Public Confused by Tech Lingo 1041
the_helper_monkey writes "The BBC has an article about how tech jargon confuses the public. It's based on a survey done by AMD asking the definitions of words such as megahertz, MP3, and Bluetooth. " I was recently reminded of how big a deal this is while trying to help my tech novice brother select a computer. If you don't know what a gigabyte is, it's hard to know how large of a hard drive you need.
Jargon and the like ... (Score:4, Funny)
But seriously, back when I was on phone tech support, half of the battle was describing things without using tech jargon. The other half of the battle was having patience. Thank goodness I am not doing that any more
You don't need to know what a gigabyte is- (Score:0, Funny)
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Terms such as 'baffled', 'flummoxed', and 'jargon' consfuse the general public.
Techs are confused by general public's Lingo.
Sorry, if you're going to write a story about people being confused by big words, please don't use big words to describe how people don't understand big words. Your target audience is then people who can't understand big words. Don't you know we have to dumb down everything for the uneducated people coming out of our schools?
Oh, wait, where is that contradicting report that says the people coming out of our schools are more tech savvy than ever. But they aren't getting educated gaddammmmit.
On a side note, techs don't understand techno-babble either:
"The jig is up!"
no...
"The *gig* is up."
"1.21 Jiggawatts???"
no...
"1.21 Gigawatts????"
So exactly how do we all keep screwing up by saying "Gig" instead of "Jig" when we probably heard it right most of our lives?
Linux (Score:5, Funny)
I never thought about it, but we must sound really funny to non-technically inclined people. "Yea, I picked up the Athlon 1800 XP, you know the one point five three three gig, and the dude was selling pc2100 for like 50 a stick of 512 so I figured what the hell, cause Galaxies was running choppy with my old 133 stuff and the 64 meg GeForce two I had."
That must sound as bad as Star Trek dialogue to most people.
1 Gig equals... (Score:5, Funny)
Put it into terms that they can understand.
Solution (Score:3, Funny)
I submit that people would be much less confused if AMD would spec its processors in terms of megawatts instead. After all, we already know they are excellent space heaters. ;)
Sometimes, tech jargon has a purpose (Score:5, Funny)
It's very analogous to the introduction of the vernacular Mass. When Masses were said in Latin, with the priest facing away from the people, it was a much more mysterious, deep experience. Now that English is used for Mass, the people, without the benefit of years in a seminary, have all become amatuer theologians, thinking that birth control, homosexuality and ecumenalism are all okay, instead of being the one way tickets to eternan Damnation that the Holy See has repeatedly declared them to be.
So, I think we need more computer jargon, computer cases only openable by licensed tech, and a return to Latin Mass.
Good news for Linux? (Score:2, Funny)
My father-in-law (Score:4, Funny)
He calls floppies "tapes".
To him the monitor is the computer.
He calls the tower the hard drive.
And he claims that I'm confusing.
In related news... (Score:1, Funny)
In other news ! (Score:3, Funny)
Users are users, and, to copy the BOFH, the day a luser will have access to my Server Room, he'll have to do it over my dead body.
For the rest, they NEVER understood Gigabit, they NEVER understood DHCP and it's all for the better.
Next, they will tell me Users are confused by rocket science and everybody will get Ahhhh !!!
tech jargon quiz (Score:2, Funny)
here was the response:
I'm mean, christ! does basic knowledge equate to sexiness? hopefully!!!!
He's wrong. (Score:3, Funny)
The monitor is the thing you hold the paper up to for scanning, and that thing label "CD-ROM" is for holding your coffee!
The last two are cliche, but I heard both waaaaaaay too much back when I was a parts jockey for Best Buy (thankfully faaaaar in my past).
Tech Geeks don't understand Mgmt Jargon (Score:5, Funny)
It's only fair that when I talk about SMP architectures, S-ATA, Terabytes, 64-bit, distributed model computing, TCP, UDP, server farms, load balancers, and quad-port ethernet adapters
Social Engineering (Score:2, Funny)
*phone rings and gaurd picks up*
Gaurd: Security, Norm speaking.
Dade: Norman? This is Jimmy Tanner speaking. Norm, do you know anything about computers?
Gaurd: Uhhhh... Uhhhhhh..
Dade: Well, Norm, my B.L.T. drive just went A.W.O.L. and I have a big project due for mr. Kawasaki, and if I don't get it in he's going to commit Harry Karry on me.
Gaurd: Uhhhhhhhh...*mumbles*
Dade: Well, you know these Japanese management types. Norm could you read me the numbers off the modem?
Gaurd: uhhhhh....
Dade: It's a little boxy thing with switches.
Gaurd: *reads numbers*
See? Tech jargon is supposed to be confusing so hackers can take over TV stations with hapless security gaurds.
Hmph. (Score:1, Funny)
When people refuse to RTFM, clearly the PEBKAC.
Face it, some technology is just too complex to be sufficiently dumbed down for the NASCAR and country music loving set.
Be Judicious (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah! (Score:1, Funny)
Caveman Tech Support (Score:5, Funny)
Could you dumb it down a little. I just don't understand all this technical jargon.
Oh boy (Score:4, Funny)
In other news, the sky is blue, what goes up must come down, and SCO is full of it.
Re:Name a field, and someone will confuse you (Score:3, Funny)
Just the public? (Score:5, Funny)
You're standing with a group of other people, discussing Company X's latest product. One of the people talking throws out an acronym that you've never heard before. You have absolutely no idea what this acronym may mean, as it was mentioned while the person was discussing a framework/language/methodology/technology that you've never heard of before.
Do you:
Honestly, are any of us geeks ever willing to admit that we don't inherently recognize and grok every single term that is thrown our way? Isn't that part of being a geek?
Re:Tech Geeks don't understand Mgmt Jargon (Score:1, Funny)
carburetor (Score:3, Funny)
If your wife thinks her car has a carburetor then:
Your wife is really old. Why are you married to an 80 year old? Is she rich? Does she have a sister?
or...
Your wife's car is really old. Buy the poor woman a new car, for Chrissakes!
Re:So what? (Score:5, Funny)
Why are the customer support representatives at gateway and dell laughing so loudly?
I got this a lot at my last job (Score:1, Funny)
Me: Sure, just bring it in and we'll take care of it.
Customer: Do you want just the CPU?
More marketing strategy goodies... (Score:1, Funny)
"RADEON 9100" and "RADEON 9200" and "RADEON 9300" and "RADEON 9400" and "RADEON 9500"
and "RADEON 9600" and "RADEON 9700" and "RADEON 9800" and "RADEON All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro" and...
Jeez, gimme a break already.
Re:Jargon and their meanings... (Score:5, Funny)
NT : Not Trustworthy - for MS, that is.
MicroSoft: A microscopic, kind-hearted organisation.
DRM: Digital Restrictions Managaement
TCPA: Treacherous Computing Platform Alliance
SCO : short for SCOurge; root of all evil.
XML : eXtremely Munged Language.
GNU : Great New Unix
Re:In other news (Score:5, Funny)
"40/20s"=hip and waist size?
"sets of six"=tight abs?
"dummy halves"=twin blondes?
You're talking about HOT CHICKS aren't you!!!?
Good Ones! (Score:3, Funny)
Shit! My BLT drive just want AWOL!
True Story:
I went into a radio shack, to have some amusement at the dumbassitude of their staff. I told them I needed a flux capacitor in order to repair the wavetable floating-point unit on my network card....
They spent 20 minutes with their heads in catalogs.... Not only didn't they know they names of things; they never watched Back to the Future either....
Re:It's not just the general public.... (Score:2, Funny)
Yes.
Re:they could at least get the terms right (Score:3, Funny)
Like Lance Armstrong?
Re:Just the public? (Score:5, Funny)
Nonsense, I grok all the time! I just took my new grok out this morning.
Re:carburetor (Score:2, Funny)
A car won't go without a carburetor. You sound like my brother who tried to convince me that I didn't need rabbit ears to watch HBO.
Re:Just the public? (Score:5, Funny)
Ahhh, a true geek. Well you see there are these things called showers...
Oh yeah? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's not just the general public....(mildly OT) (Score:2, Funny)
Quick related story:
Back when I had dialup, I switched to a cheaper provider. I was having problems, though - for the life of me I couldn't connect to my non-isp SMTP server.
So I call them up. I get a pseudo-techie (the kind with lists of ANDIFs and no practical computer knowledge. He starts in on asking me What operating system I'm running and all that. Figuring that saying OS X would be a problem I waid, "Look, that really doesn't matter. All I need to know is if you guys block off port 25." He insisted that he needed to know what operating system I was running to answer that question. Silly techie person. :)
Triv
So, I was watching this ad (Score:5, Funny)
For Bonjela [auravita.com], I think, although as always, I had the TV muted to cut out the worst of the psychotronic radiation [zapatopi.net]. Anyway, the theme of the ad appeared to be that Bonjela can be used to cure mouth ulcers, and that it does so by by killing the tiny spikey demon person that lives inside them and causes you pain.
So we've known about bacteria since the seventeenth century [theguardians.com], but we still believe - in a very real and fiduciarily binding sense - that Joe Lowest Common Denominator is more comfortable believing that mouth pain is caused by little demons. Specifically little spiney ones who dropped out of spiny demon mime school.
And you wonder why AMD gave up on trying to explain why MHz don't matter? I'm surprised they don't market their chips based on multiples of Imp Power.
Buy The New Efreet Chip! Now With the Power of Ten Genies, All Doing Your Bidding!
Uhh.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So what? (Score:2, Funny)
an original limerick,vaguely relevant (Score:4, Funny)
Encountered a creative schism
When those who spoke terse
Demanded his verse
Lose its sesquipedalianisms.
Re:Are you sure you're American? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Linux (Score:1, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:5, Funny)
I guess you've never visited New Zealand... ;-)
Re:Be Judicious (Score:4, Funny)
One must remember to match one's pronouns, as well.
Reverse the Polarity! (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh, I see, your P4 chipset's not going to work with this PC133. We're going to have to get you some DDR, which will have the benefit of detecting tachyons and reversing the starboard shield antimatter polarity nutation."
--grendel drago
Re:Sometimes, tech jargon has a purpose (Score:2, Funny)
I'm confused too. (Score:5, Funny)
Which is why tech support people deserve more $ (Score:1, Funny)
Interchangeable terms (Score:4, Funny)
At work I watched a new course being taught last week (second level word processing... including such joys as creating folders), and in this incredibly entry level course, there's a section on hardware... including asking people to say what the hard disc is.
Except it doesn't matter what the hard disc is, beyond "you save files on it"... they weren't even really saving to the hard disc, but to one of the hard discs server in the room next door.
And don't even get me started on the technical inaccuracies in the course. I could have slapped the person who was running (and wrote) the course, when she said "this is the hard disc". She was pointing at the case of the computer... if you want to show them a hard disc, say so - I have a small stack of them in the server room.
Tech jargon is difficult ? (Score:4, Funny)
That's because we don't put up things like they should be. I think "libraries of congress" and "Voxwagon beetle" are more suitable terms... hey dude.. this HDD can store 0.69865 libraries of congress and that computer goes 1.79 times faster than your Civic :-P
How sad, (Score:5, Funny)
I went to repair a PC once at a church about 18 years ago. The lady that used the computer to type letters for the pastor was bumfuzzled because "my TV won't give me a picture after I turned the brain on!"
She called the monitor the "TV" and the CPU was the "brain". It was an old IBM XT.
Turns out that she had turned the brightness down on the monitor because this was *way* before the days (IBM DOS 2.10) of screensavers.
My dad still can't grasp the difference between RAM and hard disk storage after 10 years of me trying to explain it to him.
MOST people call the CASE (the cabinet) the "hard drive"
They know mouse, monitor, keyboard, CD. That's about it.
I find it easier to explain the problem of filling the hard disk up like this.
Your hard drive is like your refridgerator. You can only put so much beer in it before it gets to full to close the door. Once it gets filled up you have to take some beer (files) out to put more in.
It's sad that most people can tell you how many times some football player farted in 1996 or the names of all the movies that some little twit starred in or name all the Brittney Spears songs but they can't put oil in a car or lawn mower, don't know the difference between the CPU and the hard drive, etc...
If it doesn't involve sports, alcohol, or tv/movie stars they are baffled.
I'm afraid there is little hope for mankind, ignorance truly is bliss...
Re:Reverse the Polarity! (Score:2, Funny)
reverse the polarity, it always works in Star Trek
My God! It's so true! The solution to everything is a tacheon beam, or some hybrid neutrino ray, which doesn't work at first, (like you gotta wonder what neutrino's would do), but then Geordi suggests reversing the polarity, and low and behold it does the trick!
Don't try it in real life, like say reversing the polarity of the electricity for your laptop. It'll either do nothing at all or result in everything going up in smoke.. hang on a minute, maybe they're on to something!
Re:Just the public? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:We don't realise it... (Score:5, Funny)
Load up the slashdot homepage in another browser tab. Now go over the homepage word by word.
Not fair! The front page currently has a story about .Net, and I don't think anyone knows exactly what the hell MS means at this point.
Re:Yes they do (Score:4, Funny)
Thank God I found a local mechanic who was honest enough to make sure I had these pivotal items installed. I can't believe the DOT doesn't require them!
Seriously. Every consumer should take the time to become as educated as I have.
Re:Be Judicious (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sometimes, tech jargon has a purpose (Score:5, Funny)
Deo Gratie...
Per nostros Quinientum Doce megabaitum de RAMus...
Deo Gratie...
Per nostra GeForsum Duo Mu Omega cum centum ventiocho megabytum de memoria Delta Delta Rho...
Deo Gratie...
E por nostro casum de aluminum con sweetum modus e infinitum blinkenlightenus...
Amen
Re:Good Ones! (Score:3, Funny)
Public wants things to work. (duh) (Score:4, Funny)
What are the other third? Sendmail administrators?
What a weird question.
Re:Why Techs Are Dweebs From Another Planet (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, I'm understanding this technology...er, I mean, "nifty stuff I can spend money on"... already.
Beneath a certain critical threshold, I have to stop blaming the experts, and start blaming the masses who refuse to make any effort to educate themselves about the devices.
As far as the medical profession goes, sure there are many doctors who think that using thick jargon makes them sound smart--and therefore trustworthy. It's a bad strategy. But if someone doesn't know what basic medical terms like "pancreas," "antibody," "virus," and "cell" mean, there's not a whole lot a doctor can do to communicate with them. At that point, it's the patient who is putting his/her own life at risk.
Sometimes tech's don't speak 'tech' (Score:2, Funny)
The graphics geeks going on about the page-flipping the voxel buffer...
The crypto guys flapping away about the size of the secret exponents chosens such that a meet-in-the-middle attack would be slower than the general discrete log algorithm...
Database wizards frustrated with the limitations of the native java odbc API having to dig down deep into the bowels of ole-db to see if the base recordset can actually start doing transactions in oracle without blowing up the servlet...
Network jockeys putting the packet to the pocket to the socket to the port...in just enough time to see the header abort...
And we wonder why the general public has no idea what the hell is going on?
Tech support (Score:3, Funny)
Me: Are you using static IP's or are you setup to use DHCP?
The "admin": Uhm, what do you mean?
Re:Be Judicious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why Techs Are Dweebs From Another Planet (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Just the public? (Score:2, Funny)
Completely true. I got a job once because during the interview, I was asked about something I didn't know about; I'd never even heard of it. I immediately told the guy that I wasn't familiar with that, and asked what it was similar to. He said he made it up to see how I would respond, and I was hired shortly afterwards.
In all cases, you will gain much respect if you show a) that you know how much you don't know, and b) that you're willing to learn. You'll win jobs, friends, girls, the whole sh-bang. Mark my works.
Doug
wizzle (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Jargon and their meanings... (Score:3, Funny)
FAMD - Forced Air Movement Device
leave it to IBM to come up with a four-letter acronym for a three-letter word.