Public schools and computers:

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

(Senior class)

A girl sits down next to me at a computer and opens IE.

In the address bar, she types "Winny the Pooh Bear pictures.com" ~ENTER~

The internet says: 404

She tries it yet again, different wording.

~Fails~

She gets frustrated, but another ghetto kid comes over to help her out from the same class.

"See, this what you do wrong..." and types in "www.Winiey the Poo Bear pictures.com"

Both are baffled by the 404 Error, yet keep trying.

Comments

[mathsnerd]

I'm crying so hard that I'm laughing too. Can't we just shoot them all?

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

in a very meager defense of the users in question, part of the problem is that they're accustomed to modern versions of IE trying very hard to find SOME goddamn thing that looks like they want no matter how retarded a string they put in the address bar. so they don't actually know that that behavior isn't okay.

I just typed "winnie the pooh bear pictures" into the address bar on IE7 and, surprise surprise, instantly got Google results. With three pictures of Pooh right on top of the page.

::helpless shrug:: blame microsoft.

edit: can't even put all the blame on microsoft - modern versions of Firefox do the same thing.

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

IE6, it was

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Sure. But you can't really expect random lusers to keep track of things like that. If they normally get away with that behavior, they aren't going to magically understand that it's wrong when they sit down in front of an older version of the browser.

It's like praising a puppy for shitting on the rug and then acting surprised when suddenly it shits on a different rug you put in the same spot.

[abstrak-tokatl.livejournal.com]

**cough** aol lUsers *cough*

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

It was a brand new school. After a month of kids defecating in their lockers and over radiators, the new school smelled like a sewage pump.

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

~See above comment about defecation~

[mathsnerd]

Shooting is too good for them. Can we re-create the Spanish Inquisition, please please please please please?

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

We prolly can, but most of them are illegal Mexican.

[gholam.livejournal.com]

And to think that some people that I've met are sure that working as a computer tech is a dead end, because in just a few years, everyone will be proficient enough not to need techs anymore...

[peace873.livejournal.com]

At that age, shouldn't they be looking for porn?

[mathsnerd]

That's okay. We'll manage somehow. After all, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! /monty python reference

[eldyn.livejournal.com]

And everyone will be able to perform brain surgery with instructions from the interwebs so we won't need doctors anymore either.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

One of my biggest gripes with Microsoft's "Do What I Should Have Meant" model of accepting user input .. it trains people to be even sloppier about their user input and makes it even harder to understand why some inputs get them what they want and some don't. Kind of reminds me of two dogs trying to sniff each other's uglies.

I used to wonder why people seemed to think it was perfectly normal to get random deluges of porn on their web browsers. I now realize that it's a natural consequence of "throw garbage at the machine and let the machine try to figure out what you wanted" user interface models ..

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

Note that UI's that make such heroic efforts to figure out what the user wanted also give no clues as to spelling, inasmuch as the majority of the search results hopefully contain the correct one. (Don't get me started on the increasingly poor spelling ability of most of the population these days.) Which removes yet another self-correcting feedback feature and moves yet another parameter into the "arbitrary machine behavior" category of figuring out how the thing works.

At least Safari and Firefox make it clear which of the two things you're actually doing when you enter text in one of the address bar fields -- there's an "address" field, that is strictly for URL's, and there's a "search" field, which is strictly for search strings. There are very compelling autodidactic UI design related reasons to do it that way. And MS has never seemed to figure that out ..

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

they are used to use Firefox :-)

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

At least Safari and Firefox make it clear which of the two things you're actually doing when you enter text in one of the address bar fields -- there's an "address" field, that is strictly for URL's, and there's a "search" field, which is strictly for search strings.

Can't speak for Safari, as I never use it (even on a Mac), but IE7 and Firefox both have separate search bars and address bars - and both return search results from the default search provider if you type a random phrase into the address bar.

[mix-hyenataur.livejournal.com]

I think they were as soon as they misspelled Pooh as Poo.

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

Most of the people I talk to every day type everything (be it URL or search term) into the Google or Yahoo bar. They think the address bar is for display purposes only...

[photosinensis.livejournal.com]

*turns black, grows a 'fro, acquires a handgun, and dons a black suit*

Google, motherfucker! Can you use it?

/Pulp Fiction

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

My mother in law had the opposite problem - if you sent her a URL in an HTML formatted email, instead of clicking it she'd type the URL into the search bar, and then you'd better hope that the url is the first hit for the url.

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

Time to register a new porn domain, I guess.

[soruk.livejournal.com]

Were they looking for graphical step-by-step instructions on how to defaecate in a locker and on a radiator?

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

Is this when we bring in the comfy chair? >:D

[mathsnerd]

Very well, if you insist....... ;-)