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Public Confused by Tech Lingo
the_helper_monkey writes "The BBC has an article about how tech jargon confuses the public. It's based on a survey done by AMD asking the definitions of words such as megahertz, MP3, and Bluetooth. " I was recently reminded of how big a deal this is while trying to help my tech novice brother select a computer. If you don't know what a gigabyte is, it's hard to know how large of a hard drive you need.
j00 d0n7 u|\|d3r574|\|d m3 1337 5p34|????
... I do love the jargon of tech.
But seriously, back when I was on phone tech support, half of the battle was describing things without using tech jargon. The other half of the battle was having patience. Thank goodness I am not doing that any more
KARMA TAG! You're it.
In other news:
:P
Terms such as 'baffled', 'flummoxed', and 'jargon' consfuse the general public.
Techs are confused by general public's Lingo.
Sorry, if you're going to write a story about people being confused by big words, please don't use big words to describe how people don't understand big words. Your target audience is then people who can't understand big words. Don't you know we have to dumb down everything for the uneducated people coming out of our schools?
Oh, wait, where is that contradicting report that says the people coming out of our schools are more tech savvy than ever. But they aren't getting educated gaddammmmit.
On a side note, techs don't understand techno-babble either:
"The jig is up!"
no...
"The *gig* is up."
"1.21 Jiggawatts???"
no...
"1.21 Gigawatts????"
So exactly how do we all keep screwing up by saying "Gig" instead of "Jig" when we probably heard it right most of our lives?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Just tell them to go here: The Jargon File.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
I never thought about it, but we must sound really funny to non-technically inclined people. "Yea, I picked up the Athlon 1800 XP, you know the one point five three three gig, and the dude was selling pc2100 for like 50 a stick of 512 so I figured what the hell, cause Galaxies was running choppy with my old 133 stuff and the 64 meg GeForce two I had."
That must sound as bad as Star Trek dialogue to most people.
Through basic generational education...
Maybe some of the currently active generations don't know what a byte or a megahertz is, but more of each successive generation does know. When, as is likely, computer education will be a solid subject part of the primary school curriculum, this problem will vanish on its own.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Put it into terms that they can understand.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Name any field (Computers, Engineering, Finance, Medicine, Skateboarding) and if you are not involved, you will get blown away by terminology.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
I submit that people would be much less confused if AMD would spec its processors in terms of megawatts instead. After all, we already know they are excellent space heaters. ;)
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Tons of stuff confuses the public, and if organizations like the RIAA can control the definition of terms (MP3 = piracy), than they could help disuade people from pirating (or sharing if that's your angle) music.
--------
Free your mind.
It's very analogous to the introduction of the vernacular Mass. When Masses were said in Latin, with the priest facing away from the people, it was a much more mysterious, deep experience. Now that English is used for Mass, the people, without the benefit of years in a seminary, have all become amatuer theologians, thinking that birth control, homosexuality and ecumenalism are all okay, instead of being the one way tickets to eternan Damnation that the Holy See has repeatedly declared them to be.
So, I think we need more computer jargon, computer cases only openable by licensed tech, and a return to Latin Mass.
A. Rightmann
I've experienced this problem with lusers before too. At first I was very frustrated, spending hours explaning the logical history underlying the acronames "cd" and "ls" and how they are actually newmonic. After a while, though, I realized that this jargon was actually working for us, not against us. If someone is too stupid to learn and understand some basic terminology, I don't want them dumbing down Linux anyway. It's like Mensa--you have to have a certain amount of brains to get in the door, which makes for a more pleasant experience among the intelligentcia.
Just tell them to go here: The Jargon File.
The truth is probably that the blame for this is squarely on the head of Microsoft for trying to make the PC ubiquitous, like a toaster, when it's really an extremely complicated technology which the common man should not even try to understand, let alone use to it's full potential. But now that the Genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, it's too late to shove her back in and we (the professional IT community) are left to deal with the aftermath of Microsoft's behaviour.
They (MS) got rich by marketing stuff to people with no business using it and we get the shaft.
All the best,
--Bob
"Memory" means how big the hard drive is.
He calls floppies "tapes".
To him the monitor is the computer.
He calls the tower the hard drive.
And he claims that I'm confusing.
Best Windows Freeware
Tech jargon contains all kinds of english words, which are often used as is, or transformed to look like native words. This is a real problem with non-techie, non-english-speakers.
For example, something like this (in French), generally makes me look like an alien:
"J'ai downloadé un file manager dans le directory des tools, mais il était buggé, et il a crashé le drive".
I don't know about your local library, but mine is not likely to have any books talking about "gigabytes". More likely they will admonish the user to save up that $5000 for the 386 instead of going for the 286 so they can get the real mode support.
On the other hand, a quick search online will quickly clear up a lot of confusion these people have, unless they get sidetracked by porn and gambling.
I read the internet for the articles.
Techs are Techs, were created to get by the tech stuff and if possible stay in the basement NOT speaking to users in case they confuse them.
Users are users, and, to copy the BOFH, the day a luser will have access to my Server Room, he'll have to do it over my dead body.
For the rest, they NEVER understood Gigabit, they NEVER understood DHCP and it's all for the better.
Next, they will tell me Users are confused by rocket science and everybody will get Ahhhh !!!
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I pointed out on the .NET thread that our company, prior to my arrivial here, paid waaay too much for a website recently because of a misunderstanding in terminology.
One of the owners wanted the website to have a domain name that ended in ".net" because he felt that ".com" was associated with the US, and he didn't want to be associated with them (this company is an offshore company).
That in itself is kind of funny, but then when the company he hired to do the programming was asking him what type of server he wanted it on and what language. He had no clue, but told them that he wanted the ".net" on it.
They thought he wanted ".NET" and started it up.
At some point the misunderstanding was seen on their side, but they just ran with it, seeing that he was pretty clueless and then overbilled us.
Fantastic.
He isn't totally clueless, he does know a tiny little bit - but that makes it worse.
He just throws around buzzwords and it is a bit embarrassing/hilarious.
His current thing is that he wants a PDA that plays MP3s, and that has a phone jack directly into it that will let him dial-up and check his e-mail, but also record conversations, but it can't be a Handspring product "because those are crap, and did you see that Palm is buying them out" as he told me.
He was asking me the other day which he should try to get, "64K or 128K" in his MP3 player. I acted like he wrote "M" for megs and left it at that.
He makes my days much longer than they need to be - otherwise, I would be doing more programming and less trying to get crap done for him.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Next we will find that most people do not understand history or how their political system is really run!
WTF?
I had the hardest time trying to explain the difference between memory as in RAM versus disk space to my mom when she looked for a computer.
Then there are all these people that want computers to be as easy to understand and use as a toaster or something. They completely forget the vast numbers of machines and ledgers that the computer in the office for example replaces.
How the hell is something that acts likes a typewriter, a ledger, interoffice communication device and research library (google and the 'Net) supposed to be as easy to use as a single use appliance? Answer it is never going to be that easy. That is not to say that things cannot get a hell of a lot better.
The tech jargon is out there for the geeks among us fixated on the system stats. The regular user sees bigger numbers and ends up buying what all his friends have anyway. Looked deep into sports car numbers lately? Half of that crap is meaningless to me torque to dumbnut ratios for sports suspension and makes it more responsive but has the downside of... You get the picture.
Wow jargon is confusing. I needed a study to tell me this?
ACK
"Please bring your computer in so we can look at it."
....
"The whole thing?"
"No, just the main tower."
"Oh, you mean the hard drive?"
Sometimes I can understand that not everyone is this interested in computers, and wouldn't know all th terms.
OTOH, I'm not a bit interested in cars, but I know what an alternator is.
here was the response:
I'm mean, christ! does basic knowledge equate to sexiness? hopefully!!!!
I work for a Canadian Graphics Board company (bet you can't guess which one... hint it's not Matrox)and you'd be surprised how many people call tech support cause they can't get their new 500$ AGP card to fit in their 500$ computer which only has PCI slots
Tech speak is confusing in it has its own vocabulary, but even if people could understand the vocabulary, there is still the daunting task of understanding the technology. For example, somebody might know that a megahertz is used to determine processor clock speed, but they might not understand that clock speed is not really a good measure of computing power even for the same company. A Pentium 4 1.3GHz will outperform a Celeron 1.3 GHz.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Don't you know that the tower is the MODEM, not the hard drive, for starters.
The monitor is the thing you hold the paper up to for scanning, and that thing label "CD-ROM" is for holding your coffee!
The last two are cliche, but I heard both waaaaaaay too much back when I was a parts jockey for Best Buy (thankfully faaaaar in my past).
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
How many people know what 'horsepower' really is? Doesn't stop them from buying cars.
... and not spend so much time praising the specs. Leave the specs there for the informed consumer, but don't expect that someone like my mom will really know what the heck to make of a computer with more gigahertz, but a slower front-side-bus.
Tech lingo (from any industry/profession) goes above the head of most people. It just means that maybe companies need to spend time explaining what the benefits of a device are
I've seen some digital camera makers try to sort out the megapixel confusion by explaining what the size picture you can print (with acceptable quality) will be. That helps to make it accessible to people who don't know a pixel from a hole in the ground. "With this camera, I can do 8x10 pictures, with that one, I can do 5x7 pics." I'd want to know all the specs, but for most people, they just need to know if it does what they want it to do, they don't care what happens behind the scenes to get there.
When my old manager used to talk about "leveraging the synergies inherit in a business relationship", all i ever heard was "blah blah blah more work for you blah blah blah."
... that he think "blah blah blah boy that sounds expensive blah blah blah."
It's only fair that when I talk about SMP architectures, S-ATA, Terabytes, 64-bit, distributed model computing, TCP, UDP, server farms, load balancers, and quad-port ethernet adapters
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
This is always a good thing for social engineering. Take, for example, this conversation, taken from real life, (not a movie called "Hackers").
*phone rings and gaurd picks up*
Gaurd: Security, Norm speaking.
Dade: Norman? This is Jimmy Tanner speaking. Norm, do you know anything about computers?
Gaurd: Uhhhh... Uhhhhhh..
Dade: Well, Norm, my B.L.T. drive just went A.W.O.L. and I have a big project due for mr. Kawasaki, and if I don't get it in he's going to commit Harry Karry on me.
Gaurd: Uhhhhhhhh...*mumbles*
Dade: Well, you know these Japanese management types. Norm could you read me the numbers off the modem?
Gaurd: uhhhhh....
Dade: It's a little boxy thing with switches.
Gaurd: *reads numbers*
See? Tech jargon is supposed to be confusing so hackers can take over TV stations with hapless security gaurds.
Canadian Cynic, canadian politics is less boring than you
"The findings are bad news for the industry, as it suggests that the baffling terms are putting people off buying the latest gadget."
Doesn't sound like very bad news to me. Marketting is the last leg of the journy for a product lifecycle (well, not counting support). If all gadget firms have to do is change their vocabulary to sell more stuff, I'd say they're in decent shape.
In the realm of computers, even the bottom of the barel is more than enough for most people these days, so an uninformed buyer won't even be hurt much by not knowing what Ghz and Gigabytes are. Those of us who do know will continue to look for tech specs on the sidepanel. Who cares if they take specs off the product name (AMD has already headed in this direction with their meaningless numerical designations for the athlon XP line).
SPAM
I'm involved in teaching people who have little experience with computers and networks how to use them. They don't know a lot of the terminology. The problem is, they don't care to know it. They, like many in management, want to throw money at a problem and hope it goes away. The result that I see is that this gets them a lot of incompatible proprietary "solutions" that don't do what they want, though they're out a lot of money for it.
I don't know what the solution is. They refuse education, instead preferring someone simply telling them something will work and being frustrated later.
funny munging
Bluetooth, MP3, RAM, cache, FIFO .. they mean very specific things, and are well suited for having their own names.
Now, if you want a thrill ride of superfluous jargon, take a gander at the business "self help" section of your local book store.
Or google for something called "Six Sigma."
Business jargoneers have a nasty tendency to rename common ideas, wrap them in market speak to create buzzwords, and resell them to the helpless souls who seem to collect in middle managment.
And is this really a problem? I know folks who are just now getting a cell phone - and they are 26-27 years old. I don't personally see how they ever lived without one, but I rely on mine for business, and I'm ususally so busy it is the ONLY way to find me. Same with a computer. I NEED to know what GHz, MHz, Bluetooth, WIFI, etc, etc etc is. I WORK in the industry. Does the average joe REALLY need a clue or even need most of this technology in their lives? Does it really even make their lives "easier?" You know what "they" say - "ignorance is bliss."
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
It's about time people started to acknowledge this issue. While all fields (medicine, physics, philosophy...) have their own specialized jargons, as technology becomes more and more a part of every normal person's life, techspeak is going to prove a significant impediment to widespread computer literacy.
A big part of the problem is that words in computer lingo often refer to lower level concepts that normal users don't (and shouldn't have to) know about or understand. It should be possible to discuss the size of a file or disk without understanding what bits and bytes are, and to be able to discuss relative speeds of computers without understanding the role of a clock signal in a CPU (or even what "CPU" stands for).
An effort should be made to replace these confusing terms with familiar ones that normal people can easily understand through analogy. For example, why not refer to memory "sizes" using mass units? A gram could be defined as equal to a megabyte, making people much less likely to answer the question "how fast is your computer?" with "20 gigabytes," since they will intuitively understand that "20 kilos" cannot be a measurement of speed. Likewise, processor speed could be measured in miles per hour, bandwidth in kilograms per second, &c..
A side benefit is that this would allow Europeans and Americans to use their traditional units, which are easily converted between.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations and articulating your superficial, psychological and sentimental observation. Beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your extemporaneous decantations, unpremeditated explanations have voracious veracity without any rodomontade and thrasonical bombard. Sedulously, avoid all poly-syllabic profundity, pussilanimous vacuity, pestiferous profanity and similar transgressions.
I don't see what the big deal is. While I understand computers quite well I didn't have a clue as to what I wanted in a TV, a surround sound system, and the like. So I did "research". I browsed around the internet, asked people I knew in the know, and after a bit of reasearch found exactly the best bang for my buck. There are plenty of resources online and even at your local library to understand "things". Go use them.
If you don't know what a gigabyte is, it's hard to know how large of a hard drive you need.
And if you never listen to what you're told or bother to think about it, it's hard to know what a gigabyte is. I know there's plenty of people who haven't heard, but I just know a lot of people who like to revel in their ignorance. When someone explains something, they grin and say, "Well, that's just too complicated for me." Then they want someone else to work it out for them.
In a land where everyone's proud of not being able to set their VCR clocks (in other words, proud of being too lazy to read simple instructions, or too scatterbrained to follow simple instructions), shouldn't warning bells go off whenever we elect such self-admitted technophobes to Congress and hear them assert, "We've got to get tough on computer crime!"?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Hell, even I wouldnt have defined megahertz that way. If you try and get the general public to understand computers literally, good luck. You need to simply educate them relationally. Tell them that the higher the number of MegaHertz, the more responcive the computer will be - it will act faster. If you're feeling brave, tell the its a measure of how many calculations the computer can do in a certain time period. Even that much might confuse them.
You cant teach people literals when it comes to computers. The average person doesnt need to know, nor care to know that USB is the Universal Serial Bus, which supports up to 128 devices with a maximum cable length of 5 meters. They just need to know that USB is a different way to plug things into your computer.
.
anything? It's not like Bluetooth is explained in it.
Could you dumb it down a little. I just don't understand all this technical jargon.
Public Confused By Tech Lingo
In other news, the sky is blue, what goes up must come down, and SCO is full of it.
The coolest voice ever.
You're standing with a group of other people, discussing Company X's latest product. One of the people talking throws out an acronym that you've never heard before. You have absolutely no idea what this acronym may mean, as it was mentioned while the person was discussing a framework/language/methodology/technology that you've never heard of before.
Do you:
Honestly, are any of us geeks ever willing to admit that we don't inherently recognize and grok every single term that is thrown our way? Isn't that part of being a geek?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Of course the public is confused by tech-specific lingo. It's for the same reason I get confused if I try to figure out where the Axle Seal is on my Miata, or what the hell SEC rule 17 CFR Part 270 means. Every major industry has its own lingo that has developed to make intra-industry communication as clear and precise as possible. They're labels, and we strive to make them as specialized as possible.
The problem comes when Tech companies (e.g. IBM) attempt to use these labels to communicate with non-industry people. That we have these labels is not a problem (it is, in fact, a good thing). That we persist in using them with 'outsiders' is.
In the end, it may be better to tell someone they can put 1000 hours of music on an iPod (which Apple has done) than "5 Gb of MP3s encoded at 128kbit." It sure is less precise -- what happens if you use 196kbit? Does it support Ogg? But hey, the vast majority of people who Apple is targeting to purchase iPods not only don't care, they wouldn't understand these differences.
I'm not arguing for a dumbing down of all tech communications -- when I buy a RAID card, I want to know what RAID levels it can support -- but some products are naturally designed for outsiders and some are naturally designed for insiders. When in doubt, include both types of lingo (how would that work? I have no clue -- "3.2Ghz CPU with an 800 MHz FSB. / This processor is wicked fast and needs a really modern motherboard -- ask your kid for help!")
I think the best attempt at making this a null issue has been the "Good, Better, Best" campaign of companies like Monster Cable (makes uber cabling for upper consumer level to oxygen free braided ultra pure copper speaker wire for audiophiles)... They rate their own products in a tiered system. Some stores (Circuit city, for example) does this between brands in store as well.
;)) uninformed consumers come to those called expert consumers in the marketing world. Their friend the mechanic or the car buff (reads all the mags, knows their shit), or us, the slashdot readers and techies for their computer purchase needs.
The public will never sit down to learn all of the jargon of the year when it comes to technology no matter it's importance to purchase decisions. Like people who don't have a workable concept of what exactally a horsepower is and how many they need (hey, one horse can carry a person right? so if my car holds 5 people and some luggage 6 HP should do it
All in all, I don't think people not knowing anything about the technical aspects of what they are purchasing keeps them from doing so. I would chalk it up to the slow economy right now. Companies need to improve the purchase process and not shy away from technologicaly advanced language.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
Wow, I didn't think we could get a less insightful article than the "Gamers aren't (always) Geeks", and then this comes along. Everyday people confused by computer terminology? Shocking!
Think of other consumer goods, however, and you'll see the same thing. Can most people differentiate between the various input/output and resolution options available on modern TV's? Do they have any idea what a VTEC engine is on their new Honda? I didn't think so...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Asking people to press any key is nearly always wrong: try pressing the CTRL key or some other metakey, it usually won't do anything. So, asking them to press enter IS more accurate.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
English is found to be confusing among non-english speakers.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
If your wife thinks her car has a carburetor then:
Your wife is really old. Why are you married to an 80 year old? Is she rich? Does she have a sister?
or...
Your wife's car is really old. Buy the poor woman a new car, for Chrissakes!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Lets face it - the general public doesn't really need to know it all. Take cars for example: we've been making them for a lot longer than computers, but do people really know what the terms mean? When I tell my mother that her van has a 3.6L V6 engine with fuel injection, does she know what that means? Absolutely not. Does she still drive her van? Yes.
:) If the average person can't handle the big terms, then the average person shouldnt be dealing with them.
Computers are the same way. Of course they are confusing to the average person. Thats why there are companies like Dell, HP-Compaq, etc that make it simple.
Say, starting tomorrow, we started buying processors not by gigahertz, but by "fast","faster","really fast","really faster"...who would really know how fast it is anyway?
I think we're doing just fine
Why are the customer support representatives at gateway and dell laughing so loudly?
Little Brother, watching the watchers
What's the big deal, anyway? Every field of endevor has its own terms that are used (almost) exclusively within that realm. The automotive industry has its own language. Aviation has a language. Farming has a language. Textiles has a language.
:) Ask the guy on the street what a "pitot tube" is, and why is it important (even better, ask him to spell it!).
I didn't know what calender and anvil rolls were until I worked at Kimberly-Clark. I couldn't have told you the difference between SBL and SMS materials. Didn't know what a forming wire was, or what a motor drive was used for.
Before I learned to fly I didn't know the difference between a Class-B or Class-C airspace, but I did know that "stalling" had nothing to do with the propulsion units
Working as a microwave circuit designer, I get to deal with another completely different set of words that nobody outside the field understands.
What it all comes down to is that since the Renniassance, it has become impossible for somebody to know everything that is knowable. People don't (can't!) put in the time and effort required to be well-versed in every aspect of modern existance.
Most people, when faced with a household problem or emergency, call an expert: a plumber, a roofer, an exterminator, an electrician or perhaps a carpenter. Each field of expertise has its own phraseology that compactly convey the thoughts of the speaker. Yes, it becomes cryptic to the uninitiated, but over the centuries people have decided that the expressive power of obscure words is better than the alternative: a torrent of verbal effluent that takes a day to pronounce and still doesn't quite capture what the speaker intended.
Me: Hi. I just installed OpenBSD on an old box, and I'm having trouble getting it to DHCP for an IP address.
Tech Support: I'm not sure what you mean by DHCP, but we have it set up so that your computer will automatically get an IP address
Me (rolling with it): Ok, but I'm still not getting an IP address
Tech Support: What version of Windows are you running OpenBSD on
Me (rather annoyed): OpenBSD is a form of Unix
Tech Support (sounding annoyed): Fine then sir, what version of Windows are you running unix on?
Me: Can you switch me to someone else?
luckily, the next person was helpful (all we had to do was reset my modem), but it goes to show that there are people in the tech industry that don't know a lot of the jargon outside of Microsoft-speek.
"Only slightly more than half correctly identified the definition of megahertz - a measurement of how many times a part of the processor, called the clock, ticks every millionth of a second." Megahertz doesn't only apply to microprocessor control clocks, it merely means 1 million cycles per second. This could be used to describe atoms, radio, or anything else that cycles really quickly.
The PDF of the survey can be found here.
From Page 4
"Because of objectives and
subject, paper surveys sent
by mail were used to avoid
built-in sample bias from
internet-based study"
From Page 6
Age mix
- 35% Age 55+
- 20% Age 45 to 54
- 21% Age 35 to 44
- 24% Age 34 and under
Gender blend
- 38% Male, 62% Female
It looks like the ended up with a bias in the sample anyway. 55% over 55 years old, 62% female... I think it was already understood that technology confuses them.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
The number one thing that seems to confuse non-techies is memory versus hard drive space. They are both measured in megabytes/gigabytes, they are both used to store programs and information, and they are both inside the big black/beige box that they seem to think is the "CPU".
I don't know that it's truly necessary to know what every term means. Non-techies may not know the definition of megahertz, but they probably understand that more is better. I don't know how horsepower is measured on my car engine, but I know more horsepower means a more powerful car.
And who cares how many people know what bluetooth means? If it's important to you, you will know what it means and you will look for it. If it's not, you will gloss over it.
I'm just a little concerned that this type of study will lead to the further dumbing-down of marketing material for tech products. Nothing annoys me more than product literature that talks endlessly about reducing costs, enhancing performance, saving money, simplifying your life, etc., without ever telling you what the product actually is.
To the point some PC makers decided to change the text so it reads "press Enter key", because much too many ppl was calling asking where the hell the "any" key was...
The hardest part was to explain why alt, ctrl, meta, esc, shift and caps lock are not exactly just "any" keys.
It has been my experience that the public is confused by words - anything more complicated than "push here" is going to be trouble.
I design fairly complicated equipement to be used by (supposedly) trained radio technicians. I recently sent out a replacement file to a specific customer to see if we had a problem he had reported fixed.
Mind you, this customer was working to integrate our equipment into an automated test station - one would expect this person to have at least a cluon or two.
In the instructions for the replacement file, I stated most clearly:
Step 1: update the unit to the latest firmware.
Step 2: after you have done the update, apply the attached replacement file.
Pretty simple, huh? Guess what: the customer did NOT do the update first, and wedged the equipment.
Now, had this been a true production update, I would have added check code to verify that the patch would not apply unless the firmware version matched, then I would have spent the hours validating that the check code actually would catch version mismatches, then released the patch. During all those hours I would NOT have been getting the other features ready.
But this was one customer, and one that should have been more technically adept than most. So I felt that spending thirty seconds explaining the process would be a better use of my time than spending the hours to make it idiot-proof - after all, I was not dealing with an idiot, was I?
The general public runs at just over the level of a caveman (no offense intended OOG if you are still listening...) - anything more complicated than "push here" will elude them (and given that I have seen footage of bank robbers foiled by a "PULL" rather than "PUSH" door, I have my doubts about that) It would seem the average person's reaction to any printed matter is "WORDS! WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE WORDS! OHH, MY HEAD'S ABOUT TO EXPLODE!"
Granted, much of the terminology used in selling computers to the lay public is too complicated for them to understand, but trust me - trying to dumb it down won't work, unless you can determine how to describe a computer in grunts and pointing.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The link to the quiz is:
t ml
http://www2.amd.com/us-en/gcab/lt/exam/1,,,00.h
It's to the advantage of marketers that the public is so ignorant about computers. It makes it easier to sell unrealistic expectations as well as worthless products. It also helps marketers differentiate between otherwise similar products.
I kid you not, a computer store I shop at was selling battery backups for home computers that touted "Internet ready" in a bold red and gold splash on the box. Huh???
I thought it might have meant that the modem line ran through the UPS to catch any surges through the phone line, but it didn't *have* any RJ-11 jacks to accomodate this speculation. I came to the conclusion that it was completely useless marketing spiel designed to play on the "Internet" buzzword.
I strongly believe that computer awareness is the next "literacy" of this millenium - as essential as reading, writing and basic arithmetic. But the only way to accomplish that (on a nationwide level) is to *require* incorporating computer literacy into the curriculum of all schools and make sure all schools have the basic tools to teach it, ie. computers.
(steps of soapbox)
blue
The survey can be found here
Question 1: Which of the following is a definition of Megahertz?
a. A data transfer technology that uses fiber optic cable to carry information
b. A unit of measurement equal to 1 million electrical cycles per second, commonly used to compare the clock speeds of microprocessors
c. A computer's random access memory equal to 1 million bytes
Question 2: Which of the following is a definition of Short Messaging Service (SMS)?
a. A messaging service that points out when an e-mail message was not delivered
b. The ability to send and receive text messages (words and or numbers) to and from cellular telephones
c. Service where the computer is installed, instead of having to bring the computer into a shop or ship the computer back to the manufacturer for repairs
Question 3: Which of the following is a definition of WAP?
a. A global standard for developing applications over wireless communication networks
b. A company that provides wireless telecommunications services
c. Transmission of voice or other sound by means of electrical signals sent over wires or radio waves
Question 4: Which of the following is a definition of megapixel?
a. A crime committed using a computer or data stored on a computer
b. A presentation graphics program that enables you to produce attractive presentations
c. A term used in reference to the resolution of a graphics device such as a scanner, digital camera or monitor
Question 5: What is a Digital Video Recorder or DVR?
a. The same as a VCR/Video Cassette Recorder
b. A box that records and plays television programs
c. A box that makes DVDs
Question 6: What is an MP3?
a. An audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 specifications
b. A kind of magnetic tape originally designed for audio format now also used in computers to back up data
c. A box that allows you to watch television programs without commercials
Question 7: What is a DPI?
a. A measure of the resolution of printers, scanners and monitors
b. A video production made with a desktop computer and home video equipment
c. A file that has been corrupted by a virus, or computer failure
Question 8: What does it mean to download?
a. To connect a computer to the Internet
b. To save a file on your computer from a remote computer
c. To send a computer file to someone else
Question 9: What is Dot Pitch?
a. A special type of television
b. A method for determining how sharp a displayed image can be
c. A company that provides individuals and companies access to the Internet
Question 10: What is a Web browser?
a. A person who likes to look at the Internet
b. A software program that allows you to view sites on the World Wide Web
c. A computer that stores World Wide Web files
Question 11: What is Bluetooth?
a. A product that can save many photographs in a small space
b. A way to connect products to each other without using wires
c. A program that searches the Internet for the lowest price available
Question 12: How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements? (Choices are "Strongly Agree", "Neutral", and "Strongly Disagree")
a. Technology words are made up just to sound interesting
b. Consumer electronics are more complicated than they need to be
c. Most product instruction manuals are not helpful
d. I wish to have things work and not spend time setting them up
e. I will try out a new technology even before I am sure I will really need it
Question 13: Have you used any of these products in the last three months? (Choose Yes or No)
a. Television
b. Digital Camera
c. Microwave Oven
d. Cell Phone
e. Videogame System
f. Internet Service
g. Home Computer
h. Digital Video Recorder (DVR)
i. DVD Player
j. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)
games like Planetside (most recent one I've purchased) saying things like 'Required Ram 256mhz' on the back.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
XP : full form eXPee - fermented urine; sewage. .Net : Used to catch .Fish; also undefined, nebulous technology.
NT : Not Trustworthy - for MS, that is.
MicroSoft: A microscopic, kind-hearted organisation.
DRM: Digital Restrictions Managaement
TCPA: Treacherous Computing Platform Alliance
SCO : short for SCOurge; root of all evil.
XML : eXtremely Munged Language.
GNU : Great New Unix
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It should be no suprise then that Linux hasn't experienced more widespread adoption. It's full of it's own jargon that is *not* intuitive no matter how often linux advocates claim it is.
I think that the problem is an interesting reflection on the state of technology, and "technologists" themselves. For example, the test includes Megahertz, megapixel, download, web browser and Bluetooth--all good examples (IMO) of naming. "Bluetooth" may be debatable, but it's a distinct name for a distinct technology, and people who use technology should be aware of its capabilities. "Web browser" is another good name; unfortunately, Hollywood's and tech-illiterate journalists' insistence on "surfing the 'net" means that a good name is unknown by the public.
On the dark side of the naming spectrum, the tech industry has given us some gems such as SMS, DVR, MP3 and dot pitch (all from the quiz). SMS and DVR are good examples of trying to pick a generic name that didn't step on any copyright holders' toes, but didn't adequately describe the product either. But perhaps the public is too picky. They learned about VHS, so why can't they learn about DVR.
Dot pitch is a terrible misnomer but its roots are firmly entrenched in the display industry. Perhaps a better term would be "pixel density" or "image clarity," but then it's hard to associate a name like that with a value that gets better as it gets lower.
MP3 is understandable: no one is going to get a friendly, trademarkable name from a group of geeks writing cutting-edge software. But the trademark issue itself it one of the culprits. How many nice names could we have for computer components if the most descriptive words weren't already trademarked?
And finally, it's easy to point out to Houston that we have a problem. It's harder to realize what the problem's origins were and to appreciate the evolution of the computer industry in just fifty years. And it's most difficult to propose a workable solution and carry it through.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Let's see. They are about to buy a computer. Therefore the place they should look for information on buying a computer is a place they need a computer to get to?
I do not have a signature
Shit! My BLT drive just want AWOL!
True Story:
I went into a radio shack, to have some amusement at the dumbassitude of their staff. I told them I needed a flux capacitor in order to repair the wavetable floating-point unit on my network card....
They spent 20 minutes with their heads in catalogs.... Not only didn't they know they names of things; they never watched Back to the Future either....
When I started reading slashdot some years ago after 'graduating' from C|Net, I had to look quite a few things up before I understood the conversations. People kept talking about something called Mozilla which I eventually realised was a web browser ;-) (This was back in the Milestone 0.7 days.) I eventually realised that an OS and the GUI were separate things and Linux wasn't simply that desktop I saw when I booted Corel Linux one time. And at that point, I could already take a computer apart, put it together again, set up networks and such.
Now here is an exercise for you: Load up the slashdot homepage in another browser tab. Now go over the homepage word by word. Would your mother understand each of these words? Or your boss? What percentage of sentences would your mother not understand?
Sometimes I forget that it takes an immense amount of time and reading each week even for people like you and me to keep up with everything on this front. The general public ... well ... it doesn't have a chance.
If not, go to a website selling a new car. Lots of jibber jabber about power telescoping steering columns, intermitent windshield wipers, ABS, Limited Slip, 5.7 Liter V8, Sequential Fuel Injection, F55 Magnetic Selective Ride Control, Fully independent suspension with transverse springs, front P245/45ZR-17, rear P275/40ZR-18, 18 gallon tank, 6.5 quarts oil, 11.5 quarts antifreeze, 16.1:1 steering ratio, 2.66 turns lock-to-lock, 39.4 foot turning diameter curb-to-curb, 22.6 sq inch gross lining on brakes (front), engine with 5655 cc, 375 pound-feet of torque at 4400 RPM manual, 6000 RPM redline, 10.1:1 compression ratio, a firing order of 1-8-7-2-6-5-4-3, head gasket thickness of 1.33mm, Bore x Stroke = 3.9 x 3.62 in, 19mpg city.
Now, I don't have a clue what some of that stuff means. Other stuff I can understand, but I don't know why or if that particular configuration is any better or worse than another.
When I buy a car, I don't care about most of those specs. I consider overall price (inital cost, financing, maintainance, and operating costs), reliability, functionality, and reputation. I know it's highly unlikely I'll ever do more than change the oil or replace a cheap (and easy to get to) part like an air filter or the power window motor. I won't use MotorHead magazine as a reference to help me buy a car... I'll use something much closer to Consumer Reports.
All of this is A-OK. My ignorance won't prevent me from making a pretty good choice in my purchase of an automobile. Why would it stop others in their purchase of an MP3 player, flat screen monitor, or printer/scanner/fax/copier machine?
Bonus points to whomever can figure out what car I (arbitrarily) chose...
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Asking a bunch of technology-aware, most likely above average on the educational scale, daily-computer using "geeks" why no one understands our jargon, is like the guy who always yells at me for not doing my own taxes. I'm not freaking interested in my own taxes, and it's not worth my personal time, but it's worth about $75 for my accountant-friend to do 'em for me. Why doesn't everyone understand all the physics jargon?!?!? It governs our every movement....
/.
Well, some people are cut out for different things. A fellow graduate student in the English department can talk circles around me about certain authors, but we study different things and we understand each other's spoutings to a very small extent. It's not a crime to not know these things, so quit the "Ignorance won't ever be illegal" garbage. You can't know everything. Some people are cut out of the mold differently.
This conversation would be infinitly more interesting if you brought in a bunch of English scholars to debate all the techno-geek denizens of
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
people are just as confused with -any- profession specific jargon
legal jargon
auto jargon
tech jargon
aerospace jargon
military jargon
photography jargon
math jargon
c'mon people - if you aren't in a particular field, the lingo is alien to you until you've had exposure to it. and if you never hear it used in -context- of course you're going to be lost.
the consumer only ever gets the high level marketing bulletpoint, and we all know how useful that is. so who's surprised by this?
what we have in the tech circle though, is marketing educating the public in a vacuum, as geeks are more reclusive than, say, auto mechanics. so the -only- think people know, is what the marketroids tell them. and as marketroids don't know anything either - it's pure fabrication.
education is difficult and expensive compared to marketing. obviously they're not going to bother with that.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
From the article's "quiz":
If only 3% scored a perfect, I feel so bad for the future of our society that I just might cry. It's not that they don't know the tech jagon, it's that they can't take tests. Here's a real tough one: Who failed this?!? You're taking a tech jargon quiz! Which one is even remotely tach-related?!
I think I'll take a moment to mourn the republic...
+ G to tha Izzo, A to tha Tizee, Talking Giz-oat, Ya'll Bettah Feel Me... +
>> A better idea would be to educate those who need to understand the vocabulary wouldn't it?
With respect, this is more than just a very bad idea. This is why real people think techs and geeks are arrogant dweebs who live on another planet.
The vocabulary is important to people inside the industry because it (usually) allows them to communicate quickly and precisely about matters that are important to them. These matters are not important to the rest of the world.
The vocabulary is not important to the people who consume what techs and geeks build. They have their own vocabulary. Since almost everyone in the world is neither a tech nor a geek, it might be wise for techs and geeks to start speaking something other than gibberish to the people who ensure their incomes.
For example, I'm sure that an entirely different vocabulary has grown up around automotive engineering during the last century. Do people who buy and drive cars need to learn that vocabulary in order to use an automobile? No. They know what is important to them, and if an auto maker fails to deliver that, regardless of what words are used to name or describe it, they'll sell few cars.
Ditto for tech stuff. People need to know "How many movies will fit on this drive?", not listen impatiently as someone explains what gigabyte means. Or, "If plug this wireless thing into my PC in the den, can I carry my laptop into the backyard and get on the Internet?", rather than listening to someone drone one about protocols. (The almost certain result of that one-sided converstation will be the real person's conclusion that the tech is unwilling to speak in understandable terms. Not unable, but unwilling.)
A much more serious example of a failure to communicate on the part of a specialized minority can be the medical profession. Doctors and caregivers put their patients' lives and health at risk if they don't communicate in a way that the patient understands.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
12:00
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
I like how Apple does their iPod advertising. They say how many *songs* you can have on it. That makes it easy for people to understand what the iPod can hold. (Yeah, I know how you sample your music will change that number, but that's irrelevant to my point.) Instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of the tech, Apple focuses on the end result.
For example, if people want to push Linux onto the consumer desktop then this type of word of mouth advertising will be crucial. Consumers done care which technology is *best* technically (subjective many times), but how it is better for them from a practical standpoint. 'Generally virus proof/free (as in cost)/can install on all of your computers (no activation)/etc.' versus 'can scale up to 8-processors via SMP' or some such.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
Quick related story:
Back when I had dialup, I switched to a cheaper provider. I was having problems, though - for the life of me I couldn't connect to my non-isp SMTP server.
So I call them up. I get a pseudo-techie (the kind with lists of ANDIFs and no practical computer knowledge. He starts in on asking me What operating system I'm running and all that. Figuring that saying OS X would be a problem I waid, "Look, that really doesn't matter. All I need to know is if you guys block off port 25." He insisted that he needed to know what operating system I was running to answer that question. Silly techie person. :)
Triv
Try explaining to someone that running out of storage doesn't mean they need more memory or that moving from dialup to DSL isn't going to make their programs run faster. I still know people who think the case is the hard drive or the "big thingy" is the modem and the monitor is the "computer." >
Everyone needs to know a minimal set of vocabulary to purchase and oeprate anything. Sure a person does not need to know what horsepower is to drive a car. But do they need to know whata Gigabyte is to operate a computer? The answer is no. Sure they should know what it is if they are BUYING a computer..just as a consumer should know what horsepower is when buying an automobile. The problem isn't that the vocabulary is too difficult, it's that people are too lazy to learn it.
For Bonjela, I think, although as always, I had the TV muted to cut out the worst of the psychotronic radiation. Anyway, the theme of the ad appeared to be that Bonjela can be used to cure mouth ulcers, and that it does so by by killing the tiny spikey demon person that lives inside them and causes you pain.
So we've known about bacteria since the seventeenth century, but we still believe - in a very real and fiduciarily binding sense - that Joe Lowest Common Denominator is more comfortable believing that mouth pain is caused by little demons. Specifically little spiney ones who dropped out of spiny demon mime school.
And you wonder why AMD gave up on trying to explain why MHz don't matter? I'm surprised they don't market their chips based on multiples of Imp Power.
Buy The New Efreet Chip! Now With the Power of Ten Genies, All Doing Your Bidding!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What language is this? I can't find it on Babelfish...
Since when is "Bluetooth" jargon? That's a registered trademark. Is "Dell" jargon? How 'bout "Slashdot"?
My amber CRT and Hercules clone are still running quite happily on my home server, though the monitor is turned off, most of the time. That system's getting retired sometime in the next few months, so the display stuff will become available. Plus down in the basement I have the rest (most of, I'll need another 3.5" floppy.) of the old equipment you need, so I'll be happy to assemble it for you, and meet your $3000 price.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
A writer of lyrical rhythms
Encountered a creative schism
When those who spoke terse
Demanded his verse
Lose its sesquipedalianisms.
Maybe there should be a show on a major station that is like "Mail Call" but for geek questions. I know there are shows on TechTV like this, but I think if TLC or Discovery channel had one, it would reach more of the average Joe.
Here a Sig There a Sig Everywhere a Sig Sig...
People in tech marketing keep telling us that consumers "just want things to work" and don't want to have to be bothered by jargon or technical details when making buying decisions. I think this is a bad idea.
The problem is that once they figure that consumers will buy without specs, manufacturers stop putting them on the box, or making them available on the Web site, and so on. That way they can cut corners or do proprietary things without anyone ever knowing. It soon becomes damn hard to see what standards a particular device supports, and thus what decision to make when buying it.
Think about car buying:
Car salesman: This is our latest! Isn't she beautiful?
Customer: How many horsepower? Displacement? Is it turbocharged?
Car salesman: She's got the most power in her class. Drives really nice.
Customer: Do you have any specs?
Car salesman: It doesn't matter, all power is not created equal. Just test-drive her and you'll realize, she's got the most power in her class.
Customer: Anti-lock breaks? Air bags?
Car salesman: I think so, but it doesn't matter, she handles so well you'll never need them anyway.
Customer: But are they there?
Car salesman: If the Toyota model has them, I'm sure she does as well. We're generally a step ahead of Toyota in these things.
Customer: How many cylinders? Four? Five? Six? Eight?
Car salesman: Um, the engine is perfectly sized for the car's body. And as I said, most power in her class. Don't worry about it, just give it a test drive.
Customer: How about the interior? From here it's hard to tell. Can I feel it?
Car salesman: (opening door) Actually, I think it's leather.
Customer: No, it's obviously not leather, I can tell just by feeling it. What kind of vinyl is it, though?
Car salesman: Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it's the best. She's a beautiful car and anything less just wouldn't suit her. Ready to take a test drive?
I admit that there are one or two car buyers these days who are satisfied with such a conversation, but (at least where I'm from) nearly everyone goes to independent sources of information before buying a car -- auto guides, the World Wide Web, etc. -- to get answers to these questions.
It's all part of being an informed consumer in a world in which business would prefer to screw you hard for all you're worth, given a chance. Naturally most consumers these days aren't comfortable with tech jargon, but in another generation, everyone will be fine with it; it will be a part of life. TV is just getting to that point... the older generation still has no idea about such things, but current adults can hook up coax cable, auto-scan for channels, run picture-in-picture, know what a "projection" TV is versus a tube, know that they want stero rather than mono, and so on.
I would prefer to see laws that require detailed, scientific specs to be printed on boxes and to be available from salesmen and manufacturers upon request. If some people want to ignore them, fine, let them, but at least then there is some measure of protection for people who are willing to try to get a reasonable deal in this world of ours. Why instead are we hell-bent on hiding all relevant information from the consumer, so that companies can sell you a "milk farm" for a few million, then deliver a small aging female goat to your doorstep?
I mean, half of the computer boxes and shop salesmen out there are already useless, providing misinformation to uneducated computer users and no viable information at all information to ededucated ones. Making this problem worse or hiding it altogether beneath a glowing sheen of ignorance may make a few of the more lazy consumers happier, but is that ethically okay if they're getting screwed the entire time by inferior products?
I'm sure some Slashdot braniac will say hey, if the consumer is happy being taken, then let them be taken! Fine. Is it okay to lynch someone and steal their wallet, if I can get them to be in favor of it? I'm sure a few shots of Brandy here and there and I can make quite a few bob...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The main difference between computer tech talk and other tech talk is that computers became part of the common daily life of people before they became truly commoditized (verbing nouns is always fun). When cars first came out, only hobbyists/rich had them and knowing tech set them apart as a club. Once they became cheap enough to become somewhat common (I'm thinking 50's), only the hobbyists really knew what the details meant, most people knew they sounded good. Nowadays even terms like 'overhead cam' are fading, as the public knows that all things considered, a car is a car. What are obvious it's factors: seating, color, looks, convenience. About the only tech most people would still would care about is mileage.
Relative to that, personal-use computers are a young technology. But their usefulness and relative cheapness have spread them through the masses unlike virtually anything before them.* Thus, they are still growing and changing, and the details matter, but they are being used more and more by people who only care about the overall package. A problem that arises is that manufacturers can't easily advertise their usability features since they come from software, so they advertise the internal details. Not to start a war, but the differences between Apple and other ads reflect this. Apple has moved to trying to advertise what the computer will do for you. Other manufacturers have featured their tech lists. They are starting to switch over, like in the Dell commercials with interns, but instead of saying 'Let's you record CDs!' they still say 'Has 52X CD burner!'. Since the only thing that seperates most computers is the internal technology they won't lose it all, but hopefully they will start leaving out more and more.
I don't think it's a bad thing per se. Yes, repeatedly telling my mother 'You don't have 40 GB of RAM!' gets tiring, but I try to keep in mind that what really matters is what she gets out of it, not what she thinks she knows about how it works.
* One counter example of quick pervasiveness of new technology might be the telephone, or later devices based on it, but these never had a real tech-talk associated with them. Sure, marketers tried to introduce one with cordless phones (900Mhz! 2.4 Ghz! Digital, not cellular!), but most people just want a phone with decent features and decent pricing that works, regardless of how. This is probably true of computers as well; there are just few places that would admit 'Well, yes you can check your email and the web with that model' without adding 'but this one is 1.643 times faster with two times the memory for only $350 more!'
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I bet a similar survey asking people what cylinder, piston, carborator, camshaft, calliper, etc. would yield the same results
Not really because nobody sells computers by telling what's inside a CPU. Nobody talks about registers and other crap in a CPU, they just say it has a 2Ghz CPU or about 2000 Mhz and that bigger numbers are better. Same thing in a car, most people want to be sold a car with an 8 cylinder engine because it must be better than a 4 cylinder. Even though that's not always true for CPUs (AMD until recently) and cars (check out the 4 cylinder powered Impreza WRX, it'll spank most stock V8 cars).
The point is, most people don't know anything about computers or cars, they just want to have something better than the next guy (think CDW commercial)
Remember to tell the nontechie to reverse the polarity, it always works in Star Trek...
"Oh, I see, your P4 chipset's not going to work with this PC133. We're going to have to get you some DDR, which will have the benefit of detecting tachyons and reversing the starboard shield antimatter polarity nutation."
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Since I mostly burn 350MB (half-CD) TV eps, I'm familiar with 1GB being very close to 1.5 (700MB) CDs. (It's 26MB too small.)
Just being nitpicky.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I still haven't exactly figured out what .net really is.
My rights don't need management.
Let's get rid of all confusing field specific terms.
Brake rotor, piston, spark plug, cadalydic converter, distributor cap...
Defendant, prosecution, jury...
Computer terms are used to describe the items. I'm sure this same problem existed when people first started to learn how cars work. They're not confusing terms, they're new terms. You don't learn them, you'll be confused.
...and that's all there is to it.
During the holiday weekend, I got to sit and talk with my Grandmother. She's been using PCs since 1992, so I think of her as an expert. But she still believes she's a novice. Half of the problem is how one sees one's self.
... ringer. :-) He hung up. I had no way of reporting his rude unprofessional behavior. Let this be a warning. Get their name first. Even if they give a fake name, they always seem to give the same fake name.
Even though she's been using PCs for a long time, she's still unaware of the jargon, but there are a couple things that entriege her. For instance, the concept of Machine Language. To a geek, this is a basic concept. To her, the idea that machines now have their very own language would be science fiction in her day, and it is fascinating.
So, I have a problem when I try to explain what I do for a living. I'm a Java programmer. "Ok, what's that?" I usually leave out the word "java" for obvious reasons - it's confusing. Ok, so I'm a programmer. Again, "Ok, what's that?" "Well, I write instructions for a computer to follow." Not, "Well, I code up objects and methods that the compiler translates into bytecode that the virtual machines uses to translate into native machine language."
Still, after that it's not like I can't talk to her about what I do. But usually I have to resort to analogy, which I hate because it's always a sloppy analogy.
Lately, I've been working on a web version of our company's customer relationship management suite. I always start from the beginning with explaining what a customer relationship manager (CRM) is. "It's a list of customers and information about them." Instead of, "It's a database of profiles with relational ties to multiple tables."
Sometimes she'd ask, "How does it work?" I'm not sure what she's really asking, so I say, half jokingly, "Very well, thank you." Usually that kind of question really means, "Can you show me a demo?"
I almost feel like a JVM myself sometimes, but at least I can talk to her.
Kind of on the reverse end for me, once I had a call in for Sprint's technical department because my Web enabled phone stopped accessing web sites. The front line support couldn't figure it out, so they told me to wait for the technical people to call me back.
They called back early Saturday to my land line. I was half asleep, and they guy sounded like he was on speed. He told me to try a bunch of things, all the time talking about the "deck" and "cards" of the wireless web. I knew all about them, but why was he throwing out the jargon? "The card you see is on the ROM, so we need to get you back to your home deck." Then he'd say, "Did you change the home deck to something else?" He had me check this and that, all to no avail. Still no web access.
Finally, he had me drill into the service screens using some codes I wanted to write down, but couldn't because I was still too sleepy. After all that, he realizes that the web service had been turned off. That's an accounting issue, not technical. I let him have it. I told him that Sprint should have figured this out before running me through the
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Firewire -- IEEE-1394
Airport Extreme -- IEEE 802.11g
Bluetooth -- Full duplex radio in the 2.4 GHz spectrum
(add your own)
There's little things in most computers and apps that do a fairly good job of masking the tech behind them. It wasn't long ago that you had to type http:// into a browser window. Now most will assume that and go get the page.
Hardware still has a way to go. RAM, VRAM, and hard drives are all fairly basic things that will frequently flunk the "Mom test". Maybe it's time for some 'unit' of memory and storage than help to explain what these do for the computer in a more colloquial terms.
You know what?
I don't think the problem is really that people don't know what terms mean, but that everyone seems to think they matter at a basic level.
At work I watched a new course being taught last week (second level word processing... including such joys as creating folders), and in this incredibly entry level course, there's a section on hardware... including asking people to say what the hard disc is.
Except it doesn't matter what the hard disc is, beyond "you save files on it"... they weren't even really saving to the hard disc, but to one of the hard discs server in the room next door.
And don't even get me started on the technical inaccuracies in the course. I could have slapped the person who was running (and wrote) the course, when she said "this is the hard disc". She was pointing at the case of the computer... if you want to show them a hard disc, say so - I have a small stack of them in the server room.
That's because we don't put up things like they should be. I think "libraries of congress" and "Voxwagon beetle" are more suitable terms... hey dude.. this HDD can store 0.69865 libraries of congress and that computer goes 1.79 times faster than your Civic :-P
- mritunjai
I hate buzzwords. Using buzzwords is almost as bad as being politically correct. At least tech jargon means something, even if some people don't know what.
that so many people are so ignorant.
I went to repair a PC once at a church about 18 years ago. The lady that used the computer to type letters for the pastor was bumfuzzled because "my TV won't give me a picture after I turned the brain on!"
She called the monitor the "TV" and the CPU was the "brain". It was an old IBM XT.
Turns out that she had turned the brightness down on the monitor because this was *way* before the days (IBM DOS 2.10) of screensavers.
My dad still can't grasp the difference between RAM and hard disk storage after 10 years of me trying to explain it to him.
MOST people call the CASE (the cabinet) the "hard drive"
They know mouse, monitor, keyboard, CD. That's about it.
I find it easier to explain the problem of filling the hard disk up like this.
Your hard drive is like your refridgerator. You can only put so much beer in it before it gets to full to close the door. Once it gets filled up you have to take some beer (files) out to put more in.
It's sad that most people can tell you how many times some football player farted in 1996 or the names of all the movies that some little twit starred in or name all the Brittney Spears songs but they can't put oil in a car or lawn mower, don't know the difference between the CPU and the hard drive, etc...
If it doesn't involve sports, alcohol, or tv/movie stars they are baffled.
I'm afraid there is little hope for mankind, ignorance truly is bliss...
If everyone pronounces it 'giga' (ie with a hard g), then the correct pronunciation is 'giga', not 'jiga'. It's not someone's name, so the 'correct' pronunciation is how people who are familiar with the term say it.
In fact, the prefix giga- is from Greek 'gigas'. The Greek gamma is always the hard 'g' sound; there is no sound in Greek that is at all like 'j'. In names like John, 'i' is substituted ('Ioannos' or something).
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Avoid an unusual and unfamiliar word just as you would a reef.
It is always best to remember your ABC's as well: Accuracy, Brevity, and Clarity. Part of clarity, as you said, is considering your audience.
I seem to remember way way back in the days of old, you would go look at computers, and most major manufacturers would have benchmark scores with various applications. You'd then pick the machine with the highest score in the applications you used most often that you could afford. Or you'd go pick up a couple of PC magazines and read a review or two. What happened to that?
Oh yeah, people started paying off reviewers and cheating on the benchmarks.
Then again, assuming that benchmarks did get back into a realistic picture, what would we use for the test applications these days? Browser page loads? I mean what does the average user who doesn't understand the terminology run on their machine?
1. IE or Netscape.
2. AOL's crap or similar from another "value" ISP like MSN.
3. A media player of some kind for audio or video or dvds.
4. An IM client of some kind.
5. Games, most likely a year or more out of date games like starcraft, diablo2, and counterstrike.
6. Some form of word processor maybe. I doubt 90% of the people who get bundled office suites ever use spreadsheets or presentations.
7. Maybe some basic photo stuff that came with a camera or scanner.
8. Financial software for taxes maybe?
Now, pick one on the list that requires more than a 1ghz machine, which is arguably the slowest machine you could reasonably expect to find. Even the games they're likely to run don't require anything within 2 generations of the latest hardware, usually it's hardcore gamers playing the new stuff that drives most of the faster system sales these days, at least for home users. But most of them learn the jargon after awhile.
So when AMD says "People aren't buying fast computers because they don't understand the terms!" I think the real problem is that people aren't buying fast computers because they don't need them. Anything they buy will do whatever they do as fast as they need so they'll be happy with whatever a salesman has been paid to talk them into buying. They never know they're getting a bad deal because there's no way for them to tell, even after they get it home and use it for a year! The only way they can know is if someone who knows all the terminology comes and looks at it and says "What did you pay for this?" and tells them it's crap.
Let's face it, the majority of applications are no longer intensive enough to drive faster hardware sales. Only a few niche apps like the latest games, heavy duty image and video editing, and software development need a system faster than even the most pathetic mainstream commercial offering in stores now. And the people who run those apps already know what they're talking about when they go shopping.
The home PC market is dying. Start buying PDA and cellphone stocks now. What? Mom'll never use a PDA? Like she won't ever use a computer? Or a VCR? Wait till the PDAs cross this "sufficiency threshold" of being able to run the apps listed above, and relegate PCs to a role of "home server" to centrally store videos you don't feel like watching this week and such. "Hmm, now I can take my entire machine with me anywhere and just dock it into a small box with a keyboard under an LCD, even at work or my friend's house, and still have all my stuff, and it works just like my old PC did." It happens, it's just like OSs giving way to browsers, and command lines giving way to GUIs and ICs to microprocessors, transistors to ICs, and vaccuum tubes to transistors. It seems like it actually starts to happen just about every 10 years on the 5th year, give or take a few.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Now that English is used for Mass...
It would just figure. Some guy starts a flamewar by comparing MCSE with Vatican II and everyone misses the most important point - Martin Luther beat Vatican II to Mass in the vernacular by about 400 years.
Sorry to nit, but I didn't spend five years as a Lutheran kid at a Catholic school just to let that one pass.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
What do you recommend we use? If people are confused by tech terms, what units should we use? "This will hold up to 40,000 Word documents?" The number of MP3s? This might help some people, but frankly, it's about as accurate as measuring the area of a closet based on "Things it can hold" -- if you have Word documents of things like Shakespeare's complete works, you're going to fit way fewer Word documents on a computer than if you had 1-page letters to friends. Bytes make sense, and they're the true limit. There's no limit that you can fit, say, the 40,000 Word documents -- it's when you run out of bytes that you have a problem. I guess what I don't understand is what you'd have us use instead. A lot of stores now have things that will say, for example, you can store up to 24 hours of video on hard drive X, or 30,000 MP3s. But throwing away the 'real' terms entirely will cause havoc, as people don't understand why they could only fit 5,000 MP3s, each an hour-long speech, onto their hard drive that was supposed to hold 30,000. We need to help them to understand -- not ramble about how a byte is 8 bits, but rather something more like "Well, the average MP3 is about 5 megabytes -- five million bytes. This hard drive will hold up to 80 gigabytes -- eighty billion bytes..." You give the example of the medical profession, and how few people actually understand many of the terms. My doctor does what I recommend people do with computers -- he'll use a medical term, but then explain what it means. If he told me "You have a condition where you have to watch what you eat or you'll die," and then I tried to explain this to another doctor, he wouldn't really know what I was talking about. But if he told me (fortunately, this is just an example) "You have type 2 diabetes. This means..." and gave me a (concise and easy-to-understand) example, I'd know the term, _and_ understand what it meant. My doctor's always done this, and it gives me great confidence in his abilities, and is frankly kind of neat to learn about things, rather than having overly simplistic terms used. The key isn't to stop using tech terms, the key is to explain them in a way that makes sense to ordinary people.
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suwain_2
In other news, a poll shows fewer than 5% of the public knows what "Dual Overhead Cam" means. Or could correctly define horsepower other than "what engines are measured in." Neither could they tell you what fuel injection was, what a transmission did or where it was situated in their car.
This news stunned advertisers that have been using these terms to sell cars for the past hundred years. Ford motor company has recently launched a campaign to educate the public as a result of these figures. Experts remain skeptical about the effectiveness of such a campaign, citing the fact that this is 100 year old technology, and saying "if the public doesn't get it now, they never will."
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
With respect, this is more than just a very bad idea. This is why real people think techs and geeks are arrogant dweebs who live on another planet.
And at the same time, the reason we geeks consider the masses as unbelievably stupid sheep.
These words don't have an arbitrary basis (beyond the arguement that all words reflect a set of arbitrary choices several thousand years ago)... Basic engineering terms with SI units to quantify them. Really, only "byte" counts as a truly "unique" word people need to understand. Everything else simply describes, in terms existing quite happily outside computer tech, physical aspects of the component. (Okay, "mouse" seems like a new word (or use thereof), but people don't have much trouble with that one).
While techies can certainly make an effort to explain their use of words that get a blank stare, the mindless masses still deserve much of the scorn we heap upon them. For example, memory vs HDD space - Really NOT a tough distinction, at least at a high-level. One stays around after you shut off the machine. Simple as that. Yet people can't remember even that much. Even worse, now that we tend to measure both in gigabytes (oooh, those nasty SI units Americans in particular seem to hate, as I learned many years ago in a college intro-bio class). Of course, confusing them on the basis of using the same units to measure them strikes me as equally sensible to confusing my penis and my monitor because I could measure both in inches.
Do people who buy and drive cars need to learn that vocabulary in order to use an automobile?
Yes. Try to drive a car without knowing what an "accelerator", "brake", or possibly a "clutch" does? Without knowing how many "gallons" or "liters" of fuel the car holds, and how far I can drive on that? Without knowing what a "defroster" does and the farly standard symbol that will appear on the button for it? Same issue. If people want to use computers, they need to learn the basic parts and the units of measure for those parts.
Ditto for tech stuff. People need to know "How many movies will fit on this drive?", not listen impatiently as someone explains what gigabyte means
Yes, people want answers phrased like that, but simply can't have them without a better understanding of the question. What codec? what bitrate? How long of a movie? Any "quick" answer makes a lot of possibly unsafe assumptions. Similar to your automobile analogy, someone might "know" that 10 gallons of fuel in a typical car should take them (at least) 200 miles over the deathly-hot desert to the next town - Oops, forgot to mention they drive an '82 Dodge Dart, getting 12 miles to the gallon. "They gonna die" for wanting a "simple" answer without any contextual understanding.
These matters are not important to the rest of the world.
No excuse exists for willful ignorance. If a term confuses me, I look it up. If I need to really grasp it, for example to properly use something I spend several hours each day using, I research related conceptual territory until I grasp the ideas behind the word. I don't only do this for computer terms, but for medical terms, automotive terms, knitting terms, audio terms, whatever. "Jargon" only provides an excuse for not knowing a word the first time someone hears it.
THAT makes me a geek, and explains why we deride the sheeple so venemously - Because most people will not even look up a word they don't know, prefering to stay ignorant. Unforgiveable, and those of us who do take the initiative to better ourselves most certainly should not accomodate those too lazy to do likewise. They want to stay ignorant? Fine, they can serve my fries (until we completely automate the fast-food industry) and I'll spare them the jargon.
The world moves on, with us or without us.
What are the other third? Sendmail administrators?
What a weird question.
-Dave
You're absolutely right. Instead of saying "megahertz," we should say "three billion individual operations every second." Instead of "MP3 file," we should say "pirated Metallica songs." Instead of "Bluetooth," we should say "magic." Finally, "PVR" should be replaced "illegal content theft enabler."
:: end sarcasm ::
Wow, I'm understanding this technology...er, I mean, "nifty stuff I can spend money on"... already.
Beneath a certain critical threshold, I have to stop blaming the experts, and start blaming the masses who refuse to make any effort to educate themselves about the devices.
As far as the medical profession goes, sure there are many doctors who think that using thick jargon makes them sound smart--and therefore trustworthy. It's a bad strategy. But if someone doesn't know what basic medical terms like "pancreas," "antibody," "virus," and "cell" mean, there's not a whole lot a doctor can do to communicate with them. At that point, it's the patient who is putting his/her own life at risk.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
For instance even amongst the highly technically oriented few people understand what the hell is going on...
...etc...
The graphics geeks going on about the page-flipping the voxel buffer...
The crypto guys flapping away about the size of the secret exponents chosens such that a meet-in-the-middle attack would be slower than the general discrete log algorithm...
Database wizards frustrated with the limitations of the native java odbc API having to dig down deep into the bowels of ole-db to see if the base recordset can actually start doing transactions in oracle without blowing up the servlet...
Network jockeys putting the packet to the pocket to the socket to the port...in just enough time to see the header abort...
And we wonder why the general public has no idea what the hell is going on?
I work in the tech support industry. The biggest problem is not the users that don't know what you are talking about (I've gotten very good at analogies) but when the "network/computer" admin calls in and can't do simple troubleshooting like reboot their router/computer, check cables to see if they are plugged in, see if there is dial tone on the phone line, give a correct error message... etc. Or they have no idea when you ask them some simple question concerning the computer/network like
Me: Are you using static IP's or are you setup to use DHCP?
The "admin": Uhm, what do you mean?
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
For example, I'm sure that an entirely different vocabulary has grown up around automotive engineering during the last century. Do people who buy and drive cars need to learn that vocabulary in order to use an automobile? No. They know what is important to them, and if an auto maker fails to deliver that, regardless of what words are used to name or describe it, they'll sell few cars.
I love it when people use the computer/car analogy because it is easy to debunk. It is flawed. Many other computer/X analogies fail on the same logic.
Computers are not cars. Cars are meant to do one thing and do it well: drive you around town. Computers are meant to do many things, balance your checkbook, control missile trajectories, play games, etc.
The reason I bring this up is because in your argument you state that there are two camps (users and techonologists) and that they require different vocabularies. For cars that's well and good, but I'm not sure, given that computers are not cars that the same applies to computers. People need to know a little (and sometimes a lot) more about how computers work than they do about cars.
Ok technicly hertz is cycles per second. Megahertz is 1,000,000cycles/second however, this is roughly equivalant to cycles /(second/1,000,000). The article is correct, although not as precice as it could be.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
It's not just the tech industry that has jargon. My sister (who wouldn't know a MHz from a Mb) has just finished her PhD thesis. Does anyone know what this means, for example:
Engaging with current debates on national identity, environmentalism, and the legacies of
colonisation, this thesis considers non-indigenous belonging in contemporary Australia
and its discursive representation as insufficient, illegitimate, and in urgent need of
resolution. Apocalyptic overtones adhere to discussions of an unsettled and anxietyridden
non-indigenous culture in which a 'crisis' of belonging for a non-indigenous
majority is seen as an historical inheritance weakening, or indeed dissolving, any kind of
national cohesion.
I think tech jargon is mild compared with this..
Why read more when arrogance is always unjustified?
;-)
What an arrogant statement.
Sorry, I don't mean that as sharply as it sounds. But your insistance that your belief holds true while mine does not... Well, I'd like to know how you consider that not a form of arrogance in itself.
However, I do have a better point to make than a meaningless "gotcha"...
What you term "the masses" (in just a shopworn elitist way of setting yourself apart) is really just a bunch of people just like you.
Truly, I used to believe that myself. I would say to myself, whenever something seemed very "wrong" about another person's (or rather, most people's) behavior, that they thought more-or-less the same way that I do and I only needed to find the motivation for their behavior to make sense.
But at some point, I came to the conclusion that no, "they" do not think like I do. They simply do not think, period. Most people simple lack any curiosity about their world, beyond what gets them fed, sheltered, and laid. Not that I mean that to apply to everyone - I know quite a few people who appear to actually "think", and tend to associate with such people preferentially. But the majority? No. Not by a long shot.
Most people have no sense of wonder at the world (past childhood, when I believe some people could still make it to "conscious being" in later life if we didn't have such an "effective" public school system). They don't look at the sky and wonder why it appears blue. They don't plug something in and wonder why it takes three prongs, when two (or one, actually, assuming an object not completely insulated from its surroundings) would suffice. They don't wonder what a "byte" means in relation to "that new way to distract myself I downloaded off Kazaa". They don't wonder how a shiny 12cm disc translates into the sensory experience of Beethoven's 5th (or even how Beethoven's 5th translates into a sensory experience at all). They don't wonder why ethanol makes you drunk but the very very similar methanol molecule kills you. They don't wonder why chenille yarn feels so soft and why lens paper feels rough. They don't wonder why Advil makes aches and pains go away. They don't wonder. Period.
And THAT I assert as my justification for calling them mindless. Not that they don't contain quite a lot of information, but rather, they don't want to contain any information beyond that necessary to keep breathing. Anything more than that people resent and attack out of fear. No one thanks the geek who builds a solar still to allow a dozen people trapped on a desert island to survive - They consider him a threat, since he knows how to keep them alive and they do not.
Rather than "mindless", I suggest "not quite conscious". The idea that people sleepwalk through their lives. Content to live to work to eat to live to work and so on until death.
And I did believe otherwise, once upon a time. You can only disprove a hypothesis so many times, though, before you need to declare it inductively false. Not arrogance, but a rational progression of ideas.
Most people couldn't tell you the differences between varieties of wines; even people who can taste the differences without any trouble. That doesn't stop people from buying wine. And it doesn't stop people who've never learned French, but who love wine, from picking up a fair amount of French wine jargon.
One of the reasons for the complaint is that a lot of people want computing appliances. And there are a lot more who don't really, but believe they do. Another reason is that tech, by definition, is rapidly changing. We add new jargon for new things. I have no idea what the latest bus technology for consumer computer products will be called 10 years from now. Nobody has a name for it yet. But I'll need to know that name 10 years from now.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
One of my favorite acronyms comes from an IBM mainframe manual.
FAMD - Forced Air Movement Device
leave it to IBM to come up with a four-letter acronym for a three-letter word.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Is it really important for the public to know exactly what a Gigabyte is or a MegaByte. Or for that matter GigaHertz or MegaHertz etc...
I think basicly the community should only need to know that when a Byte is at the end of something such as Mega Giga or Kilo that its a term of storge. I feel that they may need to know that Mega is larger than kilo and Giga is larger than kilo etc. I dont think its important to get into the fine detail of stuff, such as what these things are made up of on the board.
Another example, Hertz... when they hear or see that, they know it has something to do with speed. Speed related. And that the bigger the better, normaly.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/