• plaga (unregistered) in reply to Moss
    Moss:
    So, obviously written by an American who can't follow British humour.

    Sometimes I wonder if there aren't these legions of Britons sitting at the computer, holding their breath, waiting for the opportunity to fire out petty insults towards Americans, no matter how applicable. It gets a little tiring, but whatever.

    I can't watch IT Crowd because of the stupid laugh track. I might have been able to put up with the bad writing, or the bad acting. But if you want to hold that show up as a shining example of British wit, then be my guest.

  • (cs) in reply to plaga
    plaga:
    Moss:
    So, obviously written by an American who can't follow British humour.
    Sometimes I wonder if there aren't these legions of Britons sitting at the computer, holding their breath, waiting for the opportunity to fire out petty insults towards Americans, no matter how applicable.
    Rest assured, it’s not only Brits who do that.
  • (cs) in reply to plaga
    plaga:
    I can't watch IT Crowd because of the stupid laugh track. I might have been able to put up with the bad writing, or the bad acting. But if you want to hold that show up as a shining example of British wit, then be my guest.

    The IT Crowd is filmed in front of a live audience...

  • b0ttomfeeder (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Mark:
    Speaking of which, IT Crowd S03 E01 is out now. Go download, kiddies!
    This program looks utterly shit but I must admit that I've never actually seen it. So I'd quite like to derail the comments section and turn it into a critique of this program (it's better than derailing the comments for stupid troll shit, after all). So tell me friends, is this show worth 30 minutes of my time?

    No. It demeans IT professionals and frankly is a mediocre sitcom relying on slapstick, toilet humour and cringworthy situation comedy that steals wholesale from the last 30 years of british comedy. That said a lot of my friends who are also IT professionals love it and won't miss an episode.

  • Guran (unregistered) in reply to Jo Bob
    Jo Bob:
    Reminds me of a call for a connection issue I took once. While walking her through fighting with the TCP/IP error, she asked why I don't I just remote into her machine to fix the problem. I had to explain to her TWICE why it wasn't possible.

    Well... I once worked for a company, where internal IT support demanded all issues where to be reported... through a web form on the intranet.

    No, I'm not making that up.

  • illtiz (unregistered) in reply to Da' Man
    Da' Man:
    Benedict:
    The real WTF is the photo. Quicksand is "Treibsand" in German and not "Quicksand".
    Interestingly, if the base material is *sand*, it is indeed called "Treibsand" in German, but if it mainly consists of soil ("Erde" in German) it is called "Quickerde", and if it is clay ("Ton"), it is "Quickton".

    So I would say the average German postgraduate Geologist should understand what is meant with "Quicksand". For all the other - bad luck ;-)

    knowing some English can be a lifesaver .-)

    No shit. I've been speaking German all my life, yet I had to look these terms up in Wikipedia just to know you weren't BS-ing me here. I'm clueless about geology, of course. So...yay for knowledge of the English language?

  • IByte (unregistered) in reply to Jo Bob
    Jo Bob:
    Reminds me of a call for a connection issue I took once. While walking her through fighting with the TCP/IP error, she asked why I don't I just remote into her machine to fix the problem. I had to explain to her TWICE why it wasn't possible.
    Metaphors and similes are usually helpful in situations like this. Just ask her whether she would call the phone company to report that her phone isn't working.

    (If she says yes, you have bigger problems...)

  • Dragon (unregistered) in reply to Studley
    Studley:
    It's OK, if the Germans can't understand Quicksand then they should at least understand Kviksand, as long as they've seen either 'Allo 'Allo, or a German bad guy in a Hollywood action movie.

    They have very likely not ever seen 'Allo 'Allo as that show has only recently been approved for tv in Germany...

  • J.R. "Bob" Dobbs (unregistered) in reply to IByte
    IByte:
    Just ask her whether she would call the phone company to report that her phone isn't working.

    (If she says yes, you have bigger problems...)

    Duh! Of course she will say “yes”. If I encounter a problem with my phone line, I'll get out, find a payphone, and call the phone company. Be wary of hastily-thrown analogies...

  • Procedural (unregistered) in reply to J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
    J.R. "Bob" Dobbs:
    IByte:
    Just ask her whether she would call the phone company to report that her phone isn't working.

    (If she says yes, you have bigger problems...)

    Duh! Of course she will say “yes”. If I encounter a problem with my phone line, I'll get out, find a payphone, and call the phone company. Be wary of hastily-thrown analogies...

    You still have payphones where you live ? Here once they die they just don't bother replacing them, and most of them have; the cell phone did them in.

  • John (unregistered) in reply to b0ttomfeeder

    Couldn't have said it better. I watched the first few episodes in the hope that it might improve. I think I'd been hoping for something along the lines of the BOFH (see theregister.co.uk for the uninitiated). Now that would have been funny. Unfortunately the rest of the county wouldn't have got it.

  • John (unregistered) in reply to b0ttomfeeder
    b0ttomfeeder:
    Anonymous:
    Mark:
    Speaking of which, IT Crowd S03 E01 is out now. Go download, kiddies!
    This program looks utterly shit but I must admit that I've never actually seen it. So I'd quite like to derail the comments section and turn it into a critique of this program (it's better than derailing the comments for stupid troll shit, after all). So tell me friends, is this show worth 30 minutes of my time?

    No. It demeans IT professionals and frankly is a mediocre sitcom relying on slapstick, toilet humour and cringworthy situation comedy that steals wholesale from the last 30 years of british comedy. That said a lot of my friends who are also IT professionals love it and won't miss an episode.

    Couldn't have said it better. I watched the first few episodes in the hope that it might improve. I think I'd been hoping for something along the lines of the BOFH (see http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/ for the uninitiated). Now that would have been funny. Unfortunately the rest of the county wouldn't have got it.

    (why do I always click the reply button and not quote, some day I'll learn)

  • Bosshog (unregistered) in reply to shakin
    shakin:
    Benedict:
    The real WTF is the photo. Quicksand is "Treibsand" in German and not "Quicksand".

    Apparently the sign designer wants Germans to experience unlikely and comical deaths while thrashing about in a water pit saturated with sand.

    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Süßwaren

  • J.R. "Bob" Dobbs (unregistered) in reply to Procedural
    Procedural:
    You still have payphones where you live ? Here once they die they just don't bother replacing them, and most of them have; the cell phone did them in.

    Well, the ones that work are still maintained, but I don't think they're installing new ones anymore. The city has recently built a light rail line, and along the route you can see a number of spaces obviously made to receive a phone booth, but no actual phone booths seem to be forthcoming. Still, some time ago, the phone company's helpdesk line wasn't accessible through a cell phone, hence I sure was happy to find a payphone at the corner of the street when my ADSL line went down at 01:00 in the morning (yes, I'm a complete Net.addict, and no, I do not have an actual phone plugged on my circuit, just the modem :-)

  • IHasYerCheezburger (unregistered) in reply to JD
    JD:
    The irony is that in this day and age, holding a (camera) phone up to your screen is a perfectly valid way to capture and subsequently move the image data on your screen to a remote location. It may take longer to photograph the screen than it does to just PrintScreen but by taking an actual photograph you can <insert wooden table joke here>.
    With a camera phone, it's just as fast to upload to Flickr, as sending a screenshot by email. And Flickr has a wider audience than a single email receipient.

    CAPTHA: oh no it's appellatio again

  • IHasYerCheezburger (unregistered) in reply to Bombe
    Bombe:
    plaga:
    Moss:
    So, obviously written by an American who can't follow British humour.
    Sometimes I wonder if there aren't these legions of Britons sitting at the computer, holding their breath, waiting for the opportunity to fire out petty insults towards Americans, no matter how applicable.
    Rest assured, it’s not only Brits who do that.
    This comment was brought to you by a Belgian. All Your Budweiser Are Belong To Us.
  • (cs) in reply to Shinobu
    Shinobu:
    A few years ago, for fun I hooked up an early dot-matrix printer to what was then my current computer, with Windows... 95 I believe. Now, when I originally used the dot-matrix I couldn't get anything more interesting than a typewriter font. But hooked up to the new computer it suddenly supported True Type fonts and everything. Made me smile, that brave little printer was far ahead of what computers could do at the time. Unfortunate that I never got to use its full potential until I already had a much better inkjet printer.
    I remember using a dot matrix (don't remember the make, but it was a 24-pin model) with LaTeX, dvips and ghostscript to produce pretty reasonable output for my CV back in 1994. Took a long time, but was about as good as could be done without going to a print shop or splashing out loads for a laser printer. At that time, Win3.1 produced terrible output on that same device...
  • The Orc (unregistered) in reply to Bosshog
    Bosshog:
    shakin:
    Benedict:
    The real WTF is the photo. Quicksand is "Treibsand" in German and not "Quicksand".

    Apparently the sign designer wants Germans to experience unlikely and comical deaths while thrashing about in a water pit saturated with sand.

    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Süßwaren

    Wouldn't the "Achtung" sort of tip you off?

    CAPTCHA: delenit (a deleted mineral?)

  • Bosshog (unregistered) in reply to The Orc
    The Orc:
    Bosshog:
    shakin:
    Benedict:
    The real WTF is the photo. Quicksand is "Treibsand" in German and not "Quicksand".

    Apparently the sign designer wants Germans to experience unlikely and comical deaths while thrashing about in a water pit saturated with sand.

    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Süßwaren

    Wouldn't the "Achtung" sort of tip you off?

    I believe it means "attention!", in which case the trap may still work.
  • Fraggy (unregistered) in reply to Bosshog
    Bosshog:
    The Orc:
    Bosshog:
    shakin:
    Benedict:
    The real WTF is the photo. Quicksand is "Treibsand" in German and not "Quicksand".

    Apparently the sign designer wants Germans to experience unlikely and comical deaths while thrashing about in a water pit saturated with sand.

    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Süßwaren

    Wouldn't the "Achtung" sort of tip you off?

    I believe it means "attention!", in which case the trap may still work.
    That is correct

    Also, I'm with illtiz, even though German is my native language, I didn't know "Quickerde" oder "Quickton".

  • Montgomery Scott (unregistered) in reply to Wyrd
    Wyrd:
    I have heard, once or twice, the story of someone who, when instructed to point the mouse at something on the screen and click it, actually *picked up* the mouse, and aimed it at the screen as one would do with a remote. -- Furry cows moo and decompress.

    /me picks up mouse and holds in front of face

    "hello computer"

  • mwanaheri (unregistered) in reply to Charles400
    Charles400:
    How do I make this comment smaller?

    well, hitting <backspace> a couple of times, maybe?

  • william (unregistered) in reply to Bob

    the print screen key in DOS did just that, it printed the screen text to the default printer port (LPT1), that worked with most dot matrix printers

    in '84 there would have been Unix and early Mac OS

  • (cs) in reply to Dan

    My nostalgia just went into double-geek overdrive from the initials "TSR".

  • Michael Llaneza (unregistered)

    re: the sales team

    If you can't do the job without it, it's a job skill. Cope.

    re: computer salesmen

    What's the difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman ? The used car salesman knows when he is lying.

  • (cs) in reply to Bosshog
    Bosshog:
    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Süßwaren

    For some reason that reminded me of this hilarious cable labeling scheme.

    In Egypt I saw a sign on the lifeguard tower with a three lines of Arabic and the english sentence: "ONLY FOR SWIMMERS OVER 25 METERS!" I guess English speakers have to be pretty tall to be rescued...

  • (cs)
    Maintaining his composure, he asked Jeff to send in a hard copy. Ricky could only imagine Jeff waking up at 3:00 AM that night to wonder "WTF did I do?"

    No, Jeff wonders to date why Ricky wanted a hard copy even though the problem was clearly on the screen.

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to Bosshog
    Bosshog:
    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Süßwaren

    You can't fool a German so easily. Here, FTFY:

    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Gratis-Süßwaren
  • Bosshog (unregistered) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    Bosshog:
    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Süßwaren

    You can't fool a German so easily. Here, FTFY:

    Fare! Kviksand Danger! Quicksand Achtung! Gratis-Süßwaren
    Danke! ;)
  • JimBob (unregistered) in reply to JD
    JD:
    The irony is that in this day and age, holding a (camera) phone up to your screen is a perfectly valid way to capture and subsequently move the image data on your screen to a remote location. It may take longer to photograph the screen than it does to just PrintScreen but by taking an actual photograph you can <insert wooden table joke here>.
    Only if you work in a place that lets you take pictures of whatever may be on your screen to your private phone, and then send it to whomever you wish. Where I work, that would be a one-way ticket out the door, and to possible criminal charges.
  • (cs)

    This reminds me of the best ever Yahoo! answer: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060923202508AAKhUd3

  • Ferg (unregistered) in reply to plaga
    plaga:
    Moss:
    So, obviously written by an American who can't follow British humour.

    Sometimes I wonder if there aren't these legions of Britons sitting at the computer, holding their breath, waiting for the opportunity to fire out petty insults towards Americans, no matter how applicable. It gets a little tiring, but whatever.

    I can't watch IT Crowd because of the stupid laugh track. I might have been able to put up with the bad writing, or the bad acting. But if you want to hold that show up as a shining example of British wit, then be my guest.

    I'm an American and I have to agree with him in saying that liking the IT Crowd is simply a matter of liking British humor, nothing else. Even then, if you really hate it that much all you have to do to solve your problem is either A)Don't watch it or B)Wait for them to Americanize\ruin (The Office anyone?) it in the American version that's supposedly in the works.

  • Tepsifüles (unregistered) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    Speaking of which, IT Crowd S03 E01 is out now. Go download, kiddies!
    Tsk. Downloading films is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.
  • (cs) in reply to Shinobu
    Shinobu:
    A few years ago, for fun I hooked up an early dot-matrix printer to what was then my current computer, with Windows... 95 I believe. Now, when I originally used the dot-matrix I couldn't get anything more interesting than a typewriter font. But hooked up to the new computer it suddenly supported True Type fonts and everything. Made me smile, that brave little printer was far ahead of what computers could do at the time. Unfortunate that I never got to use its full potential until I already had a much better inkjet printer.
    Curious. Back in ~ '91 my parents bought a new computer (a 286 with a whole megabyte of RAM!) with a dot matrix printer that had about seven built in fonts that you could choose between. Contrastingly, some years later when I went to Uni I nicked their computer and bought myself a cheap HP deskjet so I could print my essays and dissertations - and the fantastic all singing all dancing colour inkjet could only manage a typerwriter-type font! That's progress for you...
  • Smeagle (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    [IT Crowd] So tell me friends, is this show worth 30 minutes of my time?

    Season 01 is absolutely perfect, your really have to watch it. Season 02 was... nice. Season 03 I have not watched, yet.

    • Oliver
  • Denamic (unregistered)

    You say he wasn't, in fact, stupid? I'm sorry, but...

  • NigelJK (unregistered)

    Not long after this (1987) I had a similar experience. I was working for (at the time) a consistantly in the top 5 fortune 500 multinational. They had a sales force for some 230+ (!) in the UK. They were all to be issued with a new Toshiba T1200 laptop, with some in-house software (and a rudimentary EMail package) which allowed for the transmittion of sales orders and the receipt of sales reports via a BT 2400 baud modem (AKA 'the coffee table' as you could actually put the laptop on top of the modem ...), as you can imaging roll out was a nightmare, but eventually it was all in place and I setup a helpdesk. I became the the 'guru' for this piece of kit, so when one of the support staff came to me asking if I could handle a call from one of the well known 'non-adopters' I took the call. The sales guy was obviously at the 'I'm about to explode' point, as his speach to me was as if he was grtting his teeth and talking to a three year old. "H o w t h e * ! C % d o e s t h i s % ^ " * % ! m a c h i n e s e p o r a t e t h e w o r d s"

    "What are you attempting to do?"

    "W r i t e a n o t e"

    By this he meant an Email. "What happens when you press the space bar?"

    "W h a t ' s t h e s p a c e b a r?"

    "The long key at the bottom of the keyboard"

    There then follow about a minute of silence and a apology.

    It's worth remembering that all of the sales team had 2 days training and familiarisation with the new kit.

    I won't go into what happend when everone sent xmas greetings to everyone, globally, on the same day.

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