Computer Jargon Too Difficult for Office Workers 601
slashflood writes "Most office workers find computer terms such as javascript and jpeg just as difficult to understand as a foreign language, according to a new survey. A poll of 1,500 staff by recruitment firm Computer People showed that three out of four wasted more than an hour every week simply finding out what some technical term meant. 'A massive 61% don't understand the difference between gigabytes, kilobytes and megabytes and as a result have sent e-mails with huge attachments that have blocked clients' systems.'"
Its not just computers. (Score:5, Funny)
I still don't know what TPS stands for.
TPS Reports? (Score:2)
Re:TPS Reports? (Score:3, Funny)
Just another Tango Lima Alpha, that's Whisky Tango Foxtrot.
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report [wikipedia.org].
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:5, Insightful)
And as far as I'm concerned, workers need to get used to the jargon or take a hike. Measurements and particular jargon abound in all walks of life. If you're making cookies, for example, you need to understand a cup, teaspoon, pint, etc. (or liter and the like if you're not American). If you build a shed, you need to know what a foot or meter is, don't you? In those disciples, you also need to know things like what a hammer is, or a mixer. Computers aren't any different. No one is asking that the average user understand coding, but understanding things like storage space is a requirement.
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:4, Insightful)
To my simple mind, TPS is "Transactions Per Second". "Test Procedure Specification" would never have entered my mind.
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but a computer is a device, not a tradecraft. Furthermore, unlike a device like a car or pocket calculator, it is a platform for entertainment and productivity, and it is far more complex than both and truly requires an additional vocabulary to operate it efficiently. And the complexity isn't necessarily the hardware, but in the lack of standardization, the abstraction of the interface, and in the necessities of modern security. The home computer is still a novelty to the general public, believe it or not. Partly because it's still a relatively expensive investment and prone to all kinds of exploits, tricks, and scams as soon as you connect it to the Internet.
Think about evertyhing you must put in place to properly secure a Windows PC, for example. First, you must install a virus scanner. For the majority of users, this *is* a must, because they really aren't savvy about e-mail attachements, message spoofing, and shady-looking websites. Then you need at least a software firewall, which pops up a prompt the first time each app request a network connection -- and the prompts aren't always very informative. Win32 Generic Host Process? Um, okay, I guess. Either that, or you get a router, and that requires hooking it up with the modem and the computer. And God help you if you need to start forwarding ports and setting up wireless encryption. Then there's IE's default settings that allow browser helper objects, referral IDs, and every cookie that gets thrown your way.
So what to do when you don't even know what a firewall is? When you aren't aware of the importance of shrinking down that huge "jpeg" you took with your digital camera before mass mailing it to all your friends and family who have email addresses? There's a lot of technical awareness that
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:4, Insightful)
So what to do when you don't even know what a firewall is?
You learn. A firewall is a very simple idea - it attempts to keep dangerous stuff away from you, just like a real firewall.
When you aren't aware of the importance of shrinking down that huge "jpeg" you took with your digital camera before mass mailing it to all your friends and family who have email addresses?
Knowing about files and their sizes is a basic part of operating a computer. That's like driving a car and not knowing that you have to change the oil.
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:5, Informative)
Knowing about files and their sizes is a basic part of operating a computer. That's like driving a car and not knowing that you have to change the oil.
Not anymore. Any new car you buy, they tell you to bring the car in for service every 3000, 5000, or what-have-you miles. They don't tell you every specific thing they're going to do. They might not even necessarily mention that they're changing the oil. Obviously most people have been brought up enough around cars to realize that you need to change the oil every so often, but that's often the extent of their knowledge. If you bring up other maintenance, like flushing of coolant, suspension alignment and greasing, brake fluid changing; a lot more people will know a lot less information about it. While it may be obvious to an auto-enthusiast, people just don't know what they have to do, which is why manufacturers have "service intervals" where they do _something_ and your car continues to work. It stands to reason that most people probably need something like this for thier computer, something that automatically scans/protects/assumes things for them, such that for 99% of people, their computer "Just Works", just like for 99% of people, the service you get at the dealership so your car "just works" is ok-happy-fine.
-Jesse
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Washing Machine: Hot cycle, Cold cycle, Permanent Press, Colors, Whites, Dry Clean Only, Gentle, Cotton, Polyester, etc, etc, etc.
I hate to say it, but those things are damned hard to operate properly.
? Most of us drive every day, yet many don't know the jargon for the parts of what a car does.
Car: Accelerator/Gas, Brake, Shift, Gear, Mile(KM), Miles(KM) per Hour, bucket seats, overdrive, fuel efficiency, gallons, gas tank, windshield, wipers, wiper fluid, oil/lubricant, glove compartment, tire rotation, coolant, etc, etc, etc.
And yes, you need to know these things to operate it.
We just want to turn the key and go somewhere.
If you think about that for a moment, you'll realize that you won't get very far. Plus you have to understand what a keyed ignition is first, not to mention the steering wheel, the gas, the brake, the shifter...
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh come on...:
* If you wear it: wash it in cold, or luke warm if it's really dirty. Separate white and colours.
* If you sleep on it (bedsheets, you dirty bastards): wash it warm
* If you dry or wash yourself with it, wash it on hot.
As far as the dryer is concerned, never, ever, use the hottest setting (which my dryer does by default for some stupid reason) unless you intent to shrink everything
Seriously, it's not that hard. Most things you wear have instructions on the label. You do know how to read a manual, right?
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why yes, yes you do. [slashdot.org]
And it's not so much a matter of how it works as how to operate it. You can't effectively operate a computer without understanding things like storage measurements.
I don't have to understand how the electric motor in my blender works to make a smoothie.
No, but you do have to understand what blend, puree, high, low, and off mean. You also need to know how to measure the milk, ice, and flavoring. Which requires an understanding a unit
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:2)
Tiny Plastic Sword, of course!
http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/ [kingdomofloathing.com]
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:2)
That was my first thought. GPoaS was the one that threw me for the longest time. Now I have one,
it's name is Vlasic. Hurray for in-jokes !
Re:Its not just computers. (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't you get that memo?
Article misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
I laughed myself sick reading this article...especilly the oh-so-helpful second page, entitled 'what it all means'.
Here's an especially good one from the list:
With 'helpful' articles like this, us IT professionals should remain in demand for a good long time. ^_^
But seriously, a good IT professional isn't one who's good at explaining the jargon, or getting laypeople to understand the technical isues...it's one that takes care of the issues for the laypeople, so they don't need to worry about them. A correctly managed IT department should be all but transparent to the other people in the office. Everything should just work, with the IT guy making certain the users' needs are met before they even know what they are. In a correctly managed facility, the IT guy's phone should almost never ring.
Re:Article misses the point (Score:3, Funny)
But regardless, it has no 'base' layer of knowledge, no gradatio
Re:Article misses the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Among office workers 26% aren't sure what a firewall does and therefore have been tempted to turn it off.
...and yet, on the second page, they didn't even explain what a firewall was, so I guess that 26% still won't know.
Re:Article misses the point (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Article misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, a good IT professional isn't one who's good at explaining the jargon, or getting laypeople to understand the technical isues...it's one that takes care of the issues for the laypeople, so they don't need to worry about them.
I think you came very close to hitting the nail on the head, but instead walked away with a brusined thumb. For most of us, understanding the issues that these people don't understand is common knowledge to us. We can take the time to explain these things to our customers or we can fix the problem, we can explain how to avoid similar problems in the future, or structure the environment to avoid them. To me, a "good IT professional" is one who recognizes what the customer wants and provides. Having worked a few help desk and similar type positions, I can tell you that some people don't want the problem fixed, they want to understand the problem. Others don't care, they just want it to work.
Now, there may be other obstacles to providing exactly what the customer wants. Most help desks don't want you spending 20 minutes on the phone with someone explaining why sending Grandma who's on dial up, 20 pictures from your 8MP digital camera may not be a good idea. However, I've always found that taking the time you have available to explain things at the level the customer wants, results in a much happier customer.
I said customers, but this of course can apply to anyone for whom you are working on a problem for. This also applies outside of IT. When I had someone in last year to clean our ducts, I spent a lot of time talking with him to find out what I could do to reduce dust and such in the air and picked up a lot of valuable information that has saved me money since then. Next time I need the ducts cleaned, I'll be calling him back because he was willing to pass on information and experience to me.
Re:Article misses the point (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, a number of my users occassionally use loaner laptops for presentations, but they really do not "get" dual displays. Why does projector scr
Re:Article misses the point (Score:2, Insightful)
But to comment on the quote: "But I don't feel I should know more - that is their job. If we did it all ourselves they would be out of a job." There is a big difference between knowing how to do day to day things (like not running programs from shady websites / MSN / email / etc.) and knowing how to configure a computer.
To entend the car analogy, I recall being a small child and not knowing what the "triangle" button did. And, being four or five, I had
Re:Article misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
This is only sort of true. Sometimes users have to know some jargon. Sometimes users have to understand the technical issues well enough to avoid them. A real helpdesk pro (or anyone that deals with customers/users) will avoid jargon when possible. When technical issues need explaining, a good IT professional will distill the issues into a couple simple metaphorical ideas, making them no more complicated than they must be, and expect that the user probably won't remember the explanation for next time.
Some users even insist on knowing why. You tell them you can't send an EXE through the e-mail system, and they ask "why?". You tell them it's a security issue, and they say, "so?"
Some users won't accept any explanation they're given if it keeps them from doing what they want, and that's the real measure of your skill. How well does your helpdesk tech deal with the belligerent CEO who is completely irrational and has unrealistic expectations? If your tech can walk away, without giving in to the unrealistic demands, but also without the CEO feeling insulted or ignored, your tech has just earned his paycheck.
So what am I saying? Forget the education angle. Users can't be educated. The real key to helpdesk interaction is to keep your users happy and feeling good about their computers, so that when you tell them "You can't do that," you won't really have to explain why (with all the jargon). They'll just believe you.
I'm barely joking.
Re:Article misses the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Article misses the point (Score:2)
Yet... we're the ones who live in fear of outsourcing. Ain't that a kick in the teeth?
Re:Article misses the point (Score:3, Funny)
Mine never rings. It's not because the lusers don't have problems, I've just instilled the correct level of fear in them - turned my fair share into "high protien animal feed slurry".
Let me re-write your conclusion a bit:
In a correctly managed facility, with correctly managed lusers, the BOFH's phone will never ring.
Soko
Re:Article misses the point (Score:3)
Not very helpful is it, when he doesn't bother to define "compressed?"
The other side of the coin (Score:4, Interesting)
We would try to explain "what we do", in simple lay-man's terms, It was not as easy as we thought it would be. Expecially if you are working on stuff like lax parser, CORBA,.
There were times when we couldn't even begin to describe what we do, without using some kind of jargon or other. As we got better in the game, we narrowed down what terms we could use and , by the end of 3rd year, we weren't even using the term computer in our description.
It worked wonders for me, at my next job interview. My would be boss asked to describe my current job (which involved building and distributing a J2EE app using perl scripts ) , to sombody like a stock broker. When I did, he told me that's the best answer he has ever heard from a techie, and I got the Job :-)
Users aren't the only problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Among CIOs, an amazingly large number of them think that office workers should have the permissions to turn their firewall off.
A massive 61% ... have sent e-mails with huge attachments that have blocked clients' systems.
A massive number of mail administrators don't know how to configure their mailservers thus allowing this to happen.
I could go on...
Re:Users aren't the only problem (Score:2)
Yeah, you try explaining to a person that needs to be taught what Excell is how to share their 15 meg PDF via FTP, or a shared folder.
Most of the people I deal with do not understand what happens when a bounce they recieve says "mail quota full". When they see an error that says "mail size exceeded" they'll assume the server is broken and tell you to "please fix ASAP," literally.
Re:Users aren't the only problem (Score:2)
True confessions time: many years ago, I ran the mail server for a small non-profit ISP. One day, it started choking suddenly at regular intervals, for a few minutes at a time, before suddenly going back to normal.
As it turns out, two of the users of the mail system were working for local business: o
Re:Users aren't the only problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple solution (Score:2)
This will aid the security mission greatly as well.
Another word for this arrangement is "meritocracy".
Re:Simple solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Simple solution (Score:2)
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of it this way... Worker is given work -> worker does something -> worker produces finished product. That something might include alphabetizing files, or driving their car, or hammering in nails. If the worker couldn't read, couldn't drive a car, or couldn't use a hammer, we'd call them u
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
And you wonder why people hate IT departments.
Listen, this "holier than thou" attitude is just stupid. Do you know how to diversify a portfolio to meet acceptable risk according to an efficient frontier formula? Well, some of those "idiot users" do. Does that make them smarter than you? If so, should they have veto power on how you run the network?
IT people are not necessarily smarter, despite what they may think. The goal is to work together in a company, and find solutions that take into account problems that employees may have. Which also means that locking everyone's computer so they can't do anything may not be the correct solution. Maybe, just maybe, users occassionly have a need that you're going to have to work extra to fullfill. That's why you were hired, not so you can sit on your duff and complain about all the work that users make for you.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh. Well then, accounting should also have a say in hiring. (Including tech people.) As should the mail room. Not to mention the cafeteria staff. And let's not forget the janitorial staff! It's very important that people who understand how to properly read the recycling labels are chosen! After all, it's only fair.
Either train them, get them a "seeing eye dog" IT monkey to follow them everywhere and do things for them, or fire them.
I agree. Has your department taken proactive action to see that all the employees are properly trained or have the support they need?
And, yes, I believe I could manage a risk portfolio. If I can figure out how to manage IT security risk, I can figure out how to manage a company's financial risk position. It's not really that different, just apply a the same types of reasoning and information gathering to a different set of scenario parameters and information.
Oh, good Lord. If that were true, you'd be out making all the money you need, not stuck with "idiot users" in a job you obviously hate. BTW, here are the computations [wikipedia.org] for Modern Portfolio Theory. Knock yourself out. I hope you know where to get the data from and how to adjust the frontier for a variety of inputs, investment styles, tax limitations, bonds, and mutual fund products. (Not that you're likely to know what an investment product is. They're all stocks, right?)
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
First, regarding Modern Portfolio Theory: Most people are very prone towards the "If I don't know how to do it, it can't be hard" mentality. I certainly am.
Second, I think IT's mission is far different from that of the janitorial staff, the mail room, etc., and that it's makes more sense to give them some measure of control than your mockery would indicate. But I think it would make more sense to just give IT some measure of control over the policies governing computer use w
News at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that means people just have to learn eh?
Re:News at 11... (Score:2)
Re:News at 11... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News at 11... (Score:5, Insightful)
>
> I guess that means people just have to learn eh?
And that's the fundamental problem. Most people these days not only don't think they have to learn, they don't think they should have to learn. (And why, indeed, should they? Since the 1970s and 1980s, their teachers pretty much gave up teaching in the name of boosting self-esteem. If self-esteem is something everybody has - that is, if it's not something earned through performance, then everybody can feel great about themselves even though they're a bunch of ignorant fuckspittles who'll be first under the water when the revolving hurricane comes.)
Every time you hear someone say "I shouldn't have to read the manual to figure out how to use it!", you're seeing another example of the problem.
Re:News at 11... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard this over and over again, and I fail to see where this concept of education originated. N
Re:News at 11... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you expect me (a hypothetical pilot in training) to read y
Usability and education are *both* required (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you should, if you want to make sure that every time you click "sen
Re:News at 11... (Score:2)
You can get a for dummies book on your computer. Countless free guides exist online that will help you solve any computer problem you may ever run into. There is tons of quick, easily available computer information.
Likewise, your car comes with a manual, and an endless supply of car-oriented-websites will provide you with insite on the parts of your car.
There are numerous free help information systems available for medical advice. Here in Canada, all the medical treatment you could ever wa
My Mother (Score:3, Funny)
My mother gives people legal advice without being a lawyer: "Save your money, here's a website that will make a durable power of attorney for you that you can print out and sign."
My mother gives medical advice without being a physician: "Here, take these pills for your cold, they really helped my thyroid problem."
My mother knows next to nothing about cars, but that doesn't stop her: "My check engin
Just Words... (Score:2)
Learning a few common terms is no different than understanding what taco or rendevous mean.
Why should they care? (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as sending huge files goes, they still don't need to know the differences between file sizes. People shouldn't be sending large documents through email anyway. A few megs at the MAX. Public drives or a webserver for anything else and the users should be educated on that.
Re:Why should they care? (Score:2)
Then you say: People shouldn't be sending large documents through email anyway. A few megs at the MAX. Public drives or a webserver for anything else and the users should be educated on that.
The problem is that these people have no conception of "a few megs" or even what's "large" and "what's small". This is basic computer literacy, which many people don't have, and what's worse, don't think they need.
Of course, part of the problem
Re:Why should they care? (Score:2)
If people don't need to know the differences between file sizes, how do you expect them to identify which files are too large for email?
Re:Why should they care? (Score:2)
So, if they don't need to know the differences between file sizes, how do they determine what stuff they can email versus what goes on the public share? If you're suggesting that file size limits be configured on the mail server, th
Re:Why should they care? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the real world, it's easy to tell if something should be mailed or not. Pick it up. Is it a brick or is it a few sheets of paper? In a computer, it's very difficult. Click "view details" on your file manager. Compare that number with what you know about hard drive sizes, network speeds, etc. Computers need a different way to indicate file size than an often obscured number. For text files, it's not too hard. Maybe show a thicker icon that looks like a stack of pages. One sheet == small. Many shee
Abort mission, they have the port! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Abort mission, they have the port! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Abort mission, they have the port! (Score:3, Funny)
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
And a massive 99% of people don't need to understand that. Mail servers should be designed to ignore e-mails of a larger size than they can handle. It's not up to the users to understand KB, MB, GB, mail server loads, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, SSH, whatever.
Their understand lies in doing their jobs effectively, whatever that may be. When my doctor refers to medical jargon I may not know what it means and may be confused (I'm generally well versed in my particular conditions) so do you really expect them to understand what the jargon in your field is?
Blah.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Mail servers should be designed to ignore e-mails of a larger size than they can handle
mine is, yet i still get an amazing number of angry queries asking why i was blocking their very important email!
it's set at 25megs damnit! i am NOT increasing that, no matter how much you bitch.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a mechanic -- hell, I don't even change my own oil -- but I understand "spark plug", "alternator", "transmission", "brake pad", "muffler"...
I'm not a doctor, but I understand "catheter", "seratonin reuptake inhibitor", "priapism", "cyst", "tumor", "intestinal tract"...
So why the fuck can't these people understand that 1,00
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
In raw orders of magnitude, 1 million : 1 thousand : 1 is sufficiently close to correct.
Also: I'm a hard drive manufacturer. Bob Maxtor's the name.
Not so easy for you, either. (Score:5, Informative)
for this:
1GB = 1024 MB = 1048576 KB
you should be using:
1GiB = 1024 MiB = 1048576 KiB
Where the GiB, MiB, and KiB stand for Gibibytes, Mebibytes, and Kibibytes.
Do I use them? No. They sound funny, and like many programmers I'm cranky and stuck-in-my-ways. But you should be prepared to accept that the standard "power of 10" usage of the SI prefixes mega, giga, and kilo you were taught in college science classes is indeed correct, and that the way we've been using them is an awkward legacy kludge that grafts a second meaning onto a widely-used standard.
Obligatory link. [wikipedia.org]
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get this.
You suggest blocking emails past a certain size, but you don't think people need to understand those sizes?
How are they supposed to know whether what they are trying to send is too big or not?
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
> (I'm generally well versed in my particular conditions)
If your doctor regularly says things you don't understand, and you don't bother to ask/learn,
some day you might die as a result. I would have died in July of 1996 if I hadn't been
curious at that the acronym "TBI" stood for. I was slated for spot radiation to complement
my high-dose cytoxan chemotherapy. If I had gotten the total body irradiation that was
written on my order, I would not have survived.
Jargon is fucking important. People should take the time to understand it.
Have fun with it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Have fun with it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Have fun with it! (Score:2)
In other news, 3 out of 4 are thick .. (Score:2)
Education (Score:5, Insightful)
In related news (Score:5, Insightful)
The terms aren't the problem; it's the fact that your average cubical dweller simply doesn't want to learn them.
I've personally explained how to fix a the same problem several times to the same person, yet they keep asking me how to fix it every time it comes up. If they'd simply listen the first time and learn how to do it rather then noding the whole time maybe they'd be able to help themselves once and a while.
Eeeeecellent (Score:2)
Our long-term job security protection program is going precisely as planned.
Excell - this helps to run programs on your PC.
Especially with assistance like this from our allies in the media
Well (Score:5, Funny)
Some Users Drive Me Nuts! (Score:2)
'But I don't feel I should know more - that is their job. If we did it all ourselves they would be out of a job.'
Oh, it's users like this that drive me nuts! Because this user feels she 'should know more' is the reason we have so many computer viruses/worms running rampant. I'll bet any cash that she'll be the first person who's demanding the IT staff fix her PC when things go wrong - probably because she didn't know but felt she doesn't feel she 'should know more'.
(/rant)
Jpeg png, javascript T-1 (Score:5, Funny)
Visio, visio--powerpoint PCX GIMP tar c++ RAM. Outlook? Gigahertz!
Re:Jpeg png, javascript T-1 (Score:5, Funny)
You bastard, my mother is a saint!
Partly IT's fault (Score:2)
HOWEVER...if your job requires you to use a computer all day, you should know something about them. Saying "I shouldn't have to know that stuff to do my job" is a copout.
As far as e-mails cloggin the servers....well, that shouldn't happen unless the server is really underpowered/misconfigured. Now, users sending HUGE attachments for no reason...
Learning is bad? (Score:2)
I see, so learning things and educating yourself is a waste of time. I love our modern mentality.
My Secretary (Score:2, Insightful)
That is normal ... sort of (Score:3, Insightful)
Every field has its jargon that is virtually undecipherable for outsiders.
Think about medicine for example, and the names of medical conditions.
Or think about botany, or construction engineering.
Where the problem lies is that unlike the above fields, computers have become pervasive, and embedded everywhere.
If computers have remained in mainframe rooms with an army of programmers and operators, this would never have been an issue. It became an issue after the PC was invented and made it to every office and every home...
Live with it
jargon too difficult? (Score:3, Informative)
This'll Learn 'EM! (Score:2, Funny)
Give 'em all 28.8k modems, that'll teach 'em!
don't blame the office worker community (Score:5, Interesting)
My experience has been that office workers (non-IT) are not the only ones who are confused by IT jargon.
From the article:
Yeah, well a LOT of IT people don't really know what a firewall does either. I've cringed at some of the definitions of firewalls I've heard peer IT workers give for firewall. And, of those who have an inkling, I would not be surprised at all if 75% of IT workers don't really know how and why firewalls work.
I've seen IT people play fast and loose with these terms too. I've been on projects where estimations are off by 1 to 6 magnitudes because some erudite IT person didn't understand the differences. (I got an emergency call one time because an entire project was going to get canceled because a team member had confused baud (bits per second) with Bps (bytes per second, combined with parity bits, essentially a magnitude difference) and had said what we were attempting would kill our network. I walked them through a pencil estimate and put them back on track that night with an estimate of bandwidth within 2%.
Again, find me an IT team fo which the majority knows this, too. It's amazing how many times jpg's vs. gif's vs. pdf vs. pbm, etc. are selected mostly on the basis of only what the person involved knows.
yeah, good luck getting consistent answers on this one. Again, my experience, IT people can be amazingly clueless about the notion of "direction" and server-side vs. client-side technology.
Yeah, me too! The IT jargon is inconsistent, overloaded, pseudointellectual, and obfuscated. It's a constantly moving target making true currency in technology jargon a royal pain-in-the-ass.
This is NOT a surprise. As may be inferred from my previous points, IT "experts" probably reach this level of blundering also.
The fluid and obfuscated universe of IT jargon has long driven me crazy. And foisting it on the lay community is a crime -- it's fscked enough in the IT universe, who the heck would expect the user community to spend the time and energy to stay current. I would like to think in an industry as driven by rigorous technological underpinnings the language would distill to a more formal, stable, and consistent language. Unfortunately, that's not been my observation.
Theory(?) The language is less driven by the technology and more by the commercial/business bent, thus pushing all in IT to distinguish themselves with the best and most sophisticated sounding terminology. (Just my theory.)
Bad headline. Not too difficult. Unkonwn. (Score:2)
Fun-ducation! :D (Score:2)
Metric system (Score:2, Insightful)
This is partially a side effect of not understanding the metric system. Cue Grandpa Simpson's quote about gas milage. While certainly a mail administrator can configure this to avoid overflowing their own system, the end user will still generate a complaint as to why they can't send mail. The real misunderstanding is file size c
What the hell? (Score:2)
Gigabytes - also refers to disc space, but measures it in larger quantities
Excell - this helps to run programs on your PC.
Is this supposed to help or hurt things? These definitions don't explain anything. Maybe this is the problem. What they should get is a simple course or some terms with proper definitions posted. If people learn the basics, they can figure out a lot more on their own. These just raise more questions than
I didn't need to be told this.... (Score:2)
I just love getting the calls about how "My Microsoft isn't working".
Shouldn't they change their name? (Score:3, Informative)
Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
Learning to use your tools (Score:3, Informative)
If they were going to be an auto mechanic would they be "wasting" their time learning the terms "torque wrench" or "floor jack", as well as what they mean and how to use them?
At one point the article says:
'It's like driving a car - you don't have to be a mechanical engineer to drive and most people will learn something about the mechanics of cars, like what the spark plugs or carburetors do. But with the computer people have not got to the point where they are willing to lift up the bonnet and have a go themselves.'
The analogy is faulty. They're not being asked to swap out the hard disk, install a new video card, or bump up the RAM, just know the basics of their tool. In a large corporation the computer is the equivalent of a fleet car or other company asset the employee is being allowed to use. If the employee wants to "lift up the bonnet and have a go themselves" they need to buy one with their own dime and learn. I'm sure most desktop support people have had more than enough experience with repairing systems from users who decided to "have a go themselves". To continue the broken analogy, a driver that doesn't know the difference between an accelerator pedal and a break pedal probably shouldn't be driving.
Nearly 75% of people said they spend more than an hour every week simply trying to find out what something means in order to finish a task, according to the survey by recruitment consultants Computer People.
I've spent huge amounts of time trying to work my way through labyrinthine HR policies, Employee Manuals, and other detritus of the corporate world. It comes with the territory when you have to deal with something new.
Excell - this helps to run programs on your PC.
I feel much better now. Does the author mean Microsoft Excel? If this is what the writer of the article thinks "Excell"does then much of the tone and content of the article itself becomes clearer. And the HR department shoulldn't be hiring people who are this easily confused.
good advice (Score:3, Insightful)
1) good idea. Ignorance of computer terms may be frustrating to those of us who use them fluently, but know-it-alls who overuse jargon (in any field) to appear smarter to novices are just assholes.
2) is Manging Director of Computer People Adam Fletcher's real job title? Is IT Director jargon? ;)
The answer is probably meeting the users half-way. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like most things, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Educate the users on *some* of the jargon, but try to construct an environment where as many technical details are invisible as possible, so they only need to know a few basic concepts to function in the office.
The biggest obstacle I see these days is the tendency for smaller or mid-sized businesses to try to cust costs on I.T. - eliminating full-time I.T. support staff, in favor of going with a service contract or a part-time worker. This does prevent the problem of paying someone to sit around and surf the web, etc. while they "wait for something to break". But it also causes such things as the situation mentioned in the article where users could simply "turn off their firewall" or make other harmful system changes. (EG. Can't send out my email!? Hey, maybe it's my network card settings! I remember the support guy at home walking me though that stuff in my "Control Panel" under "Networking" when I called for help with my DSL!. I'll try changing some of these numbers around in here!) Users are given more "administrator-type" system privileges due to the lack of real, full-time I.T. staff, and they begin tinkering with things, knowing it'll be a while before they get help otherwise. Then you've got much worse problems....
Breaking news -- average IQ is 100 (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF is Excell? (Score:5, Funny)
What is Excell and what does this mean. I have never heard of it, but aparrently I should have it, because otherwise programs won't run on my PC.
My favorite comment though was the PDF- a document that can be read on any PC. Oh yeah? Can it be read on the PC that doesn't have a PDF reader on it? Hmm!
Re:WTF is Excell? (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, it can often be read on PCs without PDF readers. Strings is your friend.
People Send Large e-mail Attachments Because... (Score:3, Interesting)
I had a group of users who had a one page MS Word file that they were using as a template that got broken somehow and it became 12 Megabytes. When they got a complaint from a recipient who was on a modem they asked me to look into it.
I remade the file and it was 43 kilobytes. Then I showed them the way to figure out how to check the size and spent the next hour explaining about file sizes.
New cameras are also very much to blame but nothing is more to blame than XP's default way of dealing with big images and just shrinking the image view. They have no idea that the files are huge, and have no desire to learn about re-sizing, compression, file formats.... Mailserver be damned I am going to send this collection of worthless pictures anyway, I just got this cool camera and I am going to use it.
Re:Simple prefixes (Score:2)