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The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer
davidmwilliams writes "Those of us who work in technology have a jargon all of our very own. We know the difference between CPUs and GPUs, between SSD and HD, let alone HD and SDTV! Yet, our users are flat out calling everything 'the hard drive.' Why is it so?" As much as I hate to admit it, this particular thing drives me nuts. You don't call the auto shop and tell them that your engine is broken when your radio breaks!
Get over it.. Who really needs users to identify which piece of their computer is broken? Even if they could tell the different components apart, they'd probably be wrong about where the problem is 90% of the time anyway.
I also get the term "modem box" frequently, in reference to the tower.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
That will never be as aggravating as memory vs. storage. "I need more memory for my program" is more likely to mean "I'm out of disk space" than "I need more RAM". And the error messages specifically say they need more disk space, but they heard once that a computer stores things in its "memory" and they stopped learning right then and there. Just turned off their fucking brains, and went to sleep.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As an outsourcer I ran in to an issue for a while trying to talk someone through something on the phone, because as it turns out, everything in side the server room is a server, even the switches, the routers, and and other piece of equipment. It really just comes down to people hearing one or two terms and thinking they're talking "tech-speak" with you. Only problem is often times they're either unable or unwilling to learn, or take offense at suggestions on what the difference is.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
It's one of the few components they routinely hear about which is usually referred to with words rather than letters and is therefore easier to remember. Since it becomes the only known (though not understood) technical term, a certain class of users will invoke it at every opportunity they get to make themselves sound as if they know what they're talking about and thereby deserve some preferential treatment.
This is not something specific to computing. The same type of people will constantly refer their mechanic to their "carburetor" or their plumber to their "ball cock" ;-)
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
BOSS - What do you know about computers?
- Well, receiving emails, sending emails, clicking, double clicking, the internet... The list goes on...
BOSS - What is that under my table?
- The... hard... drive(?)...
BOSS - Of course! You got the job!
For my customers in a very rural, very southern town, it's a toss up between hard drive and: 'There's something wrong with the modem' "You mean you can't dial out?" "What?" "Dial out. You can't dial into your internet provider" "No. We got DSL. There's something wrong with the whole modem" "..."
Be thankful
I completely understand. If our users had a better grasp of technology, they would be making all the numb skull mistakes. The same mistakes that are ranked Level 1 importance, when in fact every else on my plate is actually more important.
If they used the proper terms, I wouldn't have to carry around a mini shop in a bag.
What I am have a problem with, is when they get offended by you asking them questions that could help me fix it right now, over the phone. Saving them time and, most of the time, money.
Film makers are the reason we pull our feet back when something brushes against them.
Think of the issue from the point of view of someone who has no interest in the technical aspects of a computer. They see the entire desktop amalgamation--display, keyboard, mouse, and box of chips--as the computer. Now consider the first time that the computer, as a whole, caused them anxiety or stress: for most people when a document was lost, or when the system failed to boot, or when the system began malfunctioning. That anxiety was not caused, most frequently, by the CPU, or the motherboard, or by the memory, or the monitor, or the mouse. The source of the anxiety was something that happened with the hard drive. In their struggle to appear to know more about the computer they have managed to identify that there is a significant component called the hard drive. It's a default setting. If the word they are looking for is not the entire computer then, by default, it must be the hard drive.
People do know the difference between the radio and the engine of a car because, for many people, the radio is every bit as important as the engine and, should the radio go out, it would cause them just as much anxiety as the engine going out.
Another poster mentioned 'modem box'. Those people, obviously, have had their largest and most stressful experience with the computer when the modem was no longer working properly. Blame that one on AOL.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I like the mass hallucination that causes everyone to pronounce Linksys as Linkskees.
Well, sometimes IT professionals refer to people by their component parts too. For example:
"That dick from accounting just fubared the laser printer by feeding regular transparancies into it."
I think the problem is actually that the computer field didn't come up with a proper term themselves. I remember way back-in-the-day some computer enthusiasts calling it "the CPU" which is also highly misleading. Nowadays, computer people will call it, "the tower", "the machine", "the box", or something like that. But let's face it--these are actually not very good terms. We don't actually have a precise and universal term that refer to it. The situation was muddled by the fact that there is no standard form-factor for a computer (we went from big servers, to boxes laying down, to boxes standing up like towers, to all-in-ones like iMacs, with all kinds of variations in between...).
Now this isn't a problem for computer people. We know what "power cycle the system" means and we can be precise by saying "press the button on the front of the case". But because amongst ourselves we don't consistently use a precise term, other people just picked-up on whatever term sounded right. We kept referring to "the hard drive" while pointing at (actually inside) the box, so people thought the box was "the hard drive". It's understandable.
The whole situation is funny, but not the end of the world. You just have to keep in mind that when someone uses precise terminology (like "hard drive" or "operating system" or "internet") they could very well be using it wrong.
If you remember those boxes with 8" screens....
The MAC OS would throw up a message that said something to the effect you were running out of memory (we had 2meg installed instead of max 4). I believe the message said please close some applications (Multi-finder).
Anyway, the natural step was for the user to start deleting icons (ie programs) from the desktop.
Then they would reboot. Then they would notice that some documents couldn't be opened and perhaps notice the icon has changed.
The trouble ticket would be "Can't open a document that I could open yesterday".
Why did they remove MS Word? Because they created all their documents with Word Perfect and only used MS Word to read docs from others (so they never clicked on the icon itself).
This happened so often that we had a server with an 'image' of the standard licensed software that we could drag over at moments notice. At the speed of Appletalk. Probably should have just turned off multi-finder... Oh well.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
But outside of nerddom, computers are all software. People make the distinction between the motor and the radio because they interact with the stereo and the motor separately. And really, most people would identify the alternator, water pump, and headders as "motor". Most people have never opened the case to their pc and only know it as the thing they have to turn on to get at the internet.
I think it's mostly an issue of people having been trained for years that the relevant part is the hard drive and that everything else is just nerd jargon for the crap that supports the drive.
Frankly, they're right.
Everything lives on the hard drive, and when some part fucks up, it's their data that gets screwed up and the software that they interact with that tells them or quits working. The particular component that failed is pretty much irrelevant. The data on the drive is inaccessible or corrupt.
In a similar but related argument that pops up once in a while... nerds talk about hardening the Linux OS and say things like "the only thing rogue software could destroy is user data, the OS proper remains unharmed". Neglecting the fact that the whole fucking purpose is the data.
Users call it the hard drive because that's the only part that actually matters.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
I was in a kick-off meeting for a small web project for my firm's new client (a non-profit advocacy type organization). We were going to build a little CMS for part of their relocated web presence, and this was back before you could just-add-water to Drupal or Joomla, etc., and when which browser you used actually mattered when it came to admin tasks.
... uh ... highly technical stuff."
So, I asked the group around the conference table, "Just so we know how to approach some of this, which web browser do you folks use here in the office?" The public relations director raised her hand and said, "Oh, that's me!"
She was the Official Web Browser in the office, and was the one to talk to about all such matters. What do you say at that point? So I said, "Excellent... it's helpful to have a designated contact point on the
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
At least that is the name that rhetoricians use for it: referring to a thing by something associated with it.
When we call soldiers "boots on the ground" that is metonymy. A special case is synecdoche, using the part for the whole ("blade" for "sword").
In any case, its wired into human language and thought. If you look in a dictionary, you'll find words with three or more definitions. Usually there is a process of metonymy going on. "Justice" entered the English language meaning something to mete punishment or reward according to the right of the recipient. It has come to mean a lot of other things: fairness, righteousness, the law, a judge or other legal official, etc.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well, because in many parts of the English speaking world (presumably excluding North America) "to twig" is widely understood to mean "to understand", and in fact generally implies a sudden realisation of something that other may have found obvious. It's not obscure and not elitist, it's just not American.
I don't fault people for not knowing what the blinky bits are. What I fault is when they ask for advice and then don't fucking listen.
I shit you not, I actually had this conversation --
"Why did you buy Vista? We had this discussion last week and I told you you didn't need it, your computer couldn't run it, and you aren't missing anything."
"But I thought I needed Vista to be legal on my computer."
"No, for the fuck of Christ, no. Just make sure you don't open the box and you should be able to return it."
The next day.
"My little one opened the Vista and tried installing it. Now I don't have my stuff where I had my stuff."
"You never made backups of anything, did you?"
"No. The computer is as far back on the desk as it can go. How much further should I push it?"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
A CFO at a local community bank once told me (I was the manager of network services for the bank):
"I don't want to know how the watch works, I just want to know what time it is."
That put my job into perspective.
-ted
Try the "computer as kitchen" analogy.
System memory = counter top; where stuff that's being worked on now is
Hard drive = refrigerator and cabinets; stuff you want to keep/use, but aren't using now
CPU = oven
Programs = food processor, blender, etc.
I've found it to work surprisingly well.
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
Not long before he died, my grandfather and I were able to bond over this.
Now, he did not know the first damn thing about computers. Given that he spent most of the first two decades of his life without electricity, I really could not blame him. However, he was a furniture salesman from the 50s through the 70s. I was relating to him some of the frustration of front line tech support, and he told me about some of the things he dealt with back then. Like people calling in because they bought ironing boards, and the ironing board was not ironing their clothes. Or those newfangled microwaves. People would buy them, put the food in, and not understand why the food was not cooking even though they had not turned any dials or pressed any buttons. We shared quite a few laughs over people misunderstanding technologies that are so elementary today a child can use them.
You say you want a revolution....
I didn't twig just what she meant at the time.
Trying to use a cutting-edge word definition which only a select few know makes you look, and sound, elitist as well as trying too hard (which also applies to this common sense blurb called an article).
You, sir, are an arse. Someone using decades-old British colloquialisms does not warrant such a ridiculous diatribe.
Pirate Party UK
I used to work at an ISP in the dirty dirty, back in the days when all we had were 8 external modems on a card table.
There was a cable cut that took out our T1 connection, and soon frantic calls from end users were coming in. For whatever reason, people just didn't accept that the "whole internet" could be inaccessible because our connection to it was severed.
We just started telling people that the internet was on fire. And for some reason, they would say "Oh, okay" and hang up.
That doesn't beat the time when a customer told me that the "computer inside his computer" was making funny noises. Looking back though, it sort of makes sense.
I would probably change CPU = Oven analogy. Maybe CPU = Chef or Chefs. If you have a really fast chef or chefs, but no counter space, then shit can only be done so fast... but if you have a slow Chef, it doesn't matter how much counter space you have, shit ain't gonna be done fast.
CPU = oven. Still have an original Athlon?
Nice. I usually use the "computer as office" analogy.
Hard drive = filing cabinet, where you store your files.
System memory = Desktop; where you take out files and work (you only have so much desk space before things back up).
CPU = you/others in the office
Programs = tasks you're doing
Its usually simple enough that people can grasp it, and you can usually expand things pretty easily.
"you want to add more RAM? that's like getting a bigger desktop so you can have more projects open on it at once"
"you want a faster CPU? that's like you being able to work faster"
"multiple cores? Okay, imagine it wasn't just you sitting in the office, but there were four people"
Other hardware becomes office equipment (depending on what it is and how its used), but that starts to push the analogy a bit. :)
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