User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't

Welcome once more to On Call, the Friday column in which we share stories of tech support incidents that went pear-shaped until cunning Reg readers stepped in to save the day. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Charles" who told us that last century he worked at what he called "The very large German bank." "My job …

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Reminds me of the time ...

a user claimed the image display of the microscopic image processing system I developed was upside down, and this had to do with the software update I had provided. I explained that the update did nothing to the screen, but she was adamant the software was the problem. I came to the lab, noted that the image display seemed fine, as all the letters on it weren't upside down, the status bar was in the right place, etc. She then said that the letters were OK, but the bacteria on the image were upside down, compared to how they looked through the microscope. I took one look at the microscope, rotated the camera 180 degrees, and the problem was solved.

Case closed ... except that moments later she claimed the mouse was working in reverse (cursor went left when the mouse when to the right, etc.). I again explained I had changed nothing in the mouse settings at all. Again, she was adamant the software update was to blame. Again I trundled over to the lab, looked at the mouse, rotated it 180 degrees so the "tail" was pointing away from the user, and declared the problem solved. To her credit, her cheeks did turn a fetching shade of scarlet in embarrassment. We both had a good laugh.

[Roland6]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

This article reminds me of an event back in the 1980s when we were loading some early release software and it always failed with a blank screen. The Dev’s/support were adamant what we were seeing wasn’t possible, until one of the support guys uttered the subsequently immortal words “you did type ‘GO’ “

Us: “what?”

Support: “ when the screen is refreshed (ie. Goes blank) you need to type “GO” <enter>”

Us: “ but that’s not what your instructions say”

Support: “sorry forgot to update”

[xanadu42]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

Back in my early days of installing $10,000 accountancy systems (when the person sitting in the seat was used to typewriters) I was called out to fix a "screen problem" where there was "white dobs" on the screen...

When I arrived I found out that the "white dobs" were Tippex (or other similar) dobs... scraped the offending dobs off the screen and user was happy - we both had a good laugh and wondered about who did the actual "deed"...

Nowadays sure sounds like an "urban myth" but I can confirm NOT!

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

As the old joke goes:

Q: How do you tell if a blonde has been using a computer?

A: There's White-Out (Tippex) on the screen.

(hey, I just report 'em)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

The assistant dean of the college of English where I worked had a dot of whiteout on his screen. When he was scheduled to return from sabbatical at Oxford, housekeeping cleaned his office, including the blob of whiteout on his monitor. The first thing he did when he came into the office Monday morning was to call the dev who wrote the awful UI for the grading system and requested that she come to his office and mark his screen, again, when it was in 132 column mode, at the beginning of the character block representing the college of English. I'll never, ever, understand how that particular application was ever allowed to be deployed to all of the colleges in the university.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

Kudos for dropping it on the person responsible. Did she learn anything about UI design from that?

[doublelayer]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

I doubt it. In my experience, yelling deadens most of the reaction to real problems and stupid solutions don't really help either. If someone asks for a blob applied to their screen, I'd probably ask why and try to find a better solution. If they don't put up with that but are satisfied with that simple fix, then I'm less likely to consider if they had a good point about interfaces, especially if the "asks for" could be better described as "screamed at me for not having already done". That's regardless of whether the problem was real. While that's not necessarily a good thing because it would be nice if every potential problem got a full review, I, and a lot of others I know, have limited time to do that and therefore use rough but fast heuristics to decide whether to bother thinking further or just make the user happy and go back to work.

[Donn Bly]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

If it was marking a character position, it is my guess that the original system was based on PUNCH CARDS, and the "UI" was just a way to create the records without actually punching any cards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

"This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Charles" who told us that last century he worked at what he called "The very large German bank."...

The user responded by explaining the HSM message wasn't something he had seen before, or part of the editor's interface, so he decided it was nothing."

I worked for a German-run company & had German bosses for almost a decade. Makes perfect sense once you realize the user was German.

[SteveK]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

she claimed the mouse was working in reverse (cursor went left when the mouse when to the right, etc.). I again explained I had changed nothing in the mouse settings at all. Again, she was adamant the software update was to blame. Again I trundled over to the lab, looked at the mouse, rotated it 180 degrees so the "tail" was pointing away from the user, and declared the problem solved.

I have a user who has used his mouse in that orientation for the past 30 years, and cannot cope with it in the normal way. Come to think of it, I must ask how he uses a modern trackpad when away from his desk, I can't believe he rotates the laptop round to face away from him ... ?

[VicMortimer]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

My last dentist did that.

He insisted that it was absolutely necessary, because he spent so much time doing things with his hands while looking in a mirror, he needed the mouse pointer to also work that way.

He didn't use a trackpad at all. Had me set it to disabled when a mouse was connected.

[NickHolland]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

I had a user that did that, too -- probably 25+ years ago.

"I don't know...that's just how I always did it", she told me...and I put her mouse back, tail towards her.

No idea how she adapted to trackpads and such. But then, I still see the occasional user who never uses the on-laptop pointing device, only uses external mice.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

I remember a linguist at my company who used the mouse that way, 25 years ago...

Could it be the same one?

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

Not a cunning linguist, then?

[Francis Boyle]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

I'm pretty sure a genuine cunning linguist should be entirely capable of doing it upside down and back to front.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

Probably whilst swinging from the chandelier & peeing on the band?

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

I can understand people not getting on with trackpads. My boss is always to be found toting a wireless mouse around with his laptop - then again the work-issue Dell Latitudes we have are fitted with perhaps the worst laptop trackpad I've ever used. It genuinely makes the tiny one on my ancient 2009 era netbook seem like a pinnacle of interface design.....

[mcswell]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

While we're off-topic, I had a terrible time touch typing on my acer. I think the palm of my hands would occasionally touch the touch pad and send the mouse cursor off to who-knows where. Eventually I got a Bluetooth mouse, and disabled the touch pad. Now I type happily.

[tiggity]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

I use a mouse the "typical" way round.. but I never use laptop keypads

.. that is purely because they are utterly crap compared to a mouse!

[Ignazio]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

When the fashion for trackpads to scroll the other way started (what stupid nonsense that is, bah humbug) I configured mine to stay the usual way.

Now the work laptop comes with trackpad set that way and no software to select what you want (yeah, windoze, looking straight at you). I cart my own trackball around when moving desks. Can't be having with that crap hardware and crappier software.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

It's what you're used to, innit? It's only one step further on from reversing the direction of the vertical scrollbar, as pioneered by Apple some many years ago (and subsequently the scroll wheel). Not dissimilar to those people who can't use the mouse left-handed if they are used to the right-hand. I taught myself left-handed mousing when I had some problems with my right hand some years ago, I can now use it fairly well left-handed and without reversing the buttons too. I dare say if I used the mouse of a left-hander (with buttons swapped so "left click" under the index finger) it'd take me a while to get used to it but it's surprising how well and how quickly the brain can adapt.

Reminds me of the famous experiment from the middle of the last century. They fitted volunteers with special glasses which reversed the images their eyes saw. After a day or so of utter clumsiness they adapted, and when the glasses were removed after a week (or whatever), they then spent another half a day re-adapting to correct-way-around images.

Had a quick search, this seems to be the thing I was talking about. The experiments were a lot more varied and extensive than I remember being told!

M.

[theDeathOfRats]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

A developer at a previous job used two mices, left and right. He'd use one or the other, depending on what he was doing at the moment. Didn't have the left one configured for left-hand, either, he said he was used to it.

It worked for him, so...

Pretty nice chap, by the way.

[breakfast]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

This must have been a tough job - processing images can be tricky even when they're visible with the naked eye.

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

That reminds me of the time we had a user, a Professor of physics I think, who insisted on printing out and filing in physical filing cabinets every single email he ever received, including all spam. He did this so that he had a record of all email in case it was ever needed again, or so he said. This was only discovered when he requested a new room full of filing cabinets because his current office was completely rammed with filing cabinets full of junkmail.

The senior academics rather forcefully told him to revise his filing system and to get rid of pretty much all of it. The recycling guys had a field day when that happened.

[Dimmer]

Blank screen

Same thing happened to me. I was told that there was nothing on the screen.

When I looked in on it you could see the desktop. When I asked why she said it was blank, “ it is blank - it does not have what I want on it. “

[Bitbeisser]

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

I had a user call me and starting off that he wanted me to know that he was not drunk or otherwise under the influence. As his problem was that his screen was upside down...

That was on Windows (XP IIRC) and it happened that he accidentally had hit Alt-Crtl+<arrow keys>. Told him to do this a couple more times intentionally and everything was back to normal.

You could hear a huge sigh of relief over the phone and both of us had a good chuckle for quite a while after that.

PS: I don't think this works with all drivers in Windows 10/11 anymore...

[xyz123]

Did support for various tablet hardware. HUNDREDS of similar calls:

"my screen just has your fruity company logo in the middle and refuses to boot"

What color is most of the screen? silver with a black logo

You're looking at the back of the tablet, turn it over......."oh that worked!"

And these are users who've owned an eye-pad for 2-3years but somehow 'forgot' which bit is the front and which is the back.

Other calls include "I have a special device..it doesn't HAVE a button on the front"..."again, you are looking at the BACK of the device!"

Handled several solicitor calls because people for a well-known ISP got a 'wireless router' and were upset it still had a power cord. "BUT THATS NOT WIRELESS!"

Had at least THREE different people cut the cords off their keyboard and mouse because "I have wireless internet now, and don't need these cables anymore!" then would demand replacement devices.

And people would literally start legal proceedings.....

[Mishak]

If these are for real...

I despair* for the human race.

* Well, more really...

[Anonymous Coward]

Handled several solicitor calls because people for a well-known ISP got a 'wireless router' and were upset it still had a power cord. "BUT THATS NOT WIRELESS!"

Had at least THREE different people cut the cords off their keyboard and mouse because "I have wireless internet now, and don't need these cables anymore!" then would demand replacement devices.

And people would literally start legal proceedings.....

what part of the world was that in?

legal professionals should have their licenses revoked if they thought they could waste their customers money like that.

to be fair though, descriptions of things should be better, ofcom giving virgin permission calling their network fibre when the last mile was predominantly coax is an obvious egregious example.

[tfewster]

" A wire less" = "wireless". It sort of makes sense.

And regarding the user with "nothing" (i.e. not what they were expecting) on the screen - I've handled a similar call and was similarly bemused. From that, I learned to ask very specific questions that were meaningful to the user.

[pirxhh]

I learned the hard way to always ask "look at the power plug, is it pointing upwards or downwards?" as users would refuse to check if it was unplugged.

German plugs are not polarized; that ruse would never work in the UK, the country with the best plugs in the world.

[VicMortimer]

Worst plugs in the world, you mean.

Those things are a foot puncture wound hazard. And FUSES in the plug? Ugh, horrible archaic design. If the device needs that kind of circuit protection, put a circuit breaker in the device, not a fuse in the plug.

[J.G.Harston]

The device *IS* protected by a fuse in the device. The fuse in the plug is there to protect the CABLE. What do you think would happen if your device has a 40A fuse and the cable can only carry 5A?

[stiine]

A warm orange glow fading to white? Followed by dripping copper and probably smoke from the UL listed cable outer.

[MrBanana]

The fuse protects the cable because copper was in short supply after the war, and a lot of rebuilding had to be done. So the ring main was conceived - a way of feeding high current to a single socket via two low capacity wires. A fuse after the socket, in the plug, was required to prevent overload of the ring.

[Mishak]

That's not how it works

Yes, the ring was a solution to a copper shortage. However, as was stated above, the fuses in the plug protect the appliance's cable.

The fuse (or more likely these days, the breaker) supplying the ring protects the ring itself from overload.

Rings are normally rated at 32A - it doesn't take many moderate loads (say 3A) to overload a ring, which can easily have 10 double outlets on it (there is no restriction on the number of outlets).

However, there are further complications as unequal loading of a ring can theoretically lead to an overload if it is fully loaded at one point that is near to the origin - the load is effectively shared over two cables that may have significantly different resistance, so one will take more current than the other.

[vistisen]

Yes because when you don't have a fuse in the plug, it means the whole house goes dark with a short circuit, rather than just the one device. That is a much better solution. NOT!

• Not to mention that the devices that use more current can have bigger fuses than those that don't,

• They are more resistant to being pulled out of the socket by mistake

• The earth pin connects before the others, giving extra safety.

• They ensure that with audio equipment that all devices are in phase

• The mains ring can have more amps, as each individual device is protected according to its needs.

So no benefits at all… But I agree the are ugly.

[david 12]

it means the whole house goes dark with a short circuit

It looks like you've never lived in a country with distribution board circuit breakers.

If you had, you surely would know that it doesn't work like that.

[Martin an gof]

Still, in the UK, it is common to have few circuits. Less common these days and obviously originally another post-war cost-saving measure, but there are still quite a lot of old-fasioned distribution boards with maybe as few as four (yes, four) circuits for the entire house; one cooker, one ring*, one water heater, one lights (or maybe two lights, no water heater). It's therefore quite possible for a short to take out a lot of house in one go, if the fuse in the board goes rather than the one in the plug. However, the sort of problem which is most likely to take out the "whole house" is not a short-circuit which should take the fuse (or MCB), but rather a fault to earth which takes out a whole-house residual current device (RCD) or, older, a voltage-operated device. Again, a single RCD for the whole house was a cost-saving measure which has been recommended against since probably the 1980s.

I think the thing to realise with the UK wiring system is that back in the late 1940s/early 1950s when it was introduced it was genuinely world-leading and well-engineered and that still today many other standards (of plug and socket) do not incorporate some of its best features, such as guaranteed polarisation (vital if your circuit protection only disconnects "live", nothing to do with audio kit (or not these days at any rate unless you have an old "live chassis" valve radio or something)), tamper-resistant socket shutters, mandated mechanical specifications (theoretically eliminating a "loose" fit plug), part-shrouded pins, assembly screws hidden when plug is inserted in socket (and for a modern moulded plug, fuse carrier hidden), and cable entry from the "bottom".

Of course other countries (well, mostly Europe) have in the meantime caught up and many of the largely economic pressures which helped design UK wiring have eased. The "Schuko" or CEE7-7 (I think I got that right) can actually be a very good plug and socket combination, though I gather polarisation is not mandatory. Even in the UK the ring final circuit is becoming less common now that distribution boards with 12 or 16 or more "ways" are reasonably priced (though Copper cable is once again getting expensive) and a 16A or 20A "radial" circuit which covers just one room or a small number of rooms is more common and is run in the same cable (2.5mmsq) you'd use for a 32A ring final.

But, as an ex-Part P registered electrician, I'd still contend that the UK system of domestic wiring, plugs and sockets is really rather good, compared with quite a lot of the rest of the world.

M.

*when the ring was devised, and still to this day, the criterion was that it could serve as many outlets (sockets, fused units etc.) as you need, but only over a total floor area of 100sqm or less. (actually it was probably 1000sqft in the 1950s, but y'know). The thing to realise here is that UK housing has always been "compact" and a typical 3-bed terrace, as found in huge swathes of (post) industrial Britain will have a floor area of 70 - 80sqm, often less. Even a middle-class 1930s 3-bed semi in the suburbs is likely to be only 100 - 120sqm, so you could quite easily use a single ring for the "house" if you run a separate circuit for the kitchen.

I gather the original idea was that the 7.2kW available from a ring circuit (30A rewireable fuse, 240V nominal supply) could support sufficient electric heaters to keep the living areas warm (three two-bar (2kW) fires, for example).

[David Hicklin]

> Still, in the UK, it is common to have few circuits.

OK this is before the house got rewired but as a child in a 1950's rapid build council house** (walls made from solid pebbledash concrete poured into wooden formers) they had a single radial circuit for the sockets of which there was a total of 6 in the entire house - and this was a 3 bed semi. The bedroom I shared with my brother did not even have one

Still remember my mum ironing by plugging into the light outlet.

You lot these days with fancy ring mains....

** My parents told me that from foundations to people moving in was 6 weeks.

[Martin an gof]

All sorts of methods for rapid build at that time. Quite apart from post-war tin prefabricateds, there was the "Cornish" pattern, made from slot-together concrete panels and, believe it or not, bolt-together houses made from cast iron squares. If you don't believe me, they have a pair of semi-detached cast iron houses at the Black Country Museum.

As for sockets, my parents' developer-built four-bed semi, c1967 (they were the second owners in the early 1970s) had a grand total of one ring circuit, with one single socket in each bedroom and three of those sockets running a single spur socket downstairs. The original owner had installed two (yes, two) radiators downstairs, one of which covered up one of these sockets, meaning that apart from a couple of separate sockets in the kitchen, the whole downstairs of this 1960s house was powered by two single 13A sockets. There were also two fused outlets on radial circuits, no idea what the original intention was, but fortunately they were easy to convert to sockets later on. Just a shame one of them was a bit useless in the hall.

M.

[Peter Gathercole]

Times change

I grew up in the '60s, in houses that were all built pre-war. Almost all of them had been re-wired to the post war ring main standard (even then, electrical work was pretty rigorously regulated), and it was very normal to only have one or two single sockets per room. But then, what did we have to plug in in each room?

One radio, and later a television. Maybe a floor standing lamp, and possibly a record player (maybe combined with the radio). Bedrooms had maybe a lamp or two, and possibly an electric blanket.

I've just done a review of the electrical devices in our living room around me. One television, one Sky satellite system, one non-Sky satellite system, One Bluray player, one DVR, one VHS tape player (yes, these last two may be a bit of an anachronism), one Roku box (OK, this is USB powered, but has a wall wart). Then there's two laptops, a USB wall wart for anything that may need power, a floor standing lamp (my wife does jigsaws, and wants a fill in light to stop shadows) and currently a Christmas tree.

My 'office' (a multi-purpose bedroom) has more than the living room (also having a full AV setup, as well as several computers, monitors and printers), and a second reception room has a full separates HiFi setup and another telly. But we do have several separate 30A socket rings for different floors (and 2 on the ground floor) and also one for the kitchen.

We have a lot more electrical devices now than we used to use, and consequently, a need for a lot more power outlets, and honestly many older houses have too few for modern life. We frequently use four (or more) way power bars, which if you are careful, and use mostly low power devices (come on, how many devices do you use that draw even as much as an amp at 240V outside of the kitchen/utility) pose no risk. Fuses in the plugs provide an additional level of protection from overloading these.

I know how other countries provide many direct feeds from separate circuits, particularly when they have lower mains voltages, but I often wonder just how they are wired, but there's a potential for big bundles of cables. I guess a lot of them have floor spaces and hollow walls to run them through, something that my current 100 year old house just does not have (solid ground floor, and most walls solid.

I would like to see low-voltage (maybe 12V or even 5V) with other devices using DC-DC converters arranged as a plug-in track become more standard. This would be a better fit for modern life, but would take years to become well established.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Times change

Very late replying to this, but two points.

First, the current (ha!) edition of the wiring regulation recommendations actually has numbers for minimum outlets per room. I don't have a copy to hand, but for a small (<12sqm) living room it's something like four double outlets plus an extra two where the TV is expected to be. It worked out to eight double outlets in our medium (~15sqm) living room. Notable, however, that four sockets behind the TV (two doubles) is unlikely to be sufficient these days so multi-outlet extension leads may well still be necessary. Our "Entertainment Wall" has to power quite a lot of kit (off the top of my head I count 15 individual items, but that does include such unusual things as a Laserdisc player, cassette recorder and various format converters (composite video to HDMI, for example). Multiways can be very useful for this sort of scenario; you can turn multiple items off by switching just one or two wall sockets.

Having a large number of sockets also helps with things like table lamps and phone chargers; if the sockets are sensibly placed they can be plugged straight in to the wall rather than into an extension lead.

As for 12V or 5V distribution, the problem there is voltage drop. There is an argument for 24V, and maybe 12V in a smallish house, but you'd need quite chunky cables to distribute 5V without an unacceptable voltage drop; a drop which will vary according to the actual current draw. For example (if I've not fat-fingered things), 2.5mmsq cable (a common size used for ring circuits, not too unwieldy) will drop approximately 20mV per metre per amp; inconsequential at 230V, but if you are only sticking 5.1V in and trying to draw 30W to charge two phones at 15W each then you are going to be below the ~4.75V threshold where USB charging sort of fails and Raspberry Pis have problems, at the end of less than 20m of cable. There's a reason that PoE (for example) uses 45V or more. Anything electronic needs a steady regulated voltage so you will need to put some kind of dc-dc converter boost/buck circuit at each outlet rather than using the "5V" directly. If you are doing that anyway you might as well start with 24V and get away with much longer cables, but as far as I can tell a dc-dc converter is not really going to be much more efficient than a good quality mains SMPSU, and in order to get your dc in the first place, you are probably already fitting one of those.

There are scenarios where running 24V around the house makes sense. In particular if you intend to use batteries where converting 24Vdc to 230Vac can be quite inefficient, so you could avoid that step. Also if you have a lot of 12V or 5V native kit which can deal with badly-regulated supplies. Old fashioned light bulbs, for example.

I looked into this some years back and decided against running additional fat cables around my house, particularly as mains sockets could be bought which incorporated efficient 5V USB outlets, and I fitted at least one such outlet in almost every room. These days you can even get sockets with USB Power Delivery for a reasonable price. That example has C and A sockets and can supply up to 45W shared across both.

M.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Times change

Meant to add this link to an old article on El Reg.

M.

[mirachu]

It doesn't matter if audio equipment is in phase (except for speakers but for those it's about SIGNAL phase), unless the gear is badly designed.

[Martin an gof]

unless the gear is badly designed

Think back to the 1940s when most audio kit was valve-based and likely had a "live" chassis. If the chassis is connected to "neutral" it's a little bit safer than if it is connected to "live", but the primary reason for guaranteed polarisation is so that the fuse (in the plug and/or in the equipment), always cuts off the "live".

M.

[Peter Gathercole]

Phase

If you have more than one circuit in a room, you may have mains earth problems. Not so common in houses, but I remember measuring 120V AC between the earths of the sockets on different sides of the dining hall that was used for concerts at my University college. This was probably caused by unbalanced loads on the circuits on different mains phases, but it did cause serious hum on audio setups with powered speakers, and could also cause quite a tingle when setting up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow.. Posting silly comments without any understanding of the facts. I bet you're MAGA.

[Anonymous Coward]

German plugs are not polarized

So, are they so woke that even the plugs are gender neutral too?

[LBJsPNS]

*rimshot*

[gnasher729]

Brits have the best power plugs. Germans have the best fuses (good enough that a 20kW water heater in your shower is absolutely safe. British electrician would get a heart attack seeing it).

[Terry 6]

Hmm. Not really

Decades back we had wireless radios. But they had to be plugged in.So the concept of adding mains power to an otherwise wireless device was hardly new to anyone.

[John Brown (no body)]

Not just decades, but well over a century now! Even at the time of the story, there was almost certainly no one in the workforce who was born before the wireless was a common item :-)

[Martin an gof]

wireless radios. But they had to be plugged in

A large number of early radios ran on batteries, often because mains electricity wasn't always available. You could take your cells to the local chemist to have the electrolyte changed, or to be recharged.

And a lot of people had crystal sets, of course, which used no additional power at all.

M.

[Terry 6]

That is missing the point. Plug-in wireless sets were common place.

[Roland6]

>” Handled several solicitor calls because people for a well-known ISP got a 'wireless router' and were upset it still had a power cord. "BUT THATS NOT WIRELESS!"”

I expect ISP support deskss are seeing similar today, given how many adverts confuse “WiFi” with broadband/fibre Internet.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Good to see I'm not the only one who wonders how useful "blazing fast Wi-Fi" is, when the ADSL link to the exchange is 3 miles long, with the last 10m being made of bell wire, and which only gets 6MBps, and only then if it isn't raining.

[Sam not the Viking]

Not that long ago, the last few metres of our telephone connection which became the internet connection, was old two-core bell wire. It had several connections in it (including the old GPO 'box' with screwed connectors). It was very unreliable, especially when it rained from the north-east, and I called out the provider several times but they always made a 'working'repair.

Eventually, I inadvertently pruned the wire outside instead of the climbing rose. When the engineer came to investigate the fault, no phone, no internet, so it must be a cable fault.... he quickly identified the 'break' in the cable. It was clearly not their fault but he said: "Let's fix this properly" and ran a new cable; continuous from the wall socket to the pole..... Reliability soared....

It's a fibre line now.

[Martin-73]

Actually if it's the figure 8 dropwire, it's WORSE than bell wire, it's copper plated steel, and steel RUSTS... I've seen quite a few where the steel core is missing and the actual 'wire' is a microscopically thin copper tube filled with rust. ONE bit of movement on that wire, and it's adios ADSL/VDSL

[tin 2]

Had that! And several BT engineers, until the decent one spotted the rust streak down the wall and replaced it.

[KarMann]

Eventually, I inadvertently pruned the wire outside instead of the climbing rose.

'Inadvertently'. It's OK. We've all been there.

[PB90210]

"Dear BBC, I'm listening to Charlie Chester on my so called' 'wireless' set, yet I have had to string 100yds of wire around my garden to receive a signal..."

[John Brown (no body)]

"given how many adverts confuse “WiFi” with broadband/fibre Internet."

Or worse, the number of people confusing a mobile phone signal with "WiFi".

[PB90210]

Or, just the other day,The Donald confusing 5G/6G with the number of pixels of a mobile's camera while announcing a 6G mobile initiative

[tiggity]

@PB90210

From what I have seen, I would assume most things confuse Trump

[Someone Else]

(e.g. air. light, and song lyrics...)

[Adrian Harvey]

Some places know the difference... I was travelling on a flight recently that advertised free in-flight WiFi. Which there was. No internet connection from it for free though! Budget airline, short (2h) flight. It was actually great as it had the in-flight entertainment content on a plane-based server so you could watch on your own device (and own headphones, etc). No seat-back screen, which is normal for budget short-haul.

The advertising people sure know how to take advantage of an ambiguity!

[Zakspade]

Solicitors...

To become a solicitor, one has to undergo lots of education... Hmm.

I worked for a company who had a client that was a huge firm of solicitors.

Support call came in. A solicitor had worked on a document ALL DAY. Apparently it was very detailed. They had lunch. At the end of the day, they turned off their PC.

The next day they logged the support call. Their day's work had gone!

Lots of investigation revealed the following

- At no point during the day had they actually given the document a name or attempted to save it,

- At the end of the day, when they shut down their computer, they ignored the prompt to save the document.

Yes, we could have a look for temp files and see whether there was any way to recreate the non-document, but that became DATA RECOVERY (something which our company offered, but at a serious price). The solicitor engaged 'Solicitor Authority' and senior partners and my company folded and said we (me) would attempt to recover the data using 'best endeavours' - which meant doing it as when able while doing normal work (meaning no SLA). Consequently it slipped right down the list of priorities.

Solicitor fuming. He wanted the data NOW. He needed it. It was time sensitive. All the usual.

It has been deemed DATA RECOVERY (rejected by the client) or Best Endeavours.

Naturally, said solicitor didn't want to surrender their PC for me to access as and when i could so as to trawl though it, remotely, because they needed to use it NOW.

Guess what happened... (no, my employer didn't fold again - the data recovery aspect of their business was quite lucrative and they were not of a mind to devalue it).

[GlenP]

Re: Solicitors...

At the end of the day, they turned off their PC.

Many years ago I has a similar issue where someone had spent the day typing in a large document then closed the word processor without saving (yes, ignoring the prompt). She was a French exchange student so perhaps language hadn't helped and was practically in tears so I needed to do something.

With the aid of trusty old Norton Utilities I was able to find the temporary file in FAT and reset the first pointer to make it visible again (undelete having failed). She still had to redo some formatting but at least she hadn't lost the whole thing.

The other occasion when something similar happened it wasn't the users fault. It was on a VAX at the local college and one of the students had saved her document at the end of the day but inadvertently used the name of one of the printers as her filename - on a VAX that meant the document was printed not filed. Cue another weepy teenager but fortunately we were able to retrieve the printout and one of our department secretaries typed it back in for her so smiles all round.

[vulture65537]

Re: Solicitors...

I used a mainframe where if you called a file List: THING.LST it got deleted overnight.

[VicMortimer]

Re: Solicitors...

That's BOFH-level user hostility.

[that one in the corner]

Re: Solicitors...

> With the aid of trusty old Norton Utilities

Ah, the Good Old Days, when we were glad to have on our PC some software with the name "Norton" attached to it.

[wrgl]

Re: Solicitors...

I used PCTools. Never got my head around Norton Utilities…

[Cris E]

Re: Solicitors...

One of the things that will be lost to future generations due to pernicious influence of AI will be the experience of working all day on a document.

Not losing it, not dealing with saving it, just the idea that it could take more than a couple hours to crank out a written piece. The so-called grit it takes to investigate a topic, organize and assemble thoughts and edit the results is going to seem completely foreign to kids who think that slapping together a prompt is the same as all those things at once. I fear for our future.

[Donn Bly]

Re: Solicitors...

I saw something the other day (most likely AI-generated) about a teacher assigning her students homework which consisted of having ChatGPT write a report on a given subject -- then write a second report explaining why the ChatGPT-generated report was wrong. I thought it was an interesting approach to demonstrating why you can't trust AI

[Martin-73]

Re: Solicitors...

Yes that IS clever, and unalives 2 avians with one small piece of igneous rock :)

[Yes Me]

Re: Solicitors...

But... but... why not ask ChatGPT to explain why its report is wrong? It's generally very obliging, I find.

[tiggity]

Re: Solicitors...

Though, given it was a solicitors, it could have been a 10 minute typing job, stretched out to 8 chargeable hours

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

Re: Solicitors...

Many, many years ago when solicitors still had secretaries to do the typing, one firm decided to see if this process could be speeded up by using speech recognition software. An early package which required training on the users' voices was procured and duly trained. In test it worked beautifully, and in practice it worked well too, but only in the morning for the bulk of the solicitors (although it still worked flawlessly for the secretaries all day long).

It was eventually proved conclusively that the habits of the legal professionals at lunchtime were to blame. Lunch inevitably consisted of a pub lunch with a pint or two and the pints were always the good stuff, not weak session beer. The effect of ethanol was to slightly slur the speech of the users; not enough to be audible to the human ear but easily enough to throw off the computer systems.

The technology was shelved as insufficiently advanced for the purpose intended.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Should be interesting in the brave new world…

of exclusively "agentic AI" desktop support.

I am not sure that the agent's training would encompass the user's looking at the rear of a tablet although being an Apple user would be big clue.

Perhaps the rear should be labelled: "please turn over." Apple could use the rear camera to detect their valued but gormless customer gazing at the rear of tablet and using the Siri voice synthesis capabilty gently suggest turning the device over.

I have some sympathy for the non technical polloi when faced with non obvious things.

I have to admit that I always thought selfie cameras on smart phones^† didn't mirror invert on the phone's screen until I "demonstrated" this to a non·techie with her newly acquired smartphone—très embarrassant.

A little bit of humility like crow pie goes a long way. :) [Unless it's not obvious the selfie image is not stored reversed.]

_{† I had stuck with feature phones (lacking selfie cameras) to the bitter end (finally Nokia Asha 300.)}

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Should be interesting in the brave new world…

The word you're looking for is "dumbphone", not "feature phone" as they are SEVERELY lacking in features.

[david 12]

Re: Should be interesting in the brave new world…

The word you're looking for is "dumbphone", not "feature phone" as they are SEVERELY lacking in features.

Technically, the industry name used to describe that kind of phone is "feature phone".

[midgepad]

Dumbphones

...have a rotary dial on the front and go click click click rather than whistle to the stepper in the Strowger.

[Martin-73]

Re: Dumbphones

Stares happily at rotary dial 746 (no not 8746, it's hard wired to the PBX with a proper terminal block, oldskool)... which thanks to the magic of the PBX is quite capable of talking to both VoIP ATAs :)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Should be interesting in the brave new world…

Now that the OP's story has been snapped up for training the Agentic AI would know all about it. OTOH the POFH stories have also been read. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Perhaps the rear should be labelled: "please turn over."

An apple turnover.

[Pigeon Post]

Re: Should be interesting in the brave new world…

Give the mention of AI, maybe 'apple crumble' better fits...

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Should be interesting in the brave new world…

Better:

if you wonder where the button is, give back this device to the support and get an etch & sketch pad instead...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Should be interesting in the brave new world…

>> [Unless it's not obvious the selfie image is not stored reversed.]

Really? I thought they were saved as shown (i.e. reversed) - why are so many photos published on the internet reversed then? Most seem to have "mirrored" writing!

Ok, that's a test i need to do later when I have my phone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Should be interesting in the brave new world…

You're right! How did I not ever notice that before?!?!

[Eric 9001]

It's amazing how many people don't learn the basics of what words mean - after all, wireless means less wires - not wire free.

I figure the same sort would complain about a stain on a stainless pan after leaving salty water in it for a week.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong!

In English, the suffix -less means “without.” For example, something that is “colorless” is white or transparent; it has no color. Someone who is “homeless” has no place to live; they are without a home.

If "homeless" meant less homes, then I'd be happy to become homeless!

Useless doesn't mean "slightly less use!"

By the way, I upvoted you because i'm guessing English isn't your first language.

[Eric 9001]

English is my native language.

Although it is common to use less to mean without, in most cases of usage of the -less prefix, the thing is in fact not completely without, just less.

Anyone who claims to be moneyless, generally will have at least $20 - they rather have less money than they want.

All wireless devices have wires, or something that operates like a wire.

Stainless kitchen implements aren't without stains - those just stain less readily.

>something that is “colorless” is white or transparent; it has no color.

Considering that white is all the colours, I would say "it's white" or its colourmore, as it's certainly not without colour.

Transparent is colourless, as although a slight colour tinge results via interference effects, that's clearly less colour than given off by an opaque object.

>Someone who is “homeless” has no place to live; they are without a home.

Generally someone who his homeless doesn't in fact have no place to live - rather much less access to a place to live - it is typical for the homeless to alternate between between friends couches, shelters and sleeping on the street.

>Useless doesn't mean "slightly less use!"

Useless is generally used to refer to something that can be used, but due to severe defects, it has severely less use.

For example, windows is useless if you want to get any computation properly done.

[that one in the corner]

> English is my native language

Followed by a long string of utter and total twaddle:

> Although it is common to use less to mean without, in most cases of usage of the -less prefix, the thing is in fact not completely without, just less.

No, nope, uh uh, incorrect, not accurate, totally madey-uppy in just your head and nobody else's (unless you've been filling said head).

> Considering that white is all the colours, I would say "it's white" or its colourmore, as it's certainly not without colour.

I don't doubt you *would* say that - at which point you have decided to totally disregard any and all value, point, purpose, intent or worth in the language you lay native claim to. As well as, in that case particularly, a miserably sad failure at junior school Physics.

Must try harder.

[Michael Strorm]

> "moneyless, generally will have at least $20" [..] "All wireless devices have wires" [..] "Generally someone who his homeless doesn't in fact have no place to live"

You're using contrived pedantry to rationalise your misuse/misunderstanding of the word here, and we both know damn well that's not how those words are meant nor understood.

You remind me of certain types on Slashdot back in the day, who confused being would-be-smartass nerd pedant with actual, grown-up intelligence.

The former is saying "well, *ackshually*, 'wireless' equipment *does* have wires in it", the latter is knowing that- whether or not that's pedantically true- it's not what's meant in the sense that's relevant.

But then, let's be honest, you knew that, didn't you?

> "Useless is generally used to refer to something that can be used, but due to severe defects, it has severely less use."

No, useless is a synonym for "no use at all".

I've no idea why someone whose native language *is* English would pretend otherwise or talk such shite.

[Terry 6]

I think, if I remember correctly and I'm not bothering to reread it, it also said -less was a prefix..........

[gnasher729]

Now I completely agree that a device with any cables is _not_ wireless.

[Eric 9001]

If you open up any wireless devices, you'll find wires.

After all, the device has less wires (for example, a wireless AP does away with the need for a wire to each device, but the AP still needs to be powered and be provided an internet connection via a wire), not no wires.

[Anonymous Coward]

"wireless" means "without wires" - but it refers to the transmission system, not the device internals.

[Pascal Monett]

"I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

Not really.

The user is not generally aware of all the things that happening in the backend for his terminal session to work, especially back in the days where tapes were a thing that were useful on a day-to-day basis for other than system backups.

Even today, I have to remind my wife regularly that when she says Google doesn't work, I have to ask her on which browser she is. At that point, she generally blanks out for a minute before venturing "Firefox ?". So I go check and she's on Brave. I've abandoned trying to get her to understand the technicalities that are beyond the fiber cable that goes from our house to the lamppost across the street.

Don't get me wrong, she's far from being a dumb blond, but she's just not interested in that stuff. When she clicks on a link, she expects it to work, period. And since we've had our GB fiber link, I can hardly blame her. It's just that, sometimes, it's the server on the other side that is not responding fast enough for her taste (and she's not really the patient kind). In the best of cases, by the time I get to her desk in the living room, she says "oh, its working now".

Oh well, I get a bit of exercise like that.

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

Don't forget the exasperation of something not working (like cart) and wanting you tell them why and to fix it

[MiguelC]

Re: "The user is not generally aware of all the things [] happening'"

My task was to design a piece of software that would replace a commercial offering we were using that was incompatible with Windows 7 (which we were in the process of upgrading to).

The user showed me how it worked and what they did daily, "press F3 once then type something then press F3 twice and check the values, then press F3 n times", etc. Each time F3 was pressed, the program advanced to the next part of the workflow.

I then asked how to go back to the previous screen in case you wanted to recheck something.

"Well, you press F3 until you get to main screen again and restart pressing F3 until the screen you missed is shown", was the answer.

I looked a bit closer for a second, then pressed F2. And, to the amazement of the user, the previous screen was presented.

So, although the user had been using that program for over 10 years, they had never read the instructions shown at the bottom of every screen!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "The user is not generally aware of all the things [] happening'"

Last year I showed a 40-something system administrator how to use the windows on-screen keyboard using his laptop keyboard and a mouse, to send ctrl-alt-del. This year I had to show someone older, and with more experience...the same trick... I can't imagine ever trying to click the onscreen keyboard control key, then the alt key, then the delete key. Especially since when you press the keys on your local keyboard, the on screen keyboard keys light up...

[ShortLegs]

Re: "The user is not generally aware of all the things [] happening'"

Re: "The user is not generally aware of all the things [] happening'"

Last year I showed a 40-something system administrator how to use the windows on-screen keyboard using his laptop keyboard and a mouse, to send ctrl-alt-del. This year I had to show someone older, and with more experience...the same trick... I can't imagine ever trying to click the onscreen keyboard control key, then the alt key, then the delete key. Especially since when you press the keys on your local keyboard, the on screen keyboard keys light up...

Does your real name start with J... and you work at a company name starting with I?

[pirxhh]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

To help troubleshooting my elderly mother's internet, I built a device with a few LEDs that are either green or red - monitoring her local WiFi, the fiber router, my mail server, Google, and her bank's website. It's just an unobtrusive IKEA picture frame on her wall that has saved me hours of frustration.

After a bit of cleaning up and adding Home Assistant capabilites, it's on Github now: https://github.com/quantenlabor/hass-led-panel

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

Years ago, my definitely no-technical brother declared that he wanted to see what he was missing on The Internet. So, I set him up with a Windows machine, showed him how to use it and left him to it.

About once a month, he would call and tell me "it wasn't working", so I'd run over the few miles to his house and sort out whatever Windows Update had broken.

Finally, I got fed up and told him I was going to upgrade him to Linux. Same as Windows, I told him, but a bit better. He was unsure, so I did the old "pull the hard drive" move, and saved his Windows HDD while installing a new on for Linux. Fast forward a couple of months and he's banging away on Linux like he's used it for ever...and no phone calls. I reinstalled his Windows drive so he could pull some files off it, and he's down to a "service call" maybe a couple of times a year.

I draw no conclusions from this N=1 data, but I have heard it works for others in similar situations. All I can say is that it worked for my brother.

[NetMage]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

Should have gotten him an iPad.

[Roland6]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

I would have agreed with iOS 4, but more recent versions include functionality that is most definitely not intuitively obvious.

[Victor Ludorum]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

Reminds me of the Cloudflare outage the other week.

Wife: 'This website says there's a Cloudflare problem. You use Cloudflare, don't you? Can you fix it?' (A handful of my clients' websites are proxied through CF).

Me (trying to sound convincing): 'Err, I don't really have access to that part of Cloudflare...'

Wife: 'Why not. I thought you understood computers!'

Me: '...'

[Korev]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

That's a bit uncloudfare

[doublelayer]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

It still should be something that never happens, since the user was not asked to understand or even read the message, just to recognize that some things on the screen is not the same as the screen being completely blank. Sadly, it's also very common. I have a few people who will report problems to me but cannot understand that, if there is an error message, I want to hear A) that there was one and B) what it said, and if there was not an error message, I want to hear what was attempted, what normally happens, and what happened differently this time. I don't know why they have not learned that, when they tell me that "The server doesn't let me work", the first thing I'm going to ask is what it said (okay, what I'm first going to ask is what they're calling a server today, but once we've established the thing they're trying to work with, looking for the error message is the first step after that).

[GlenP]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

I had a support ticket raised by one of our Tech (plastics tech, not IT) guys last week. He deals a lot with customer complaints himself, I thanked him for giving me a comprehensive, but concise, summary of the problem complete with screen dumps of the errors and a description of what he'd been doing.

I wish every user was like that, it's mostly, "XXX isn't working!" You then establish it's not actually XXX anyway and getting the actual errors out of them is like getting blood out of a stone.

[stiine]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

Always has been. At least since keyboards have had more than just letters and numbers. I'm sure we've all had users that needed to have the carriage return = return = enter = ↵ talk.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

Don't forget "Where's the <Any Key>?"

[midgepad]

Proper names

The Any Key is not the same as any key.

Early on in a switch from two applications running on MS-DOS one of which had to be logged into after closing it, using the other, closing it, opening the first, which could look like busy at work all day, to running two MS-DOS programs under W3.1 (and starting both from the initial script) a worker complained very bitterly that I kept changing the system every day.

Well, no. Every month, perhaps.

Further enquiry revealed that a screen showing 2/3 size (medical practice automation program) in the foreground and 2/3 sized Word Perfect in the background was an entirely different computer system from one starting with WP covering half the medical program.

It took a lot of work with two sheets of paper on a desk to get across that concept.

[peter_dtm]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

hmm - I wish ! current support desk - raise ticket & fill it in (actually well hidden and frequently moved) - Describe issue briefly. Expand fault description; add movies/screen shots, software version. May have screen shots lying around or from colleagues showing how it should work if relevant. List of things already checked (basic tier 1 checks; to tier 2 for some issues) What I was trained to do when producing a fault report; what I have trained (some) of our clients to do with about 10% success rate. Point out that when they call back to investigate I may be talking & remoted in to ac lient so please just teams me - when I notice it I'll respond. Add in known upcoming times I won't be available - all time say 14h00 UK (09h00 Ohio time) (All times regardless where in the world within the CRM are always Eastern time or as they call $Town in Ohio.

Get an email saying they are closing the ticket because they called and no response - check the ticket - they called at 04h00 UK time and then at 01h00 on a Saturday with a follow up call on the Sunday.

Re-open ticket - get called on teams at 16h55 UK (yup Close of Day is 17h00) - arrange to be called back tomorrow - which may or may not happen - just as likely to have closed ticket - rinse & repeat.

Eventually Tier 1 contact at decent time; Start doing various Tier 1 checks - yes I know I do the same BUT I will have read the damn ticket 1st because guess what - Tier 1 call the next ticket on the list without attempting to read or look at anything in the ticket - Like I have a dual monitor and they can't understand why their remote system can't see what I am doing/their clickety clicks do nothing. Ask them if they saw the screen shots ? read the fault description - well lets say ONCE I had an apology; she went off and read it and then said Thank you very much I'm escalating to tier 3; we don't need to waste your time with tier 1 or Tier 2.

So - since this is an IT "publication" what is it with Tier 1 (& 50% of Tier 2) frontline IT hell desk that they never ever read the damn ticket notes ? Then when they pass it rinse and repeat at Tier 2 - they don't even read what the tier 1 guy wrote in the ticket

Of course we always check the reports we get (remote support of Industrial automation so much WIndows fun and games); but if we are interacting with the client we always tell them we have learnt to check things - and we don't check every thing - because they send in screen shots etc.

You think I'm kidding ?

ticket with client's IT as the VPN has stopped working properly for my colleage

Send them screen shot of "net user %username% /domain" and "net user fredblogs /domain" (and repeat durn=ing the ensuing mayhem)

Point out the he is missing a start up script and half the groups.

3 months later; many calls later; emails abundant; oh we think fred bloggs will be ok now; we discovered he'd been assigned the wrong profile so he had the wrong start up script and the wrong groups.

Run net user for both again and ask why fred is still missing group "evil_contractor_scum-adm2" as we already know that that is needed to be allowed to reboot & clear/delete assorted protected files. Fortunately the correct help desk guy was still on cc of the email trail. He thanked us for picking that up and confirmed he'd now got it right - lo & behold happy fred bloggs can at long last finish what he'd been doing when he lost access.

/rant But why ? why can't the hell desk read (& make some effort to understand) the damn tickets BEFORE calling/teams ?

[David Hicklin]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

> frontline IT hell desk that they never ever read the damn ticket notes ?

Easy - they have to follow a script which they will never deviate from.

[ChoHag]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

You think users is bad? Try fielding support requests from developers!

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

My wife, having worked in IT before becoming a cheese expert, and having the good grace of listening to me when I speak about the dumb issues I see at work, knows exactly what to do in most instances.

However, she still has to call me to help her.

And almost every time I just perform the exact steps she just did, and did again to show me it was not working.

And then, of course, it works fine.

As I say usually:

My dear, the only difference when we perform these steps is that me, being an IT professional, knows exactly what I do and why I do it.

(and then I run away fast)

[Diogenes]

Re: "I found that a strange concept of 'nothing,'"

I often found that with kids at school. It became a thing where I would "lay hands" on the computer, and tell it it was healed, and got the kid to do it again, amazingly 9/10 it worked.

When I was doing my first practicum ( career change after 30 years developing software) , at a country school which wasnt big enough for a qualified ICT teacher, I showed staff how to identify when kids were running a JavaScript script that popped up a message saying access was forbidden or the more enterprising kids that used VB to create professional looking error messages that they cycled through

[Nik 2]

Go, Look, See

At some point it becomes quicker to send somebody round to do at-shoulder support.

[Little boy down the lane]

Re: Go, Look, See

That might have involved a flight across Yurp

[Mr Dogshit]

Re: Go, Look, See

Yep, Second Line too lazy to get off their arses and do their job.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Go, Look, See

True - but only if there's somebody in the same premises who can do that.

[pirxhh]

Re: Go, Look, See

Oh yeah.

In prehistoric days, I once had to send someone a few countries over a fax, as I could not convey to them by phone to type //HC [Enter]. The concept of a forward slash got lost in translation for at least twenty minutes.

[VicMortimer]

Re: Go, Look, See

I learned many years ago that user confusion on slash direction is very, very real.

It's usually confusion between forward/back, but worst case virtually any key on the keyboard can be a "slash" with the most problematic users.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Go, Look, See

Weird, as forward slash is right there on the keyboard right where you're typing along with all the other punctuation they've just been typing, yet rather than use what's right in from of their eyes and right underneath their fingers, they go hunting around searching searching searching and use a backslash for some goddammed\moronic\incomrehensible reason. YOU HAD TO PHYSICALLY TAKE YOUR ATTENTION AWAY FROM WHAT YOU WERE DOING AND *LOOK* FOR THAT INSTEAD OF USING THE ONE THAT IS RIGHT THERE!

[KarMann]

Re: Go, Look, See

I see what you did there. Have my upvote.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Go, Look, See

The only reason any normal user even knows about backslash is because IBM used / to introduce command line arguments in their mainframe's Job Control Language and so thought it would be clever to do the same in DOS 1.0. Then they added "sub-directories" in DOS 2.0 and needed a directory separator character.

For many years there was a way to make DOS honour / as well as \ but it was never widely supported by third-party apps. A pity really.

Then the internet happened and Microsoft were late to the party and so PC users had to learn about "forward slash" after all, but still aren't able to use them as the gods intended. Another pity really

[Herby]

Re: Go, Look, See

Re: Slashes...

It wasn't IBM that introduced us to slashes (the one below the question mark on many keyboards)m it was DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). The problem was made worse when they needed directory separators and chose the "backslash" (the one below the broken (or not) vertical bar).

Unix (which had directories) made the logical choice to use the slash since it was a lower case graphic, and a dash (minus sign) for the option separator. Although the option indicator is a matter of choice for the program.

IBM did use slashes in JCL, but they were commonly limited to introducing JCL statements by using them in the first two columns of the punch card. Nowdays many languages use a double slash to indicate that the following is a comment (a poor idea in my book). That's life.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Go, Look, See

Sorry, when did DEC ever use backslash as a directory separator ( except on those of their PCs which ran MS operating systems where its use was already defined ) ?

[Cris E]

Re: Go, Look, See

I used to use the parenthetical uphill and downhill when working with users of limited capacity.

[vulture65537]

Re: Go, Look, See

Anderson's rewriting of atomic physics makes positive and negative charges into forward and backward.

"Poul Anderson's "Uncleftish Beholding" is a famous essay explaining atomic theory using a deliberately simplified, Germanic-rooted English, avoiding Latin/Greek words like "atom," instead coining "uncleft" (un-cleft/undivided) and "uncleftish" (atomic), demonstrating linguistic purism and showing how science might have ..."

[doublelayer]

Re: Go, Look, See

A little beside the point of punctuation naming, but since you brought this up, I haven't read it but I already have a problem. So we're going to use "uncleft" instead of "atom"? That's a bad replacement. Atom was chosen for a word for "indivisible", not capable of being divided, rather than just something that hadn't yet been divided which is what uncleft means. It does break down a bit since atoms can be divided, but I can argue that they change their natures when that happens so they're still compatible. Introducing inaccuracy into fundamental words so that they don't include anything too Greek. I suppose another reason not to support linguistic purism and I already had plenty.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Go, Look, See

OK here’s what you do, you tell the user;

Stand up and face the computer, now turn 90 degrees to the left, so that the computer is now to your right. Now fall backwards, the direction you travel is the same as the backslash as viewed from left to right.

Now the forward slash is the same but this time fall forward, flat on your face - it really isn’t that difficult.

What’s that? You can’t possibly do that, OK well I’ll have to cove over, and I do have a cattle prod, which will probably cause more pain than if you did actually fall flat win your face - your choice!

[Ken Shabby]

Re: Go, Look, See

Try telling them to source a file with. ./file you might as well ask them to type Llanfairpwllgwyngyll and not being able to convey frustration as they repeatedly type in seemingly random characters.

` Backtick is another

[John Robson]

Re: Go, Look, See

Even if that's not a support person, but a colleague of the end user.

Just a second pair of eyes to make sure nothing's been missed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Go, Look, See

"Is there someone else there I could talk to?", a line I have occasionally deployed in the hope that I will get passed to someone who isn't scared of computers. I work in retail, and the polite way of describing most of the staff I have to deal with is; "they weren't hired for their IT knowledge" (because they have less than none).

[VicMortimer]

Re: Go, Look, See

It does sometimes help.

For home users, sometimes it's necessary to ask if there's a child in the house. When I was working ISP tech support years ago, I had a call from an illiterate user. The guy couldn't read a word on the screen, I had to describe the icons. I finally got him to put his kid who could actually read on the line. We were making progress, but I had to end the call when the kid had to go to t-ball practice. (Unfortunately the guy had a winmodem, I wasn't allowed to tell him to go buy a real modem, and those things were FLAKY back in the late '90s. I dropped some hints, don't think either of them got it.)

[Phil O'Sophical]

screen messages

I think we've all worked with people, even apparently intelligent ones, who are completely incapable of reading a message word for word from a screen.

"Storage manager waiting for tape to be loaded"? You're likely to be told that there's a message about there being no Dymo supplies in the cupboard.

[Sam not the Viking]

Re: screen messages

I've worked with some brilliant, imaginative people, who are really quite inept at the practicalities of living amongst other humans.

I've also worked with people I initially thought dim, who turned out to have real skills in fields outside their 'normal' work.

I am very wary in my initial judgement..... although I'm not always wrong.... It's worth reflection ---->

[blu3b3rry]

Re: screen messages

I've had the pleasure of working with some very intelligent people. Some are kind and humble, others less so.

Some would definnitely consider my workplace to be full of "eccentrics", but all I can say is that I find myself in good company as a result. After a number of years here it definitely makes you double-check your initial judgements.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: screen messages

Also, people who are incapable of actually repeating what they actually said to you.

* Insert the mumble in the mumble

# Sorry, could you repeat that?

* It wants me to ask ask about the ...

nooooo. My head has "Insert the mumble in the mumble" waiting for the mumbles to be replaced. They've given me SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

It's like when you're at a till and you're waiting for the operator to start saying numbers, and when they say something not numbers it doesn't get processed.

* hardyagainingdyawannn

# Sorry, how much?

* hardyagainingdyawannn

# Pardon?

[PB90210]

Re: screen messages

I find it distracting when someone reads back your phone number but with the pauses in the'wrong place'

Oh, and those websites that insist on you entering your 20-digit card number without those pesky spaces that are shown on the card *to make it easier to read*!!

And those boxes that immediately scream 'input error' after the 1st character rather than wait to see if the input is actually invalid... you're asking for a date but I don't know of any single character dates!

[Brave Coward]

Re: 'you're asking for a date but I don't know of any single character dates!

To be fair, quite a lot of my dates were boring, single characters.

[find users who cut cat tail]

Re: screen messages

The first character? That would be progress for my bank.

If you select a field in their form, but then decide to fill some other bit first and switch there, it starts complaining about missing values.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: screen messages

Premature evaluation is the /other/ root of all evil.

[Ken Shabby]

Re: screen messages

Sorry, it’s never happened before, honest.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: screen messages

My employer has a time sheet system like that.

When you open up this week's timesheet for the first time it has "helpfully" filled in a single row assuming 8 hours for each day. But there's no project code so that row is automatically flagged as an error. And since I rarely work 5 days on the same project the first thing I have to do is delete the time that doesn't apply anyway. It's usually easier to delete the entire row and start afresh. Sigh.

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: screen messages

The worst time-sheet program I ever used was the one that required you to log exactly 35 [1] hours per week, regardless of how many hours you'd actually worked. If you'd put in 10 hours of overtime to meet a deadline? <fingers in ears> "Lah lah lah lah lah".

And this was for a salaried position, for which overtime wouldn't have been forthcoming in any case. But that they didn't even want to know how much unpaid work they were getting out of us? That was adding insult to injury.

[1] It would reduce that for weeks containing statutory holidays, but still, it knew exactly how many hours it expected you to work in any given week, and wouldn't let you report either more or fewer.

[Anonymous Coward]

An industrial tribunal

Might be persuaded to take that as evidence of a widespread and longstanding conspiracy to defraud workers by wage-theft.

An information commissioner who required companies to exercise care in holding correct data might also take a dim view of a system designed (this being before artificial imbecility) to require employees to lie,mto enter false data into the company records. If they had copious spare time, and enthusiasm.

And you'd not write that program, would you.

IANAL and this is not legal advice.

[doublelayer]

Re: An industrial tribunal

Only if that did the same to people paid hourly, which it almost certainly wouldn't. I haven't seen that system, but I'm quite confident that this was a bad mechanism for salaried workers because those I have encountered usually define a fixed number of hours to give people credit for and always use it, no matter whether people use more or less. The systems I've used mostly don't care about how many hours you work and don't bother to collect it or, if they do, allow you to enter whatever you want and then ignore the number and use the normal value anyway because they're calculating pay rates based on number of theoretical hours in the payroll period. In order to make a case for wage theft, some wages have to go missing first, so this would only work for hourly workers and they're very unlikely to have used the same configuration for those because it would mean that anyone who worked less than 35 hours in any week would be overpaid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: An industrial tribunal

We used to use such a system to ensure that time spent on projects was booked to the appropriate customer. Overhead was shared, but on one occasion someone had spent a considerable amount of time on an activity that could not reasonably be booked to any customer. After repeated requests to his boss for guidance, met by the response "just figure something out" he created a new activity, and so booked half a day to "pissing about".

For some reason his boss was not amused.

[peter_dtm]

Re: screen messages

oh no ! I ALWAYS read a phone number with different breaks (or with breaks if none initially) Why ?

Because it makes YOUR brain concentrate on what the numbers i am saying are and NOT what you are expecting to hear ! So you say 1 555 555 1234 I'l give you something like 15 555 51 234 - you find it distracting because your brain stops ambling along going "la la la la that's my phone number; I already know it; brain not listening" and brain engages and listens properly

Win all round as you will pick up I missed a 5 ... I've even have people respond with "oh sorry that's the wrong number" and give a similar but different number

I heartily recommend repeating numbers back differently & have managed to subvert quite a few of my colleagues over the years; and the same with part numbers etc that are alphanumeric. Our brains are VERY VERY good at hearing what they want to hear

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: screen messages

Called a company recently to ask them to stop sending me junk mail. A female voice answered, seemed fine until "she" said she'd take down my phone number and mailing address to leave a message for the company owners - and repeated the number back. The number was like [phone], but what "she" said was "one billion two hundred thirty-four million five hundred sixty seven thousand eight hundred ninety". Yup, "AI" at work.

[Return To Sender]

When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

Back in the days of CRT monitors, persistent (actually) blank screens often turned out to be our users having moved something about on the desk and somehow managing to turn the brightness down. Or the so amusing colleagues who waited for someone to leave their desk and turn their monitor down.

Some of the most difficult customer support calls were with people who knew something about systems and were trying to be 'helpful' by interpreting what they were seeing rather than repeating it verbatim. For our safer regulars (i.e. had a decent working relationship, sense of humour etc.) the conversation often included "I want you to take your brain out, put it somewhere safe and just tell me word for word what you're seeing"

[Flightmode]

Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

>Back in the days of CRT monitors, persistent (actually) blank screens often turned out to be our users having moved something about on the desk and somehow managing to turn the brightness down. Or the so amusing colleagues who waited for someone to leave their desk and turn their monitor down.

In open plan offices, there was the ol' leaning-over-your-colleague's-monitor-to-have-a-chat-and-surreptitiously-pulling-the-power-cable-when-they-were-looking-the-other-way-move. Or the perhaps more frustrating situation my wife had when she worked for a newspaper and was equipped with a brand spanking new Power Mac G4 Cube. With the power button on the top. With people constantly placing stuff on it - papers, books and even coffee mugs. I think it lasted about a week before she had to move it off her desk.

[An_Old_Dog]

Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

If I designed nifty-looking desktop computer cases, mine would be shaped like pyramids, cones, or some other shapes which did not provide inviting flat, horizontal surfaces to misuse.

[vulture65537]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

There is a range of work lockers with a sloping top .

[doublelayer]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

That's one approach, and nothing's very wrong with that, but another perfectly valid approach is to have a flat top surface if it fits your design but don't make it in such a way that it causes problems. Put the power button, reset button, ports, and everything else on some other side and leave the top blank or with something decorative on it. That way, it can be flat and it still can't be misused. Designers should always start with how their equipment will be used and can then be creative within that envelope.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

How heavy a load would it be OK to put on the flat top? Would it be OK to stack a second CRT monitor on top? And another on top of that? The cleaner's bucket of water?

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

The usual item is a pot plant, especially one that needs regular watering, with the result ---->

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

" Designers should always start with how their equipment will be used"

LOL, in your dreams!!!! There's a ring of hell specifically reserved for designers and architects. With an extra hot section for UI designers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

I worked for a company many moons ago where their, then, new server range had a curved top. The number of complaints we got from sysadmins that said there was nowhere to stand their beverage was more than you would think you would get.

This is also when CD-ROM drives were relatively new and we kept having to send folks off to fit replacements as they couldn't cope with the weight of a full mug.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

You had computers with CD-ROM?

We only had ones with cup holders...

[Excused Boots]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

Yes I’ve long thought about a computer in the shape of a sphere supported on three legs with all the inputs coming in from the bottom.

Could look cool, but alas, probably the worse possible arrangement from a heat dissipation view.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Nifty-Looking Desktop Computer Cases

Space helmet TV

[Return To Sender]

Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

"With the power button on the top."

Yeah. I fairly recently bought a new (tower) PC case and didn't spot that the power switch was on top. Didn't worry too much as the PC lives under the home office desk. Subsequently discovered that the cat liked the warmth from the vents on the top of the case and had unerring aim when it came to paw on button..

[Gort99]

Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

I guess you'll need a "moggy" guard!

[blu3b3rry]

Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

I guess Apple finally solved the power switch location issue a good twenty years later by putting the power button on the bottom of the latest Mac Mini case....

[VicMortimer]

Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

Eh, honestly it's not a bad idea, it reduces the instances of users shutting down the computer when they know they've got to get to the bottom of it to turn it on.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

Based on a recent test, when an elephant puts a foot down on the new version, it shuts down, so I don't think putting the button on the underside really works.

[Colonel Mad]

Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

Or they were heavy smokers!

[tip pc]

reminds me of the telnet test

someone says the firewall is blocking their app from working

back in the day i'd ask them to open the windows command prompt and type telnet x.x.x.x 2209 or what ever port they needed & tell me what they see.

they'd then say nothing happened or nothing is happening, i'd then say did the window go blank, they say yes I then say thats the sign it worked, if they want proof of what it looks like when it doesnt workk i get them to go to a none existent address and they see a different response namely seeing what they typed then after a pause the timeout message.

most remain sceptical until its fixed at the remote or local end by others, path in between us typically fine.

[doublelayer]

Re: reminds me of the telnet test

I had the opposite problem. A charity I sometimes volunteer for wanted a copy of something that was being maintained for them by another company. That company provided them with temporary FTP credentials. So far, I wasn't involved other than recommending an FTP client because I hadn't set up that service. But when they consistently failed to figure out how to use the FTP client, even with the assistance of their providers' helpdesk, that's when I was called in.

The people at the charity were using the FTP client correctly. They kept getting errors and new sets of single-use credentials, none of which solved the problem because the people providing them evidently never thought to consider that their FTP ports are normally firewalled off with an allowlist and, as far as I know, never collected any IP addresses to allow through. Every connection would time out before the credentials were tried because only the SYN packet ever got sent. I don't know why their support system wasn't equipped to add things to their firewall when they were to generate an infinite number of temporary passwords, but it took escalation to what they called L3 support before they found someone who understood my email which boiled down to "This is the IP address. This is a log of no TCP connection. This is a log of a successful connection to the port the application runs on. Something is wrong with only the FTP server. Might this possibly be that this address is not allowed through your firewall?". I wanted to but did not ask "What address did you think would have worked here since you never asked anyone for one to allow".

[J.G.Harston]

Re: reminds me of the telnet test

After weeks of frustration, I ended up typing up some instructions for connecting to a certain service with puTTY with NOW TURN YOUR FIREWALL OFF! Absolutely NOWHERE in the application's documentation was there anything to indicate that "Connection refused" actually meant "Connection *BLOCKED*".

[midgepad]

in puTTY?

The author is easily approachable.

[A dirigible]

Connection refused

Huh? What did you think »refusal« meant?

Actually a firewall is much more likely to just drop the SYN rather than refuse the connection (via RST or ICMP error) causing a timeout in the sender’s TCP stack. Your POSIX compliant OS should report this via ETIMEDOUT which putty renders as »connection timed out«. I can understand if this straight translation is misleading, but mainly blame security theatre for that.

[tatatata]

Re: reminds me of the telnet test

Ha yes. Some people are extremely confident with the telnet test. Someone showed me with telnet that the UDP ports were closed on the firewall.

[Anonymous Coward]

Error message

In some bespoke software I'd written there was a should-never-happen scenario which produced an error message along the lines of "phone Anonymous Coward and tell them this number: 168702342" (there were several such messages each with different numbers) - this was a debug build intended to pinpoint the conditions that led to the should-never-happen happening.

I took such a call, stating "I was using the software and an error popped up saying I should call you and give you a number" "OK, what was the number?" "I don't know, I've closed the window now"

[Craig 2]

Re: Error message

Yes this happens regularly to me - "A box popped up with a message and now (something) doesn't work." Ahh right, what was the message? "No idea, I just clicked ok"

[vulture65537]

Re: Error message

I was caught at work saying I hate people who can't read. I corrected it to people who can't read shouldn't work in IT

[doublelayer]

Re: Error message

I'd adjust it a bit. In my experience, it's not the people who can't read, as in don't understand the message. They usually ask for help and listen. It's the people who can read but don't. A lot of messages that get ignored are things that the user can understand if they read them, and even if they don't, it is something they can contact a person about and read clearly so that person can help. A lot of people do that. Those who don't usually don't out of choice rather than ability.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Error message

"No idea, I just clicked ok"

This is where you need a little bit of lateral thinking in UI design. The OK button should just pop up another dialog beside the first one saying "Don't just click OK. Ring tech support and quote the exact message to them. Once you've done that they'll tell you the magic key combination to remove the message".

[doublelayer]

Re: Error message

At the point where you need that, you might as well skip that and communicate the error straight to tech support automatically and lock the application until tech support clears it (be sure to have a report key in case more than one comes through at once). In both cases, it's a lot more than most problems deserve.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Error message

What problems need isn't necessarily what they deserve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Error message

All they'll do then is reboot the computer. Or turn the screen off and leave.

These days it's far better to log the issue directly. Certainly save log files so it can be diagnosed later.

[jake]

Re: Error message

"These days it's far better to log the issue directly. Certainly save log files so it can be diagnosed later."

In those days it was also far better to log the issue directly, in human readable form, saving the log files so they could be diagnosed later.

[Roland6]

Re: Error message

Common problem with “blue screen of death” style errors; in these instances a smartphone’s camera is really useful…

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: Error message

Indeed. In movie mode to catch the ones that fly by too fast. You only need one frame, but timing a still photo just right can be a pain. (Obviously the movie thing only works if you can reproduce the problem.)

[gnasher729]

Re: Error message

“ Yes this happens regularly to me - "A box popped up with a message and now (something) doesn't work." Ahh right, what was the message? "No idea, I just clicked ok"”

Add a method to your code that shows an error _and remembers the last error_. And a menu item “Show last error again”.

[Anonymous Coward]

Penny ante

In a role many years ago, a client called the helpdesk about not being able to access the system (a remote database connection).

After patiently spending nearly an hour getting the user to check, recheck and confirm the modem was working, the poor tech guy had to drive - 100 miles - to the user to discover (yes, you guessed it) the modem was unplugged. Apparently the user said there were "lights flashing" because that's what they had been told to say by the office manager.

[GlenP]

Re: Penny ante

User: The computer isn't turning on

Me: Can you check the power lead is firmly in? (IBM PS2/50 had slightly dodgy input sockets)

User: Yes it is!

Me: Can you just unplug it and plug it back in again firmly to be sure?

User: Yes, yes, I've done that!

Me: OK, I'll call an engineer but be aware that if it's a loose power lead it will be chargeable!

A few days later...

User's Boss: Why have I just received a bill for £120 for an engineer visit?

I explained that the engineer had arrived, pushed the power lead back in and left. The boss wasn't very happy with their secretary at that point!

[Apocalypso - a cheery end to the world]

Re: Penny ante

That's a stiff power lead, not a loose one - by definition since the secretary didn't have the strength to push it back in fully.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Penny ante

I once got called out fix an HP LaserJet, 4 or 4000, something of that era, and on arrival noted the brown parcel tape holding the maims power lead in place. So I took the tape off and pushed the IEC plug fully into the socket. No more intermittent power losses on the printer. This was a contracted support visit, not warranty (long expired) and had been like this from new. A bill was sent. User errors not covered by contract.

[Just Enough]

Ignore what isn't understood

Never under estimate the user's ability to just have blind spots about what is happening on screen.

I once sat through a user demonstrating a problem they were having when booting their computer. They insisted it there was no error message, and it was just freezing. I ended up sitting next to them as the computer booted. In course of booting an error dialog appeared, but they clicked on it before I had time to read it.

"What was that?" I asked.

"What was what?" they replied.

"That error message you clicked."

"I didn't click anything."

"I just saw you. Let's reboot again. Do not click on anything."

Turns out that their computer had been warning of an impending full C: drive for months, but they didn't understand what it was saying, so had just been ignoring it. They had got in the habit of just clicking OK on the warning so often, they'd stopped even registering they were doing it. I practically had to grab the mouse off them to stop them.

[Aldnus]

In this instance i cant blame the user for this!

Cant blame the User for the IT team being either too lazy to visit (especially in thoose days) or the the IT team being too lazy to load a tape reel. !!!!!

[KittenHuffer]

Re: In this instance i cant blame the user for this!

But I would be quite happy to blame the user for saying that the screen was blank when it wasn't!

[Apocalypso - a cheery end to the world]

Re: In this instance i cant blame the user for this!

> But I would be quite happy to blame the user for saying that the screen was blank when it wasn't!

I blame L1 100% for this.

If the user says the screen is blank then L1 should go through the usual monitor unplugged / brightness turned down tests. At some point someone should have asked the user if the status line was visible since we're told there was always a status line.

If the user still swore blind that the screen was blank then a hardware technician should have been sent out to swap the screen, not pass the call to "Charles".

[doublelayer]

Re: In this instance i cant blame the user for this!

While I kind of agree about IT visiting, that's based on an assumption that any building with users on terminals probably had IT on site. If it was a distributed thing with a user at a facility with no IT staff on site, we're now talking about a much longer travel to have someone physically show up for a minor problem.

But the tape thing is different. I don't know what the procedure was for loading one and whether the user might have had to ask for it. Maybe there was someone who should have loaded that earlier. However, even if it was completely automated except for a human loader, there would still inevitably be at least a couple minutes latency for any tape to be loaded and the user would still see that screen, just for less time. They would still have had the call with the helpdesk, it would just have abruptly ended when the user hopefully said that it all came back to normal. Either way, when the user faced an expected part of the interface and didn't understand it, it was their inaccurate description of the situation that caused all of their problem.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: In this instance i cant blame the user for this!

There's also the possibility that the tape drive is busy with or scheduled for somebody else's job.

[An_Old_Dog]

"I'm looking at a Blank Screen"

I went round and round with a user complaining sbout a blank screen for a few minutes until they eventually said, "I'm looking at a blank screen. It says, 'Press any key to continue' at the bottom."

That taught me something about TUI interfaces, and how I should design them differently in the future, even if it's "just" in an MS-DOS batch file.

[VicMortimer]

Re: "I'm looking at a Blank Screen"

The one line at the bottom is almost certainly a holdover from the pre-screen days.

You don't want to waste the paper by printing a line telling the user one thing then a bunch of blank space. So you print one line. The user can't miss it, the printer just made loud noises as the line was printed.

The teleprinter gets replaced with a CRT terminal. Nobody thinks about the user implications for several years.

[doublelayer]

Re: "I'm looking at a Blank Screen"

So what's the answer instead? Put the line at the top? How would that make any difference when the screen is small enough that the user can see the whole thing. Especially when, as in many cases, the bottom line is already used for status and this is a status update. Instead of making a new type of window, you continue to place the information in the same place, meaning any user who receives training and understands it knows where to look for the information about what's happening. Consistency can be helpful to users as well.

[Richard 12]

Re: "I'm looking at a Blank Screen"

Stuff at the top is generally a title, stuff at the bottom a footnote or page number.

Most people read titles, a few read footnotes but almost nobody read page numbers.

[disgruntled yank]

Nothing

This is more or less G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown story "The Invisible Man."

[vulture65537]

I had someone tell me the message on the screen as a series of LETTERS rather than words. As soon as a computer was involved he lost the ability to read.

I've also seen a screen with brightness all the way down.

And (this one puzzled me for a minute) the computer has 2 video outlets and meaningful results require plugging into the right one.

[A.P. Veening]

And (this one puzzled me for a minute) the computer has 2 video outlets and meaningful results require plugging into the right one.

Let me guess, the right one was the left one.

[D-Coder]

Left is right, right is wrong.

[Roland6]

Is that when viewed from the front when you are bent over it, or from the rear when you have spun the system round?

[mirachu]

A graphics card I had way back required the monitor to be plugged to a certain port to get image at power on, otherwise it would take until drivers were loaded. Which was an issue before drivers were even installed.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Massive fail

on the part of " level one support, level two support, "

Had the same myself once , after user had had a phone call with the help desk , who had done their best to fix the issue I was informed "User cant get email" , so after travelling to a neighbouring site to investigate this I found upon arrival a mostly blank screen with a small message on it .

"No boot sector on drive A"

And this wasnt the days of booting the os on your 286 from a floppy , these were the days of booting into winNT from C and putting your only copy of your work on a floppy , despite having a networked backed up home drive to store it on , and then expecting me to recover it when you've put said floppy through the wash ! :( ... dont get me started ....

[SteveK]

I've had so many calls over the years that have gone along the lines of:

X isn't working.

OK, is it giving an error message?

Yes.

[Sigh] Right, what does the error message say?

I don't know.

[Deep breath] OK, could you read me the exact message?

It says something about the network maybe?

Honestly, how hard is it to actually have the information to hand and actually be able to concisely and accurately describe the problem?

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

This is why when remote controlling the users PC became practicable it was a godsend to remove that language barrier.

When I say "barrier" i mean near impassable chasm given the average user's complete inability to describe what they are doing or follow instructions .

.

As a lowly desktop support 2nd class citizen We wernt allowed to have it at first ,we wernt responsible enough apparently, which *really* pissed me off

[VicMortimer]

It's better AND worse.

Yes, solving the problem can be quicker now.

But the user NEVER gets educated. They learn nothing.

[A.P. Veening]

But the user NEVER gets educated. They learn nothing.

Just documenting the screw up for his (or her) superior/supervisor will make them learn rather quickly. If they don't, they have a tendency to get replaced rather quickly.

[Doctor Syntax]

That assumes the supervisor will recognise that this was a problem.

[l8gravely]

Facetime makes debugging so much simpler

I live a good 30 minutes away from my in-laws and my MiL is terrible at computers. She used to regularly blow up here WinXP laptop for reading email and the web until I got her a Chromebook. Best ten year investment I ever made.

But getting her to read the screen and report what it says was .... trying. I'd spent two hours on the phone, and by then the sunk cost of just not getting into the car was way way behind me. Sigh... but once she got an iPhone and learned how to do facetime, and pointing the camera at the screen.... that made a huge difference. She can still mess things up to the extent that a visist is the best answer, but quite a few times I can just see what the problem is and get her back on track.

Such a time saver to be able to see what the user sees, and what they _don't_ see because they don't think it's important.

[Roland6]

Re: Facetime makes debugging so much simpler

FaceTime also saves the problem with RDS/screen sharing solutions of the mouse moving on its own accord, because whilst you are reading something the user decides they can do something else like read their emails..

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Facetime makes debugging so much simpler

i use google remote desktop to remote mothers pc .

other systems are availble no doubt

[Doctor Syntax]

"what does the error message say?"

Wrong question. What it says is a different semantic level to the actual words. You've prompted the user onto that level that makes them think you want them to interpret it and it's going to take a lot of work to get them off it.

[Ken Hagan]

I take your point but "Don't worry about what it means, just read the words to me in order." is probably going to land you in trouble with HR, so how do you actually phrase the request?

[Doctor Syntax]

"Don't worry about what it means, You need to be my eyes for this. Please read the words to me in order."

Of course your problem might be that it's a member of HR who's the user. There is no known method of handling that situation.

[Doctor Syntax]

Ahhh. I've just thought of the solution. It requires voice synthesis and the PC's speaker being turned on.

Tell the user to press the trigger Fn key and have it speak the error message loud enough to be heard over the phone.

[Pussifer]

Or say you need to write the error message down and could they read each word in the message out, one at a time, 'while you write it down'.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Honestly, how hard is it to actually have the information to hand and actually be able to concisely and accurately describe the problem?

I've lost count of the number of times I've logged a support call, provided all the details and then get a call back where the first words are "Right, tell me what the problem is then..." The desire for people to read what's in front of them cuts both ways.

[Terry 6]

OTOH I've lost count of the number of times that I've been told "They don't pass on the information to us"

[Doctor Syntax]

Automated call handler: "Say your post code and press hash"

Self: ${Postcode}#

ACH: ${Postcode}

(Transfers to agent)

Agent: "Could you tell me your post code?"

[Boris the Cockroach]

The tales

I've got from down among the robots are legion, the users who've done what we've designed to be impossible for a start.

But it brings me to a important question.

These folks get up in the morning, have a wash/shower, put the clothes on, have breakfast, then drive to work.

And the question is always "How?"

Icon... for how much of my day goes

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The tales

These folks get up in the morning, have a wash/shower, put the clothes on, have breakfast, then drive to work.

And the question is always "How?"

They're the ones that love WFH. Shower? Clothes? They just pull on a dressing gown and eat breakfast in front of the screen. They they wonder why their keyboard stops working.

[Eric 9001]

Re: The tales

Must be using a terrible keyboard - I've dropped parts of food and some liquid many times onto keyboards and I've had no problems (just clean it out or dry it before it gets inside the keyboard really).

[IanRS]

What did you do? Nothing!

I had a junior developer in my team once who claimed that his development environment application was no longer working, but insisted he had done nothing to it since it last worked. After a fair bit of investigation and step-by-step crawling through the application flow I found out that it was trying to access a database table which no longer existed. How had that single table come to vanish? "I didn't think I needed that table, so I deleted it."

The contents of that table were highly dependent on everything else and non-trivial to recreate, so I pointed him to the environment complete wipe and rebuild instructions and left him to fix his own mess.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shop floor automation

Anonymous for reasons. I was responsible for software and servers that ran some manufacturing QA systems. In the event of an untrapped error, the shop terminal screen would return some cryptic error message, plus a line requesting that the message be reported. And the on-duty contact's pager number. Me.

So, late one night, I get a page. Some shop floor manager rather irate that he had to deal with "technology". When I requested that he only had to read the message on the screen and I would be handling the nasty computer stuff, he blew up. With a string of nasty language that would make a sailor blush. Finishing up with, "Get your ass down here. Now!"

So I made the long commute to the factory (for a problem I could have fixed from home in my pajamas in 15 minutes). The manager was nowhere to be found. But I asked one of the technicians what was up with the bad attitude.

"He's illiterate. And you asked him to read something." Pager numbers, he could handle. But that was about it.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: Shop floor automation

So that "manager" managed to seriously inconvenience somebody but couldn't be bothered to request somebody else to read the message over the phone? Being illiterate can happen and is unfortunate (and people are understandably sensitive about it), but this takes incompetence to a whole new level.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Shop floor automation

"Being illiterate can happen and is unfortunate"

Hiding it is unfortunate. The manager could have covered it up as dyslexia. No one would have dared making fun of him or failed to lend a hand. But it's the "tough guy" image that has to be preserved.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Shop floor automation

OTOH his attitude could well have provoked a complaint about abuse and the follow-up would have brought out the illiteracy and consequent unsuiedness for the job. It sounds like a case of just plain stupid.

[Filippo]

Context: manufacturing execution system for a factory

Operator: "The line is not starting."

Me: "Are there any active alerts?"

Operator: "No."

Me: "You sure?"

Operator: "Yes."

Me: "There aren't any alerts?"

Operator: "None."

Me: "What color is the application background?"

Operator: "Red. There's a flashing 'alerts' button."

[Paul Hovnanian]

Heh. We had a factory system, recently ported to a web page. Rather than having to deal with users that didn't recognize an error message for what it was, we added an animated stick figure of a user, repeatedly smacking his head on a computer keyboard to error screens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddest user support story I've got has to be getting a call while I was away on training to use a new software package with some coworkers. Another coworker needed help, called and let me know, so I spent a while composing a long, detailed text explaining exactly what to do. Got another call, "You expect me to read that?" and he insisted I come back to help. I caught an earlier flight back, just for this one person, and the thanks I got from him was non-existent. To this day, I'm not really sure why I agreed to it, other than already knowing how to use the new software package, and wanting to help someone.

[Doctor Syntax]

"You expect me to read that?"

"Guess why I wrote it."

[matobinder]

The scroll lock key is not on

My favorite support. Way back about 26 years ago. A customer used our call out support (highly paying customer, we would come on site to help)

I was the on call guy at the time, staying in a Hotel near the customer for this reason.

Called in and said the GUI that we built, they used to control. Was "locked up." Hey said he couldn't click on anything or type in to the UI.

I asked if he could do anything else, and he said yes, It was just this one applications UI. Easy! I knew that software had an annoying "feature" that when the Scroll Lock key was pressed, it basic accepted no user input. I asked if the Scroll Lock light on the keyboard was lit. (I new the workstation he was at had that.. sat there many times)

He said no.

I asked "Hey just press the scroll lock key and see if it response after that.

He said that didn't change anything, no, no response in application

So (this was around 2am) I dressed up, and drove over to the facility. And walked over to where the guy was. As I was approching, I could see the scroll lock "light" lit on the keyboard.

I asked him to press the scroll lock key.

He did.

Then wow.... the application responded.

He then told me that he didn't really think that was the problem so didn't actually try pressing the scroll lock key ( My guess is he didn't know what it was)

The worse part about it was, the Hotel bar was closed by the time I got back...

[henryshawn]

Classic support story and a great reminder that sometimes the issue is physical, not digital. I love how calm observation beat endless troubleshooting here. We have all met users like this, and it is always satisfying when the fix is that simple.

[deeredd]

3 am support is the best

Many many years ago I wrote and supported an app which was used overnight - learned a lot about UI from this that's for sure because there's daytime stupid and then there's nighttime stupid which is an order of magnitude greater.

One morning about 3 I got a call "document creation server not working". I went through many of my favourite bug checks before finally asking about the PC itself "seems fine", about 15 mins of questions later it transpired it was fine, but was also turned off at the wall. Reader I hung up and had a lie in the next day.

[El.Mich.]

"Mr. {my-name], my screen has gone away! You must come asap! PLEEEEASE!"

Back in the early 90ies still with Windows 3.0 (or eventually already 3.1) a secretary of a law firm had called me and had me come into the office asap.

Well, to shorten things: She had messed about in the control panel, chosen white background, white content, white frame color, white font and just about everything else that might have then been available to choose it to become white and then she had hit the enter key ...

And literally everything was white and in her view "gone". => "... no colours any more I want them to turn white ..." [Sorry Mr. Jagger for borrowing one of your classics!]

And that's just one of the stories I might be telling about my experiences in the early and up till the late 90ies with secretaries and their first or early contacts and experiences with PCs as such and the early internet and some of the early forms of crap- and malware (virii et alii) ...

Well, I guess I might hit the length limit of this editor ... ;-) But at least the financial compensation made it somewhat worth it! ;-)

And to be totally clear: Not all of their bosses, mostly lawyers as well as certified accountants and certified tax advisors, were that much better or more cautious. As well as other bosses of my small and medium-sized clients at the time. ;-)

One of them I remember quite well had installed a direct ISDN-based internet-link on his PC because some of the games and other "entertainment", he had become fond of, were not possible to load and install across the central firewall system and other "mitigations" I had installed and fortunately configured correctly. So he took to his own knowledge and experience with his home PC ... And after several weeks one pretty bad dialing software he had "found" and installed on literally HIS PERSONAL PC had accumulated some 40.000 DM (roughly 20.000 €) in additional telephone line costs. In his literally own firm so it had hit him right in the face ...! ;-)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "Mr. {my-name], my screen has gone away! You must come asap! PLEEEEASE!"

"... no colours any more I want them to turn white ..."

The computer will do what you tell it to do. That might be not what you meant or the result of what you meant might not be what you wished for. But you got what you told it to do.

[anthonyhegedus]

Happens a lot

I've lost count of the number of times I have conversations like this:

me: so what's on the screen?

user: nothing

me: oh, so it's completely blank?

user: yes

me: can you tell me if there's any writing at all on the screen?

user: no, completely blank

(turns out the screen says "no signal" or click ok to continue" or "Error xxx" or the login screen is showing, etc. etc.)

me: so it's not "nothing" or "completely blank", there is something?

user: oh yes there is something

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: Happens a lot

...

Me: So, the next time I ask you what's on the screen and you say "nothing" ... [pregnant pause] ... Should I believe you?"

[elitejedimaster]

Back in my tech support days I had many users that were every bit as dense as this one. More than once I would have to ask the user to describe everything they saw and with their way down. Once they saw that to which I was originally asking for made a dim bulb light up. Then I had to hold their hand as I walked them step by excruciating step on what to do next. Ask a user to turn their computer off then back on? Still says the same thing? Ahh, you only turned the screen off and back on. The computer is the box you put the floppies into. No, that's not the hard drive. How do you right click? See your mouse? See the button on the right? Yup, that's it.

[Terry 6]

We've said this enough times on here. Users who think the screen is the computer and that's what you turn off is only surprising if we forget that to the users the screen is just a smaller TV. And the box is just the storage place for their files and stuff.(The Hard Drive).

[Terry 6]

Sometimes we need to remember

I know users behaviour can be a pain and seem like stupidity.

I supported IT for my team of specialist, brilliantly diagnostic teachers and I've had all of that and more. But they can't be blamed for all of it.

*"There's nothing on the screen". We assume they’re being literal:They assume we mean the stuff that ought to be there (Windows usually) and the strange words that might appear on the screen aren't anything they think should be there. If we ask "Are there any messages/Is there any writing on the screen?" and they still say "no" that is a different matter

*Turning off the screen rather than the actual PC. As I said already, and we've said on here many times. To many users the computer is just a TV that does stuff. And the box is where the work goes to. And you turn the TV off: Not some attached storage box

*"Yes it's plugged in" when it isn't. Less excusable, but to some, perhaps many, it's been plugged in and working for months or years, and the tangle of wires looks the same as it always did- so of course it must be plugged in still. The idea that it might have come loose at the back is probably not even considered, because most everyday appliances don't have a connection removable at both ends, let alone become unplugged ( and they just don't think of the few that do, assuming they do have and are aware of such).

*"The email isn't working" when the whole PC is off. Actually I can't excuse that one. There are limits.

[RobDog]

Definition of mothing

In this case meant ‘nothing…i recognise or deem useful.’

Standard user practice, better get used to it.

[JulieM]

I know the feeling

I have lost count of the number of times I have wanted to ask, casually, "The truth, please?" during a remote troubleshooting session.