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...something to think about. 
Jeremy Falcon
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I've lost faith in humankind
You people who deal regularly with users probably experience this regularly. You have my heartfelt sympathies...
It started off as an email attachment they couldn't open.
Forward it to me, I'll take a look
Apparently there are people who can't forward email because they don't know how to.
The "attachment" happened to be a link to a huge video. Since they can't forward the link, they got their kid to log in to the email account and sent me a photograph of the screen. They can skype, thankfully, on their iPhone. Apple is right, people definitely don't need that many features because it confuses them. Had it been an Android phone I'd have been screwed - making me visit them to look at the mail in person.
That took two attempts because the first pic was of the list of emails (without opening the one with the link)
Had to type the link manually (freaking long hash), download it and write it to a DVD so that they can view it (another thing that they could do)
The previous tech support request was to fix their laptop (because programmers know to fix everything. Go figure)
Turned out the thing was unplugged (rats nest of wires, no idea what is plugged in where) and the battery was dead. Nearly took the damned thing apart, had too much faith that they would overlook something so obvious.
I need a drink. And another one after that.
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Nighthowler wrote: I'd have been screwed - making me visit them to look at the mail in person.
Years ago, I did tech support and we only had a telephone. There is a skill in asking users to describe what they are seeing. Nowadays, people rely too much on being able to remote in and do not know how to ask the right questions. A lost art, it would seem. 
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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RyanDev wrote: Years ago, I did tech support and we only had a telephone
I know what you mean. My first computer job was tech support in 1994. We had the telephone and a really innovative DOS program called Carbon Copy. It was Remote Desktop for DOS!
When it became too cumbersome to talk them through convoluted command lines, we would dial in and do it ourselves! 
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Well, I did it in 1999 but for HP and they were too worried about liability issues, supposedly, so we were not allowed to use any remote tools.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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But you are correct. It was a skill to ask the right questions.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Several years ago, when Fortran was still in use and users had printed manuals, my cubicle was across from the guy doing telephone support; I could look into his. The steady noise from his explanations to customers did disturb me a lot, but sometimes they made me chuckle.
Like this one case where overheard the entire conversation - but of course only his side of it. It went something like this:
- Uuu, hmmmm. Say, do you have a Fortran manual handy?
- Good. Can you open it on page 146?
- Will you read out loud the first paragraph on that page?
(a somewhat longer interval)
- Sure, that's what we are here for. Good luck, now.
The fun side of the story is that this support guy never picked up his own copy of the Fortran manual, didn't need to search for the right page to refer the customer to. He had had that same question so many times before that he knew the exact location in the Fortran manual to refer the customer to.
Which illustrates that working as a support guy is not always as challenging as you might expect it to be when you accept the job offer.
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Funny you say this. We had Mortgage Software. We offered 800 free support for our product. But since we knew SOMETHING about DOS/Computers, it was quickly abused. And turnover was tough.
So, we took the top 20 issues, and put them in the help system (plus the old help).
And we demanded the Tech Support MAKE the customer hit F1, and scan the list, find their own problem.
And then READ the solution to the tech support person.
Our call volume dropped within 2 weeks to a manageable level. Some clients resisted, but Support informed them that they are monitored, and the Support person will get fired if they don't make them do it. (The client selfishness died off quickly).
The cost of that support was really crippling a small company.
We took the next 2-3 "longest" phone calls (DB Corruption), and made the program auto-detect and auto-correct it! That was cool.
But the users... Ugghhh. (I'd fax you what is on my screen, but the monitor wont reach the fax!)
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That's a blast from the past. We used to use Net Remote. Slow networks and (in some cases) modem links made for sluggish sessions.
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It's old, but... Too Stupid to Own a Computer : snopes.com[^] it's still as true today - if not truer, given that any imbecile that can turn on an iPhone thinks they "understand computers" these days. 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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You're forgetting the people that think that the younger generation is all "in-tune" with computers because of video games and facebook(twitter, snapchat, insert relevant social media here, because I don't care).
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli
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Virgin have an advert at the moment in the UK: Masters of Entertainment[^] which annoys the heck out of me: just because the ad company executives can't do any of those things (despite a mental age of seven) doesn't mean that I can't.
The "younger generation" aren't all "in-tune" with tech, because most of 'em have no idea what happens behind the scenes of iOS / Android / Farcebook / Twatter - but it looks like they are to people who grew up in pre-Betamax days!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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If those were only all things we had to endure just because some useless drone can't do them...
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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I think you're giving too much credit to ad execs...that was painful.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli
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By the same merit, though, I'm cr@p with radio tech, because computer tech was just growing up when I was "that age", and attracted me more.
I'll bet there were plenty of grumpy old buggers complaining about "kids nowadays not even knowing how to wire up a crystal", or some-such.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Between cloud & virtualization, a lot of today's developers don't realize they need actual hardware to run on.
How many of the younger generation even know how an OS works. How about Dynamic Link Libraries or OLE?
Does anyone know of any college that requires their CS degree students to learn Assembly Language? Colleges seem to have left Assembly to the engineers.
And yes, I am of the generation where if you needed something (compiler, OS, etc.) you wrote it yourself. Input via paper tape or punched cards.
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And that worries me - the people who employers want (young, just out of college, with the latest knowledge) are the people who know the least about how to actually do anything "outside the box". And these are the people who will be working on the most complex tasks - since complexity increases with time and the amount of lower-level support that has been developed and built on.
Then you look at what these people seem to have problems with and it's nearly enough to make you give up driving once you have closed all your accounts to move to a cash economy...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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There are some thing machines do better than humans. We built Assembler because we aren't at all good at coding machine language. We built compilers because humans aren't terrific at coding assembly, etc.
Thinking about it, that to me seems to be a good place for AI. Teach the AI S/W about the machine architecture & instruction set. Teach it about Assembler, C, C++ and C# (you would want the AI to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind, so we humans could if needed, decipher what the code is doing).
Teach the AI about how all the underlying infrastructure (magic) works. Teach the AI about coupling and cohesion. Teach it about the kinds of cyber attacks that EMET deals with. Let the AI take over the construction of the OS software and all the other "magic" stuff. No single human understands all the 100M+ lines of code that constitute the Windows OS these days.
Strikes me that done correctly, this could (over time) largely eliminate programing errors that cause security vulnerabilities. Also would yield leaner, faster code
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I refer you to series 1 of 'The IT Crowd'. (UK TV sitcom that went off the rails after the first few episodes but the first few were funny).
Surely it must be easy to teach an AI to say "Have you tried switching it off and back on again?"
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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Back when I was teaching I ran an evening class for "Computer Studies". One mother brought her son to attend the classes and proudly told me, "He's very good and knows all about computers. He always sets the high score on Space Invaders!" - which also gives you an idea of how long ago it was!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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You don't know how good you've got it. I was support supervisor for an accounting software company back in the early 80's, and some of the things we encountered back in those days have since become urban legend, but I assure you, they are totally true. Some examples:
These were the days of 5¼" floppy disks, and often we would get the client to send us in a copy of their files so we could inspect/repair them. One case sent us in a photocopy of their backup disk. Another folded the disk so it would fit into a standard envelope. Yet another kept the disks safe by storing them on the side of a filing cabinet with a magnet.
One of the funniest examples: one of our clients was the 7th Day Adventist Church. When doing telephone support, we always told them what to type letter by letter, and used a word as in "a for apple, b for balloon" etc. Anyway, our staff said "d for dingo", and didn't that stir things up! Poor girl was stuck on the phone for almost three hours getting a full explanation of how Lindy could not possibly have done it.
Cheers,
Mick
------------------------------------------------
It doesn't matter how often or hard you fall on your arse, eventually you'll roll over and land on your feet.
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Ah, yes, I've had the old 5 1/4"s with compliment slips staples through them.
My all time favourite one, though:
"I think the computer's broken."
"What makes you think that?"
"The screen's gone all blank except for a pound sign in the corner."
That was a conversation with someone who was meant to be a UNIX systems administrator. Sometimes it really is better to ask a programmer.
Slogans aren't solutions.
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But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
Cheers,
Mick
------------------------------------------------
It doesn't matter how often or hard you fall on your arse, eventually you'll roll over and land on your feet.
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PeejayAdams wrote: "The screen's gone all blank except for a pound sign in the corner."
So put a shilling in the meter.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Had a guy walk into my office, reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pull out a folded-in-half 5.25" floppy. Not surprising ... he couldn't read it.
Neither could I.
"But that has my last 6 months of XXX work on it! You have to read it!"
"You can't fold a disk like that and not ruin it."
"I've been doing this for 6 months and it has never been a problem."
"Why didn't you put your files on your hard drive or the network drive?"
"I don't trust them. My floppy is safer."
That conversation is etched in my memories.
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