They've always been considering alternatives when available. It's nothing new just because the media focuses on it.
They key aspect of this is that while there are alternatives, obviously, people are still buying XP, and to a lesser extent Vista. If companies keep buying XP, those companies aren't going to roll out a new OS in the next two or three years.
Two or three years from now, a computer that will run Vista perfectly fine is going to cost the same as a computer that runs XP perfectly fine today. Two or three years from now, Vista will have had a lot of initial bugs ironed out, and a few service packs to go along with it, drastically reducing cost, and probably making it cheaper than having to roll out alternative software on alternative OS', and educate your entire workforce in their use. Vista is Windows. Anyone who's been working on XP in their office for any period of time can figure Vista out. Even if they hadn't, in two or three years, OEM machines will have shipped with a flavour of Vista for years.
People aren't going to switch to Linux because they use Firefox. People aren't going to ditch Exchange because they use Open Office. People aren't going to care -at all- that Microsoft updated their DirectX specs of all things, because people just do not care, and it just is not going to affect them.
Microsoft are benefitting from people still buying XP licenses. They're still on a Microsoft operating system using Microsoft software, and when they're up for a change of operating system, Microsoft will likely still be the best bet. Losing customers to competition is more or less inevitable, but thinking that Microsoft are facing any real setback because businesses are actually buying their software is stupid. It's all about vendor lockdown. Not which specific products you use.
Microsoft has made a large investment in Vista research and development and.. research, yeah, but that isn't going to disappear. The fruits of that labour are ready to be used, and the longer people stay on XP, the more time developers have to make their applications and drivers fully Vista compatible.
The longer people stick to XP, the better for Microsoft. If they were faced with "Vista or nothing" at launch date, they'd take a good hard look at alternatives. They have no motivation to do that when all of their applications are supported by the new OS.
The thing is that Microsoft isn't losing money on Vista. On the contrary. They're making good money off of both their new and their old product, and having two products on a market supplementing eachother like XP and Vista do is only a positive thing for Microsoft. It helps retain the userbase through to the next generation of the OS.
The title of the article is "DirectX 10 Hardware Is Now Obsolete". If you want to talk about the features making it obsolete, you'll be wanting "DirectX 10.1 Ships With No New Noteworthy Features". The fact of the matter is that it's nothing new that new standards supersede older ones, and that's what the summary and the people posting comments are complaining about.
Is that.. is that progress? New technology requiring new hardware?! BURN IT! BURN THE WITCH!
I didn't think I'd live to see the day where new technology would be unwelcome to the slashdot crowd. I guess it isn't surprising, though, it being a Microsoft product, and slashdot degenerating into a zealot sandbox.
DirectX 10.1 is going to be released about a year after DirectX 10. DirectX 9.0c was released about a year after DirectX 9.0b, and DirectX 9.0b hardware was also incompatible with DirectX 9.0c spec. That didn't create a whole lot of mainstream uproar, as people are generally positive towards new technology. I guess this being Vista and all, people can ignore pesky facts like those and continue their circle jerking unabated.
.. but a good few of my female colleagues who do technical stuff regularly mass-email amusing porn and are the first to point out and make up innunendo. It works just fine.
.. the fascination with the perfectly good analogy this man used. Why aren't people ripping on how he explained email in the same speech? Anyone I know who actually knows would explain the Internet in the same way to laymen.
It beats you because you obviously commented on my original post not comprehending at all what it is that I was talking about, and despite vigorously trying to clue you in, you're still failing to understand it.
Every single one of my scenarioes involving NAT have been technically valid. You just haven't understood what it is that I was saying. That you come out as arrogantly as you do and tell me to "read up on NAT" when in fact you don't understand what it is we're talking about is quite humourous.
In any case, all of my scenarioes have been explicitly described as both boxes being behind a NAT box, as it was a possibility. While you seem to somehow have magically determined that the Vista box is a NAT box, despite the XP box being the one seeing external traffic, it does not at all make any of my given scenarioes technically invalid.
Given full explanation of the scenario I was describing, not once, but twice, and still having you arrogantly telling me to "read up on NAT" when there was absolutely nothing wrong with what I was explaining leads me to conclude that you either are incapable of reading what it is that I'm posting, and debate from some fictional point existing only in your mind, or that you really do not understand NAT. In either case, anyone who knows about NAT, and is able to read, will be able to see this, and I really do not see why I should be wasting my time lecturing you on anything, so I'm just going to leave you wallowing in your own little world.
NAT is absolutely -not- irrelevant to this discussion, as it is obviously present. It is very doubtful that the Vista box is the NAT box. The Vista box is using an internal address to connect to an XP box showing external traffic, making the XP box the only likely NAT box of the two, if either of the two are.
NAT as a technology is irrelevant to where the traffic goes externally, but this discussion is not about where the traffic goes, it's about the validity of the screenshot as a source of any real information, as commented on by the GP.
In this case, as I told you before, the question of whether or not seeing random incoming traffic from known zombie infected networks on a border device is uncommon and unexpected at all applies, making the NAT stipulation irrelevant, as it assumed that the author of the article wasn't completely technologically inept. The stipulation is, however, still technologically sound, so if you have any further complaints about it, I suggest that you go back to school, or at least study the topic again.
In conclusion, my NAT stipulation was technically correct, and you either misunderstood me, or don't understand NAT.
Thereby proving my point that if a machine behind your NAT box, INSIDE your network is sniffing out traffic, it will never see an incoming IP packet with a destination of your external IP address, which is what is shown in the screenshot that is at the centre of this discussion.
You aren't really getting what it is that we're talking about here.
Of course NAT is supposed to be transparent from layers 3 and up. That's the point of NAT. That's why when your data reaches your NAT box, it is stripped of its inside local address, and given an outside global source address instead, so that the destination knows where to reply.
When the reply arrives at the NAT box, the NAT box replaces the outside global destination address (the address of the NAT box, your own global IP address) with the inside local address of the workstation (the internal IP address assigned to the local workstation receiving the reply).
This is why doing a scan behind a NAT box, any incoming traffic will have the IP destination header set to the inside local address (again, the internal IP address belonging to the workstation for which the packet is intended), replacing the outside global address (again, your global IP address.)
This means that any incoming traffic captured BEHIND your NAT box, INSIDE your network will NOT show your EXTERNAL IP address as the destination, but rather the INTERNAL IP address of the destination machine. That's what makes it transparent. The destination IP address of incoming traffic inside of your network will be the same as the source IP address of the outgoing traffic that prompted the reply.
Why don't you go do that Wireshark dump that you suggested?
Browsing slashdot, you'll see incoming packets with a source of slashdot's outside global IP address, and a destination of your inside local IP address.
The possibility described in my post explicitly described a scenario of both the Vista box *and* the XP box being behind a NAT box. In that scenario, packets sniffed on the network would *never* contain the global outside destination address of incoming packets. It would be replaced with the local inside destination, being the workstation IP address.
In the context of the screenshot linked by VGPowerlord:
Any traffic sniffed from behind the NAT box would show the inside local address in the IP header, not the outside global address of the WAN interface.
Either you don't understand NAT, or you were a little too quick on the trigger, and misunderstood my post. In either case, the third option of the XP box being in a DMZ (or indeed actually being the NAT box itself for some ungodly reason) applies, obviously excluding the second scenario. This does, however, not make the second scenario technically impossible, and there is nothing wrong with the NAT speculation in it.
Well, I could explain to you how you are misunderstanding either my post or NAT, but since you started out so rudely, I'll just leave this hanging for people to chuckle at.
So, what, he has the Vista machine and the XP machine sharing a hub of all things, or does he have a SPAN session up? Why does he feel the need to remote desktop to a local machine that's in all likelihood in the same room as the Vista machine to take a desktop of some rather anonymous looking "port scanner" that's lacking any real verifiable bits of information?
If this guy is doing this internally, why is the remote desktop session showing 192.168.0.1, and the PeerGuardian logs showing a destination of 24.247.148.173? Surely if these two machines are on the same network with internal addresses, there's a NAT box somewhere stripping any evidence of the global outside destination in the original IP header. Even if the XP box is sitting at the end of a SPAN port monitoring traffic, why is he delegating global IP addresses to his equipment behind his router?
If the XP box is in a DMZ, is it really any wonder that it's receiving random traffic from large bot infested networks, and even then, why is the traffic so infrequent, and why are there no regular ISP ranges like you'd normally find in a promiscuous scan of incoming traffic?
So because a handful of identical NICs didn't play well together with whatever Cisco equipment they were interfacing with, instead of investigating the problem and finding out whether the NICs were too liberal in their interpretation of the autonegotiation specifications of 802.3u, or the Cisco equipment somehow messed up a process that should be identical for all NICs with -only- those specific NICs, you chose to just blame Cisco and call their products sub-standard.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not really convinced by your anecdotal evidence that seems to be solely based in assumptions.
The point of the matter is that if you participate, no matter how little, you have no right to criticise people for taking advantage of precisely the same sort of dietary habits that you're helping perpetuate, no matter how little.
Even in the unlikely event that there's any vegetarian or vegan on the planet who hasn't at some point in their life eaten meat, there's still absolutely nothing that can justify insulting other people to such an offensively vocal extent, just because they don't share their views and opinions.
Animals kill animals for food. Humans kill animals for food. Any humans are carnivores. A handful of people may not agree with that, but to insult other people for living according to their very nature is ridiculous.
This really is an amusing post considering that what I had to say, and what you agree with me in, was that confusion exists both between bit/byte bandwidth measurements and base2/base10 storage measurements, and not only with bit/byte bandwidth measurements as you first proclaimed.
If making you aware of your mistakes in a neutral and well-meaning manner can provoke this kind of reply from you, and if it isn't "worthwhile" to you to be informed of any inaccuracy in your claims, then I'm sure you're a great guy to be around. And that you're right all the time. And that whoever doesn't agree isn't worth listening to.
I'm thinking that that happy place you're referring to is where you're headed as I post this.
Trade isn't really free if certain products from foreign countries have prohibitively high tariffs. Just like people aren't really free if they risk getting shot trying to get past the prison walls. Sure, you -could- risk jumping the wall, but you'd be a wanted fugitive for life. Sure, you -could- buy the foreign products if you were so inclined, but it would be at the cost of your business' ability to compete with its rivals.
When you're forced into only having one realistic option, you aren't really free in any sort of way. Same applies to trade.
Wow. I've never seen anyone be so detailed in explaining something that any normal person would have gotten past. Nor have I ever seen anyone as surprised at the fact that people who feel that they're getting less than they're paying for would want financial compensation. The fact of the matter is that class action lawsuits usually only happen once. Luckily, there are countries in the world that are in fact -not- English speaking, and a good deal of these countries have had exactly the same kind of lawsuits as well.
It's common knowledge to technical people. Yes. Welcome to slashdot. Most people here work in IT, the discussion here is between IT professionals, and we are discussing the commonly occuring situation where we have to explain units used in computing to laymen.
It is common knowledge to IT professionals that the storage/filesystem base2/base10 is a source of confusion and vexation for consumers. If I by saying "common knowledge" had meant that it was common knowledge to anyone regardless of background, then it obviously could not be a surprise to the people that I am talking about. Logical deduction would tell you that I must obviously be referring IT professionals who help answer these consumers, which, gasp, is what we are, and the point of view we're discussing this topic from.
It's common knowledge to IT professionals. Good, apparently got the obvious. You don't need to explain to me what I'm saying when you finally understand it if you're slow on the uptake.
Ending your explanation, you're finally coming around to understanding what it is that I am saying. Congratulations. You wasted a good few posts on failing to comprehend what most anyone with a modicum of ability to deduce would have.
"Kibi" sounds no more ridiculous than "Yotta" or "Zetta", and using base 10 SI units for base 2 measurements is obviously neither adequate nor convenient when they're the cause of as much confusion as they are. Kilo is 1000. Kilo is not 1024. Using it to represent 1024 might be convenient to someone who has more ease typing "Kilo" than they have typing "Kibi", but for everyone else, it's neither convenient, adequate nor practical when you end up having to explain which of the two colloquially interchangable meanings you actually meant.
If you consider yourself partially educated, then surely you're able to use google. Article after article pops up.
Not only do I work in IT, but I also work with people who have done tech support on consumer products for years in the past, and the list of anecdotes involving precisely that misconception is practically endless. Most of the people I know who could be considered laymen have asked about this after purchasing computers.
I'm sorry, but if there is any basis in your claim to be partially educated, I wouldn't need to point out common knowledge. You would know it if you had experience, and you could google it if you were educated.
Slashdot Mirror
They've always been considering alternatives when available. It's nothing new just because the media focuses on it.
They key aspect of this is that while there are alternatives, obviously, people are still buying XP, and to a lesser extent Vista. If companies keep buying XP, those companies aren't going to roll out a new OS in the next two or three years.
Two or three years from now, a computer that will run Vista perfectly fine is going to cost the same as a computer that runs XP perfectly fine today. Two or three years from now, Vista will have had a lot of initial bugs ironed out, and a few service packs to go along with it, drastically reducing cost, and probably making it cheaper than having to roll out alternative software on alternative OS', and educate your entire workforce in their use. Vista is Windows. Anyone who's been working on XP in their office for any period of time can figure Vista out. Even if they hadn't, in two or three years, OEM machines will have shipped with a flavour of Vista for years.
People aren't going to switch to Linux because they use Firefox. People aren't going to ditch Exchange because they use Open Office. People aren't going to care -at all- that Microsoft updated their DirectX specs of all things, because people just do not care, and it just is not going to affect them.
Microsoft are benefitting from people still buying XP licenses. They're still on a Microsoft operating system using Microsoft software, and when they're up for a change of operating system, Microsoft will likely still be the best bet. Losing customers to competition is more or less inevitable, but thinking that Microsoft are facing any real setback because businesses are actually buying their software is stupid. It's all about vendor lockdown. Not which specific products you use.
Microsoft has made a large investment in Vista research and development and.. research, yeah, but that isn't going to disappear. The fruits of that labour are ready to be used, and the longer people stay on XP, the more time developers have to make their applications and drivers fully Vista compatible.
The longer people stick to XP, the better for Microsoft. If they were faced with "Vista or nothing" at launch date, they'd take a good hard look at alternatives. They have no motivation to do that when all of their applications are supported by the new OS.
The thing is that Microsoft isn't losing money on Vista. On the contrary. They're making good money off of both their new and their old product, and having two products on a market supplementing eachother like XP and Vista do is only a positive thing for Microsoft. It helps retain the userbase through to the next generation of the OS.
Who?
The title of the article is "DirectX 10 Hardware Is Now Obsolete". If you want to talk about the features making it obsolete, you'll be wanting "DirectX 10.1 Ships With No New Noteworthy Features". The fact of the matter is that it's nothing new that new standards supersede older ones, and that's what the summary and the people posting comments are complaining about.
Is that.. is that progress? New technology requiring new hardware?! BURN IT! BURN THE WITCH!
I didn't think I'd live to see the day where new technology would be unwelcome to the slashdot crowd. I guess it isn't surprising, though, it being a Microsoft product, and slashdot degenerating into a zealot sandbox.
DirectX 10.1 is going to be released about a year after DirectX 10. DirectX 9.0c was released about a year after DirectX 9.0b, and DirectX 9.0b hardware was also incompatible with DirectX 9.0c spec. That didn't create a whole lot of mainstream uproar, as people are generally positive towards new technology. I guess this being Vista and all, people can ignore pesky facts like those and continue their circle jerking unabated.
.. but a good few of my female colleagues who do technical stuff regularly mass-email amusing porn and are the first to point out and make up innunendo. It works just fine.
I don't think you understand me fully.
My post was directed at the quotation in the description about CCTV surveillance rarely stopping people in the act.
.. no crime can be punished on evidence. People have to be stopped in the act.
.. the fascination with the perfectly good analogy this man used. Why aren't people ripping on how he explained email in the same speech? Anyone I know who actually knows would explain the Internet in the same way to laymen.
It beats you because you obviously commented on my original post not comprehending at all what it is that I was talking about, and despite vigorously trying to clue you in, you're still failing to understand it.
Every single one of my scenarioes involving NAT have been technically valid. You just haven't understood what it is that I was saying. That you come out as arrogantly as you do and tell me to "read up on NAT" when in fact you don't understand what it is we're talking about is quite humourous.
In any case, all of my scenarioes have been explicitly described as both boxes being behind a NAT box, as it was a possibility. While you seem to somehow have magically determined that the Vista box is a NAT box, despite the XP box being the one seeing external traffic, it does not at all make any of my given scenarioes technically invalid.
Given full explanation of the scenario I was describing, not once, but twice, and still having you arrogantly telling me to "read up on NAT" when there was absolutely nothing wrong with what I was explaining leads me to conclude that you either are incapable of reading what it is that I'm posting, and debate from some fictional point existing only in your mind, or that you really do not understand NAT. In either case, anyone who knows about NAT, and is able to read, will be able to see this, and I really do not see why I should be wasting my time lecturing you on anything, so I'm just going to leave you wallowing in your own little world.
NAT is absolutely -not- irrelevant to this discussion, as it is obviously present. It is very doubtful that the Vista box is the NAT box. The Vista box is using an internal address to connect to an XP box showing external traffic, making the XP box the only likely NAT box of the two, if either of the two are.
NAT as a technology is irrelevant to where the traffic goes externally, but this discussion is not about where the traffic goes, it's about the validity of the screenshot as a source of any real information, as commented on by the GP.
In this case, as I told you before, the question of whether or not seeing random incoming traffic from known zombie infected networks on a border device is uncommon and unexpected at all applies, making the NAT stipulation irrelevant, as it assumed that the author of the article wasn't completely technologically inept. The stipulation is, however, still technologically sound, so if you have any further complaints about it, I suggest that you go back to school, or at least study the topic again.
In conclusion, my NAT stipulation was technically correct, and you either misunderstood me, or don't understand NAT.
Thereby proving my point that if a machine behind your NAT box, INSIDE your network is sniffing out traffic, it will never see an incoming IP packet with a destination of your external IP address, which is what is shown in the screenshot that is at the centre of this discussion.
You aren't really getting what it is that we're talking about here.
Of course NAT is supposed to be transparent from layers 3 and up. That's the point of NAT. That's why when your data reaches your NAT box, it is stripped of its inside local address, and given an outside global source address instead, so that the destination knows where to reply.
When the reply arrives at the NAT box, the NAT box replaces the outside global destination address (the address of the NAT box, your own global IP address) with the inside local address of the workstation (the internal IP address assigned to the local workstation receiving the reply).
This is why doing a scan behind a NAT box, any incoming traffic will have the IP destination header set to the inside local address (again, the internal IP address belonging to the workstation for which the packet is intended), replacing the outside global address (again, your global IP address.)
This means that any incoming traffic captured BEHIND your NAT box, INSIDE your network will NOT show your EXTERNAL IP address as the destination, but rather the INTERNAL IP address of the destination machine. That's what makes it transparent. The destination IP address of incoming traffic inside of your network will be the same as the source IP address of the outgoing traffic that prompted the reply.
, or produce some information of your own.*
Why don't you go do that Wireshark dump that you suggested?
Browsing slashdot, you'll see incoming packets with a source of slashdot's outside global IP address, and a destination of your inside local IP address.
I suggest you either take your own advice.
The possibility described in my post explicitly described a scenario of both the Vista box *and* the XP box being behind a NAT box. In that scenario, packets sniffed on the network would *never* contain the global outside destination address of incoming packets. It would be replaced with the local inside destination, being the workstation IP address.
In the context of the screenshot linked by VGPowerlord:
Remote host -> Src=203.162.247.11 Dest=24.247148.173 -> NAT -> Src=203.162.247.11 Dest=192.168.0.x -> Local host.
Any traffic sniffed from behind the NAT box would show the inside local address in the IP header, not the outside global address of the WAN interface.
Either you don't understand NAT, or you were a little too quick on the trigger, and misunderstood my post. In either case, the third option of the XP box being in a DMZ (or indeed actually being the NAT box itself for some ungodly reason) applies, obviously excluding the second scenario. This does, however, not make the second scenario technically impossible, and there is nothing wrong with the NAT speculation in it.
Well, I could explain to you how you are misunderstanding either my post or NAT, but since you started out so rudely, I'll just leave this hanging for people to chuckle at.
So, what, he has the Vista machine and the XP machine sharing a hub of all things, or does he have a SPAN session up? Why does he feel the need to remote desktop to a local machine that's in all likelihood in the same room as the Vista machine to take a desktop of some rather anonymous looking "port scanner" that's lacking any real verifiable bits of information?
If this guy is doing this internally, why is the remote desktop session showing 192.168.0.1, and the PeerGuardian logs showing a destination of 24.247.148.173? Surely if these two machines are on the same network with internal addresses, there's a NAT box somewhere stripping any evidence of the global outside destination in the original IP header. Even if the XP box is sitting at the end of a SPAN port monitoring traffic, why is he delegating global IP addresses to his equipment behind his router?
If the XP box is in a DMZ, is it really any wonder that it's receiving random traffic from large bot infested networks, and even then, why is the traffic so infrequent, and why are there no regular ISP ranges like you'd normally find in a promiscuous scan of incoming traffic?
This just does not look credible at all.
So because a handful of identical NICs didn't play well together with whatever Cisco equipment they were interfacing with, instead of investigating the problem and finding out whether the NICs were too liberal in their interpretation of the autonegotiation specifications of 802.3u, or the Cisco equipment somehow messed up a process that should be identical for all NICs with -only- those specific NICs, you chose to just blame Cisco and call their products sub-standard.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not really convinced by your anecdotal evidence that seems to be solely based in assumptions.
The point of the matter is that if you participate, no matter how little, you have no right to criticise people for taking advantage of precisely the same sort of dietary habits that you're helping perpetuate, no matter how little.
Even in the unlikely event that there's any vegetarian or vegan on the planet who hasn't at some point in their life eaten meat, there's still absolutely nothing that can justify insulting other people to such an offensively vocal extent, just because they don't share their views and opinions.
Animals kill animals for food. Humans kill animals for food. Any humans are carnivores. A handful of people may not agree with that, but to insult other people for living according to their very nature is ridiculous.
This really is an amusing post considering that what I had to say, and what you agree with me in, was that confusion exists both between bit/byte bandwidth measurements and base2/base10 storage measurements, and not only with bit/byte bandwidth measurements as you first proclaimed.
If making you aware of your mistakes in a neutral and well-meaning manner can provoke this kind of reply from you, and if it isn't "worthwhile" to you to be informed of any inaccuracy in your claims, then I'm sure you're a great guy to be around. And that you're right all the time. And that whoever doesn't agree isn't worth listening to.
I'm thinking that that happy place you're referring to is where you're headed as I post this.
Trade isn't really free if certain products from foreign countries have prohibitively high tariffs. Just like people aren't really free if they risk getting shot trying to get past the prison walls. Sure, you -could- risk jumping the wall, but you'd be a wanted fugitive for life. Sure, you -could- buy the foreign products if you were so inclined, but it would be at the cost of your business' ability to compete with its rivals.
When you're forced into only having one realistic option, you aren't really free in any sort of way. Same applies to trade.
Wow. I've never seen anyone be so detailed in explaining something that any normal person would have gotten past. Nor have I ever seen anyone as surprised at the fact that people who feel that they're getting less than they're paying for would want financial compensation. The fact of the matter is that class action lawsuits usually only happen once. Luckily, there are countries in the world that are in fact -not- English speaking, and a good deal of these countries have had exactly the same kind of lawsuits as well.
It's common knowledge to technical people. Yes. Welcome to slashdot. Most people here work in IT, the discussion here is between IT professionals, and we are discussing the commonly occuring situation where we have to explain units used in computing to laymen.
It is common knowledge to IT professionals that the storage/filesystem base2/base10 is a source of confusion and vexation for consumers. If I by saying "common knowledge" had meant that it was common knowledge to anyone regardless of background, then it obviously could not be a surprise to the people that I am talking about. Logical deduction would tell you that I must obviously be referring IT professionals who help answer these consumers, which, gasp, is what we are, and the point of view we're discussing this topic from.
It's common knowledge to IT professionals. Good, apparently got the obvious. You don't need to explain to me what I'm saying when you finally understand it if you're slow on the uptake.
Ending your explanation, you're finally coming around to understanding what it is that I am saying. Congratulations. You wasted a good few posts on failing to comprehend what most anyone with a modicum of ability to deduce would have.
I guess you guessed right.
"Kibi" sounds no more ridiculous than "Yotta" or "Zetta", and using base 10 SI units for base 2 measurements is obviously neither adequate nor convenient when they're the cause of as much confusion as they are. Kilo is 1000. Kilo is not 1024. Using it to represent 1024 might be convenient to someone who has more ease typing "Kilo" than they have typing "Kibi", but for everyone else, it's neither convenient, adequate nor practical when you end up having to explain which of the two colloquially interchangable meanings you actually meant.
If you consider yourself partially educated, then surely you're able to use google. Article after article pops up.
Not only do I work in IT, but I also work with people who have done tech support on consumer products for years in the past, and the list of anecdotes involving precisely that misconception is practically endless. Most of the people I know who could be considered laymen have asked about this after purchasing computers.
I'm sorry, but if there is any basis in your claim to be partially educated, I wouldn't need to point out common knowledge. You would know it if you had experience, and you could google it if you were educated.