• Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to NakedJaybird
    NakedJaybird:
    Franz Kafka:
    The Chub-Chubs are Coming!!:
    So you've run into female techs, and recognized them as such. Excellent. This does not counter what Peter and NakedJayBird had to say. The existence of female techs who are compensated appropriately does not negate the existence of secretaries who are given tasks outside the scope of their jobs, up to and including technical assistance to corporate dweebs. And I think that the latter is more likely to be found in an environment with clueless corporate dweebs than the former, based on personal experience and what I've heard from my colleagues.

    Really, I took the comments about electrician/secretary to say more about the corporate morons and their dimwitted attitudes than about any 'feminist victimhood'. Methinks you project a bit much.

    I'm not the one projecting. The original comment about electrician/skelekratary is the one that dragged the whole poor feminist thing into the thread. Everything about that is speculation driven by what I have no idea.

    And anyway, the corporate morons aren't sexist - they're just biased against anyone who isn't them.

    There is no 'poor feminist' connotation. Just because someone turns on the light or plugs something in does not make that person an electrician. The narrator's word selection is interesting; it suggests executive ignorance, which is a primary contributor to WTF-ism. Exposing every possible avenue of executive ignorance is part of the fun, including the inability to identify someone's real role, and resorting to stereotypical guessing.

    Yes there is - it's the part where they drag perceived gender inequality into an unrelated discussion. There's enough to laugh at without making stuff up.

  • (cs)
    Anon:
    Ross:
    If someone of average intelligence can't figure out how to work a phone or a light switch it's because the object was badly designed, not because the person is stupid. Everyone making fun of the executives should read The Design Of Everyday Things.

    Now that much I will agree with. In my experience, most household lights have either a switch or a dimmer (that doubles as a switch when you turn it all the way down). What kind of a moron puts in both? I can imagine, the switch was off, somebody tries the dimmer and nothing happens. They put the dimmer back where it was and then they try the switch. Nothing happens because they just turned the dimmer all the way back down.

    Not trying all four combinations is fairly stupid. I guess I deny the central thesis of your arguments: there ARE such things as stupid people. Sure, there are plenty of badly-designed UIs that confuse the stupid and the non-stupid alike, but to deny the existence of human stupidity is just... strange.

    Which species was it who invented the idea of sawing off the branch while you're sitting on the wrong end? Us!

    Which species wins the most Darwin awards every year? Us!

    Which species likes to peer down the barrel of their guns to see what's blocking the bullet from coming out? Us!

    I have personally encountered the separate switch/dimmer design in a meeting room. It only took me moments to work out what was going on, and the reason is because I was paying attention to what I was doing and thinking about it rather than just randomly flipping controls, so I noticed (through the use of my ordinary everyday sense of touch) that there was no on-off click at either end of the dimmer when I turned it, and realised there had to be a separate switch. I won't try and claim this means I am not stupid in general, but on that occasion I certainly wasn't.

    Light-switches and telephones are everyday objects of which every one of us is exposed to many thousands of different minor variations in the design and controls. Making them work isn't a specialised skill, it requires the application of some fairly ordinary common-sense and the recall of your past experiences. Being unable to structure thoughts, or not being able to recall and learn from your past experiences, is pretty much the definition of stupid, isn't it?

  • That's not Alex (unregistered)

    waitaminit, i've seen this style before... overly verbose, gratuitous chapt...er...paragraph headings; creative writing fail; missing a punchline... This is a Jake Vinson "anonymization", not an Alex one!!!

  • JaronK (unregistered)

    Heh, I doubt he was an electrician. We're called AV Techs, thank you very much. And I have to do this all the damn time.

    And we set it up to be as fool proof as possible. Plug in your laptop right where you stand and you're golden. Take the mic from me and talk into it when you want to be heard. But fools are so ingenious.

    Hell, I'm surprised this post didn't have the other common one... you hand a microphone that's turned on to a professional speaker. They take the mic, walk up to the lecturn, turn the mic off at the switch, then try to talk into it and complain that it doesn't work. Then I have to walk back and switch it back on. This is why, by the way, you'll notice that most technicians hand you a mic that has tape over the switch, though I've had a few people pull up the tape to turn it off. Weirdos.

    Some of the new Senhieser mics can be set so the on off switch does nothing, designed that way specifically because of how common this is. I love those.

  • poorengineer (unregistered)

    The summary of it is about "Highly paid supposed professional sharp decision maker (CEO or top management or degree holder executives) is unable to understand or perform common sense tasks like on/off electrical appliance, setting up projectors, etc. And if you are led by them, probably you are in a team of Lions for Lambs LOL Lambs don't even understand common sense, will there correct decisions made?". Correct me if I'm wrong.

  • Jean-Paul (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Smash King:
    What happened to the other 2? I noticed that too. I guess those two execs were killed and eaten by the other twelve after being locked for so long waiting for the elevator.

    It was dark. They were probably eaten by a grue.

    c|n>k

    this! this ftw!

  • jordanwb (unregistered) in reply to Anon Ymous
    Anon Ymous:
    CCFLs have been dimmable for more than a decade. Years ago I took an old guitar and built a speaker into it with an internally mounted cold cathode fluorescent lamp that adjusted intensity based on the audio signal.

    I have no idea what you just said but it sounds very cool.

  • Isaac Eiland-Hall (unregistered) in reply to magi
    magi:
    Nothing worthwhile has ever been said in a powerpoint presentation, nothing.

    Clearly you have never visited ted.com

    captcha: I'm not going to post the captcha because even if it WERE amusing, the joke is way overdone

    (btw, that was one hell of a long captcha ;-) )

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to jordanwb
    jordanwb:
    Anon Ymous:
    CCFLs have been dimmable for more than a decade. Years ago I took an old guitar and built a speaker into it with an internally mounted cold cathode fluorescent lamp that adjusted intensity based on the audio signal.

    I have no idea what you just said but it sounds very cool.

    I know what he's talking about and the only way it could be cooler is if he could make the light change color.

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to WhiskeyJack
    WhiskeyJack:
    And everyone uses a phone, practically every day. Phones have had ringer controls for decades. Even if it's a phone you've never seen before, you should be able to at least start to figure it out.

    Ah, but what if the phone isn't ringing because it's in "do not disturb" mode? When I was a consultant a number of years back we had a phone system where the command to toggle DND mode was some arcane key sequence like --1-7-1. In cases like this, it really doesn't matter how smart you are or how many other phones you've seen. Unless you knew the magic incantation for this particular phone you'd have to call the receptionist over, who would fix it in about two seconds and make you look like an idiot.

  • Snow_Cat (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    3) is there such a thing as a professional light switch operator?
    Yes; That would be a lighting technician. Though their duties a a bit broader than that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighting_technician
  • Roelf (unregistered)

    I'm an AV technician at a University, this sounds exactly like my typical day, except replace the executives with professors.

    I would say I'm glad I'm not the only one in this situation, but I wouldn't wish running out 50 times a day to fix stupid problems on anyone.

  • WW (unregistered)

    To all the people comparing the things the executives failed at to various forms of rocket science:

    They were unable to turn on a light. That is not rocket science.

    When you're faced with lighting controls that include one or more dimmer switches, the common-sense approach is to set the dimmers to the midpoint of their travel, so that when you finally get the right one while you're testing the on/off switches, you'll know it. This, too, is not rocket science.

    Something I learned very long ago: The first two rules of the technician are "plug it in" and "turn it on"; it may be necessary to add "turn it up" to the list. It's remarkable how many problems can be solved with those two (or three) directives. The laptops needed to be plugged in. The lights needed to be turned on. The lights and phones needed to be turned up. None of these operations is outside the skills of an ordinary person. And the Ctl-F4 guy did not know how to work his own laptop, or at least thought he didn't, though he'd actually failed at "plug it in".

    Remember that these are people whose primary job responsibilities include giving presentations at meetings. They should, by now, have mastered the art of using basic conference room features (lighting controls, projectors, and their own damn laptops). This cannot be the first time all 14 of them have ever faced tasks like using light switches, whether it's a single switch or a panel that looks like it came out of the Space Shuttle.

    And for the folks saying that it's more efficient for them to have the electrician do things, remember that every time, they dorked around with it for a while, experimented with new forms of fail, then called the electrician and had to wait for him to show up before they could proceed. If they'd applied basic logic to, say, the light switch issue, they'd have been up and running probably 15 minutes before they actually were.

    Oh, and yes, I would feel like an idiot if I paid someone else to do something I could do with a little research. There are things I pay people to do for the sake of convenience (changing my oil comes to mind; I go to JiffyLube because I hate lying in a snowy parking lot in February, or on searing asphalt in August, wiggling the wrench onto my rather inconvenient oil filter). But I pay them to do it because I don't want to do the job myself, not because I can't. There are few if any things that are part of daily life which I can't do with the proper tools and a few minutes to RTFM, and I most certainly would feel like an fool (the kind soon parted from money) if I paid someone else to do something simple because I didn't know how (paying someone else to do it because I don't want to, on the other hand, merely makes me a slacker). It's a matter of pride.

    But, once again, we're not talking about servicing cars. We're talking about using cars. It's as if the executives normally drove cars that had the headlight controls on a stalk, and had to call AAA when they rented one where the controls were on the dash.

    I believe that anyone who is not capable of operating devices which are intended to be operated by non-specialist users, especially after having seem them operated by others, is in fact an idiot. If they are intentionally incapable of doing so because they feel competence is for peons, they're beneath contempt.

  • peterbruells (unregistered) in reply to WW
    WW:
    To all the people comparing the things the executives failed at to various forms of rocket science:

    They were unable to turn on a light. That is not rocket science.

    When you're faced with lighting controls that include one or more dimmer switches, the common-sense approach is to set the dimmers to the midpoint of their travel, so that when you finally get the right one while you're testing the on/off switches, you'll know it. This, too, is not rocket science.

    You clearly have not seen the light controls in a local college I sometimes frequent.

    Medium sizes conference rooms, for about 80 students or so.

    The light switches are impossible to use. 2 x 4 switches plus some other buttons, all unlabelled, controlling two to three kinds of lights. All with quite a lag. Sometimes controlled from remote, with certain kinds of light turned off during bright daylight to conserve energy.

    The projector setup's also a mess - it's connected to a thingie with quite bunch a cables sticking out of it.

    Yes, it's possible to decipher something like that. But I'll be damned before I waste my time on this.

  • (cs)
    A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

    -Robert A. Heinlein

  • (cs) in reply to Exec
    Exec:
    Sorry it took so long to comment, I had to call an electrician, my keyboard didn't work.
    Boring meta-comment.
  • (cs) in reply to Patt O'Phil
    Patt O'Phil:
    I didn't know how to comment so i called the electrician.
    Boring meta-comment.
  • (cs) in reply to topcat_arg
    topcat_arg:
    I was about to make a comment, but I'm still waiting for the electrician to press the necessary key to submit this.
    Boring meta-comment.
  • (cs)

    A couple of people have brought this up, but I figure it bears repeating because I haven't said it yet. ;)

    Fundamentally, human knowledge is built upon shared experience. When faced with a situation that is not covered within your past experience - even if "common sense" allows you to figure it out quickly - it is a discontinuous event and you don't solve it as quickly as you would otherwise.

    The problem is that, as producers, we want something new and novel that sets our product apart, rather than bow to the established norms and conventions. This is why different laptop models from the same manufacturer - rhymes with bell use Fn-F4 or Fn-F8 to switch screens. Same thing with light switches - most people understand a light switch or a dimmer, but very few would expect both controls to control the same light device.

    Here is a real-world example that I ran into a few years ago. I traveled to London (UK) on business, and when I got to my hotel room the only light I could turn on was a desk lamp; the other lights refused to work. After poking around for a bit I noticed a box on the wall close to the light switches with a slot on top. It looked about the right size for my key card, so I stuck it in and... it charged my room for every porn movie in their catalog. Haha, no... All the lights came on. Chatting with the desk clerk later that day, apparently they get more calls to the front desk about that single problem than any other hotel issue.

    I bet to some readers this would be second nature, because you've seen it before. To a dog-tired traveler from halfway around the world, it could easily be a daunting problem.

    This is a little different from the "turning on the headlights" scenario, for a couple of reasons. First, the headlamp switch location in any given car will most likely be within about 12 inches of the headlamp switch location in any other given car. Second, it is clearly labeled as such using a fairly standardized symbol.

    A better example would be the four-way, or "hazard" lamps. Sometimes the switch is on top of the steering column, sometimes it is on the side, and sometimes it is somewhere on the dash. The symbol for this switch has only become fairly standardized within the past few years. And once I've found the control, do I push it, pull it, slide it?

  • Greg (unregistered) in reply to Elie

    "What happened to the other 2?"

    They got eaten. And there was much rejoicing.

  • Addison (unregistered) in reply to Mr B
    Mr B:
    A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

    -Robert A. Heinlein

    Cool. I have done all of those except conn a ship, design a building, set a bone, and die gallantly (though that's because I've never died). And I'm only 21.

  • (cs) in reply to dunno
    dunno:
    obediah:
    Yay, let's bash all the people that aren't competent and current in the minutia of our jobs and hobbies!
    Plugging a cable is not minutia. Stop advocating idiocy.
    I encourage everyone to take a second from gleefully bashing every CEO, professor, grandma, and general Luddite that can't hook up a projector or resolve other basic computer problems to consider 3 things:
    1. How many of you have every paid someone to change the oil in your car?
    I usually pay them every time, yes. Oh, you mean ever? Yeah. Changing oil in your car is all-in-all much more difficult than plugging a cable in, or flipping a switch, not to mention it takes much more time than any of those.
    I agree. It looks like obediah pays someone to operate the light switch every time he enters or leaves a room. Tell us obediah, do you pay someone to munch your food for you too?
  • (cs) in reply to WhiskeyJack
    WhiskeyJack:
    If I stick you in a room and you cannot figure out how to turn on the lights, then I must ...
    ...create a flash game: Escape the Conference Room.

    That's a good idea, actually.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to GalacticCowboy
    GalacticCowboy:
    Here is a real-world example that I ran into a few years ago. I traveled to London (UK) on business, and when I got to my hotel room the only light I could turn on was a desk lamp; the other lights refused to work. After poking around for a bit I noticed a box on the wall close to the light switches with a slot on top. It looked about the right size for my key card, so I stuck it in and... it charged my room for every porn movie in their catalog. Haha, no... All the lights came on. Chatting with the desk clerk later that day, apparently they get more calls to the front desk about that single problem than any other hotel issue.

    I've seen that it European hotels too. It's quite aggravating, and not immediately obvious (well it is to me now, because I've seen it before).

  • (cs) in reply to GalacticCowboy
    GalacticCowboy:
    Same thing with light switches - most people understand a light switch *or* a dimmer, but very few would expect both controls to control the same light device.

    I came home from work one day to find such a switch installed in our bathroom (my wife found it at the hardware store and installed it). It took me all of 2 seconds to figure out that the flip switch turned the light on and off and that the little slider thing controlled how much light would come out when the light was on. I am not an electrician, a lighting technician, or a genius - I am an ordinary person with common sense and basic problem solving and pattern recognition skills. The executives in the story clearly had none of those traits.

    And it turns out there's an excellent use case for such switches. We'd set the dimmer to a fairly low level at night, and turn off the switch. When someone (in particular our little kids) woke up in the middle of the night, he or she could flip the switch and get enough light to see by without being blinded. Very nice. One of these days I'll get around to getting one for the bathroom in the new house ...

  • (cs) in reply to Mr B
    Mr B:
    zoips:
    Mr B:
    So TRWTF was Scott then? Who managed to slime his way up the greasy management pole with no more clue than any of the other 12/14* people at the meeting.

    Congratulations!

    *delete as applicable when the submitter responds, defending his inaccurate story and apparent inability to turn on a light bulb. I'll have £5 at 7/2 that he claims he was playing "Devil's advocate" in order to submit a WTF.

    Seems more likely that the "electrician" is the one who submitted this WTF. Also, Scott is a prick, obviously, which is why he's mentioned specifically by the "electrician."

    The submitter is usually the one in bold. No reason to suspect otherwise.

    In soccer terms I believe he just scored an "own goal".

    He just figured that Alex the electrician would fix the story to read that Scott fixed all the problems and made the other 11/13 executives look like morons.

  • methinks (unregistered)

    I hope they had the foresight to entice the electrician away as new technology lead for their own company ;o)

  • (cs)
    It seems that most of the above commenters have never heard of usability:

    ...

    -Either the people in the room are not willing to be disturbed and the phone should be unplugged, or they are and the phone should ring normally. What is the purpose of a phone that rings silently ?

    It'll still work when you want to call someone else. Unplugging the phone disables it completely, then you have to find the plug and reconnect it before you can call out. I'd rather silence it and leave the cord in place.

    But it would be nice if the phone made it obvious whether its ringer was silenced or not, so you don't wait forever for a ring that never comes...

  • golddog (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    GalacticCowboy:
    Here is a real-world example that I ran into a few years ago. I traveled to London (UK) on business, and when I got to my hotel room the only light I could turn on was a desk lamp; the other lights refused to work. After poking around for a bit I noticed a box on the wall close to the light switches with a slot on top. It looked about the right size for my key card, so I stuck it in and... it charged my room for every porn movie in their catalog. Haha, no... All the lights came on. Chatting with the desk clerk later that day, apparently they get more calls to the front desk about that single problem than any other hotel issue.

    I've seen that it European hotels too. It's quite aggravating, and not immediately obvious (well it is to me now, because I've seen it before).

    I learned of that in Australia, and quite like the idea. From what I'm told, it's an energy-saving device; you can't leave the lights on in the room when you're out, because the key is required to give them power.

    I agree, that particular case is non-intuitive. I'm really confident that the meeting room didn't require that though.

  • IByte (unregistered) in reply to Mr B
    Mr B:
    A human being should be able to [...] fight efficiently, [...]
    -Robert A. Heinlein
    I guess the executives misheard that one. They appear to be masters at fighting efficiency.
  • (cs) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    Ah, but what if the phone isn't ringing because it's in "do not disturb" mode? When I was a consultant a number of years back we had a phone system where the command to toggle DND mode was some arcane key sequence like *-*-1-7-1. In cases like this, it really doesn't matter how smart you are or how many other phones you've seen. Unless you knew the magic incantation for this particular phone you'd have to call the receptionist over, who would fix it in about two seconds and make you look like an idiot.

    This is fair, but only because memorizing that code is not something you would reasonably expect the average person to know as part of their knowledge of "how to operate a telephone". On the other hand, I think it's reasonable to expect a businessperson to conclude "there's probably some code or setting to disable ringing". The thinking changes from "the phone must be broken" to "I need to ask someone what the code is".

    In this case I would also hope that a sticker or card or some other indicator would be posted near the phone with instructions. Also, an indicator light or broken dial tone or something should be in place to indicate that this mode is on.

    I worked at a telecom company that made fancy phones with nice LCD displays. It only took a minute to figure out how to navigate its menu options and turn features on/off through the menu interface.

  • disl (unregistered) in reply to cparker
    cparker:
    If you ever find yourself using words like "synergize" and "monetize" on your own in a serious discussion, or if you ever start thinking enterprise software written in Java coupled with at least a dozen buzzwords (Hello, IBM!) is a good idea, I have one word for you...

    RUN.

    But take the money first.

  • Fast Eddie (unregistered) in reply to SixNutz PhD (Slpstck)
    SixNutz PhD (Slpstck):
    Surprised:
    watching fish flop around on shore and marveling at their poor land-swimming skills

    those were the days, oh how we laughed. right up until poor Jimmy drowned. he assumed, reasonably enough, he could hold his breath longer than the fish. the fish tricked him though, it had an oxygen tank. Jimmy didn't.

    It's always funny till someone gets hurt.

  • Saccharissa (unregistered) in reply to vr602
    vr602:
    Boring meta-comment.

    Meta-boring meta-meta-comment.

  • (cs) in reply to golddog
    golddog:
    I learned of that in Australia, and quite like the idea. From what I'm told, it's an energy-saving device; you can't leave the lights on in the room when you're out, because the key is required to give them power.

    It's also a most excellent way to lock yourself out, since your key card isn't with the rest of your stuff...

  • PR (unregistered)

    I don't believe it. I say the story is BS.

  • (cs) in reply to GalacticCowboy
    GalacticCowboy:
    This is a little different from the "turning on the headlights" scenario, for a couple of reasons. First, the headlamp switch location in any given car will most likely be within about 12 inches of the headlamp switch location in any other given car. Second, it is clearly labeled as such using a fairly standardized symbol.

    A better example would be the four-way, or "hazard" lamps. Sometimes the switch is on top of the steering column, sometimes it is on the side, and sometimes it is somewhere on the dash. The symbol for this switch has only become fairly standardized within the past few years. And once I've found the control, do I push it, pull it, slide it?

    You, Sir, have clearly never driven an Alfa Romeo.

    Those in charge of Alfa Romeo instrumentation are, shall we say, inventive. Or maybe just a little insane. They'll put buttons for just about anything, just about anywhere. And you can't rely on the model number for guidance.

    I never used the full beam on my 146 T-Spark because, well, I only used it for trips of less than 20 miles over well-lit roads. One night I was pulled over by the Newbury police, who btw are very well-mannered, and asked why I'd been blinding them for the last two miles. "Could you dip your headlights, please?"

    Well, no, I couldn't. Damned if I knew where the dipper switch was (and no, there wasn't a dimmer switch either -- I could have switched the lights off altogether, but that's not really an option you want to offer the fuzz). They finally let me drive, very slowly, back home to the other side of town, where I promised to consider the problem at length. As I say, nice folk.

    I finally located the control. A big, unmarked, rectangular button. Right by the seat-belt, and I'd obviously nudged it whilst putting the belt on. Smart thinking by the designers, there.

    Do I recommend driving an Alfa Romeo now? Hell yes. I'm currently driving a Selespeed, which is described as a "semi-automatic." This means that it isn't an manual/stick shift, and it isn't an automatic. But the great thing, the really stupendously great thing, about this transmission is that, even though it isn't one thing or the other, it is in fact three kinds of neither one thing or the other.

    You can drive it in "City Mode," which is sorta automatic but not quite, or you can drive it by shifting up or down, which is sorta manual but not quite, or you can drive it using the paddles on the steering wheel, which is sorta Formula 1 but frankly not in a way that you'd notice unless you had severe brain-damage.

    It's a great car. It's stupid and stunningly beautiful. I'm told that most men hanker after marrying women like this, but I'm far more enlightened than them.

    Plus, I can't afford the alimony.

    Now, where's the sodding dimmer switch on the Alfa's individual seat-by-seat heating system? I think I'll just go check under the spare tire.

  • (cs)

    I wrote a comment which I wanted posted, but no matter how many times I previews it, the post was not actually added to the thread. Half an hour later the electrician arrived and assessed the problem. He pressed Submit, and the comment was posted.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Peter
    Peter:
    Stephen Gazard:
    I've seen a church with 2 foot high dimmable fluorescents in a church in Brockley about 2 years ago. Impressive things
    The church in Brockley had another church inside it? Yes, that is impressive .

    Yo dawg I heard u like praying so we put a church in your church...

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    As an aside: I went to a computer science conference a few years back and I was shocked by the same level of technical incompetence from some presenters who couldn't get projectors to work. I even sat through talks given with old acetate sheets and marker pens. So it's not just executives - academics are just as clueless.
    What matters is whether the presentation is good, not the medium. All Feynman needed was blackboard and some chalk. Then there was Fermi's wife, being shown a new laboratory named after her late (?) husband. When at the end of the tour they asked her what she thought of all that, she replied (I paraphrase): Well, this surely looks very nice, but all my husband ever needed was paper, pencil and an armchair.

    Have a look Feynman's lectures from 1979: http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8. No PowerPoint in sight, thank $DEITY.

    Alert: Those lectures are addictive. But, if you have a bad day and know nothing productive will get done, not all is lost. In about 7 hours or so you can watch all four of the lectures, and understand quite a bit about modern physics!

  • (cs) in reply to Tina
    Tina:
    This reminds me of something I deal with fairly frequently... I'm in grad school and the department recently invested $60k in a conference room. Fancy pants projector, video conference, interactive white boards, etc. No one in the department actually knows how to operate the system so whenever I've been in there after hours I get to watch people crowd around a laptop. Fantastic use of tuition money if you ask me.
    Seems to me like a lot of the faculty and students should be dismissed ASAP. Science is about finding pleasure in understanding things -- eventually you solve a problem that noone else solved before, and that's how new discoveries are made. Surely the people in said grad school lost what it takes to understand how things work. It doesn't really take an extreme intellectual effort to figure out how to run a darn projector. You just have to have the right approach.

    Maybe it was humanities department? They usually are as far removed from science as it goes :)

  • (cs) in reply to golddog
    Anon:
    GalacticCowboy:
    Here is a real-world example that I ran into a few years ago. I traveled to London (UK) on business, and when I got to my hotel room the only light I could turn on was a desk lamp; the other lights refused to work. After poking around for a bit I noticed a box on the wall close to the light switches with a slot on top. It looked about the right size for my key card, so I stuck it in and... it charged my room for every porn movie in their catalog. Haha, no... All the lights came on. Chatting with the desk clerk later that day, apparently they get more calls to the front desk about that single problem than any other hotel issue.
    I've seen that it European hotels too. It's quite aggravating, and not immediately obvious (well it is to me now, because I've seen it before).
    You'll also find it in most every modern hotel in Japan.
  • (cs) in reply to WW
    WW:
    I believe that anyone who is not capable of operating devices which are intended to be operated by non-specialist users, especially after having seem them operated by others, is in fact an idiot. If they are intentionally incapable of doing so because they feel competence is for peons, they're beneath contempt.
    You put it quite beautifully into words. Thank you. Goes into my quote file. (bolding mine)
  • (cs) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    This comment is the most sensible one I have seen on here in some time. I would like to expand on point #1: the amount of knowledge that we humans have is increasing at an exponential rate. It is simply not possible to be an expert in every field. I may be a good programmer, but I know nothing about engine repair, HVAC installation, or aircraft piloting, and I seriously doubt I could acquire the necessary knowledge and experience to do any of these things well in a few days.
    My prof had certainly repaired his cars, perhaps his engines too, he is a pilot, surely he could do basic HVAC calculations, he did write some software back in the days where FORTRAN on mainframes was popular, and he's still one heck of a great mechanical engineer. Oh, he also draws quite well. Surely he is not an expert in everything, but at least has a basic skillset in many fields. That's the difference between a dumb person and a bright one, IMHO.
    Experts in any field are worthy of our admiration and respect, regardless of whether or not they know how to properly hook up a laptop to an overhead projector.
    There is this popular misconception that problem solving skills are supposed to be limited to a particular field. I just don't buy that you'll make a good executive, who can solve real corporate problems, without being able to solve simple problems in "real life". Either you take pleasure in finding stuff out, or you don't. Can't have it both ways. If you abhor figuring our how a light switch works because it's supposedly beneath you, I see you driving a publicly traded company or two into the ground sometime in the future. Seeing all those highly paid "fix the damn projector" execs routinely driving their companies into the ground, I think I'm somewhat right.
  • (cs) in reply to WW
    WW:
    I believe that anyone who is not capable of operating devices which are intended to be operated by non-specialist users, especially after having seem them operated by others, is in fact an idiot. If they are intentionally incapable of doing so because they feel competence is for peons, they're beneath contempt.

    Ditto if they're intentionally incapable because they want to appear helpless or stupid. Not applicable in this story, but it shows up an awful lot in real life ...

  • (cs) in reply to Eternal Density
    Eternal Density:
    I wrote a comment which I wanted posted, but no matter how many times I previews it, the post was not actually added to the thread. Half an hour later the electrician arrived and assessed the problem. He pressed Submit, and the comment was posted.
    Boring meta-comment.
  • (cs) in reply to vr602
    vr602:
    Eternal Density:
    I wrote a comment which I wanted posted, but no matter how many times I previews it, the post was not actually added to the thread. Half an hour later the electrician arrived and assessed the problem. He pressed Submit, and the comment was posted.
    Boring meta-comment.
    Witty riposte!
  • James (unregistered)

    Sounds like TRWTF is that many of the things in the conference room that should have been clearly labeled, weren't. It happens around here too -- spaces that any given individual might visit once a year or less, are set up the same as those that are used by the same people on a regular basis. Granted, a lot of the other ones (calling the electrician to tell you your laptop wasn't plugged into the projector's video cable) are still just plain dumb.

  • (cs) in reply to Addison
    Addison:
    Mr B:
    A human being should be able to [ . . . ] plan an invasion, [ . . . ]
    -Robert A. Heinlein
    Cool. I have done all of those except conn a ship, design a building, set a bone, and die gallantly (though that's because I've never died). And I'm only 21.
    WoW does not count!
  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    ...it is our privilege, neigh obligation to reciprocate!
    What, are you a horse?

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