Re: time sync? time servers give wrong time



On Sat, 15 Mar 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<slrnftm9i8.2oh.keeling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, s. keeling wrote:

"Sir, pack up your computer and take it back to the people you bought
it from."

"Okay, what do I tell them?"

"That you're too stupid to own a computer."


[stolen from a classic true story WP support call.]

That's all to true. A lot of people are using (and worse, running)
computers and have absolutely no idea what it is doing, never mind how
it is doing what it is. Some of the problem is the modern concept of
"you don't need to know - I'll set things up do that they work". Of
course, if the user needs to do anything other than click on one icon,
then the user is out of luck.

In the early 1980s, IBM had a series of television advertisements that
featured a mime dressed up as Charlie Chaplin. In one ad, he's prancing
around a PC in his "hat" shop, and Oh, this PC is going to make him a
lot of money because it will help him make business decisions. (It had
better do so - the IBM PC with CGA display they showed was ~US$2500
without application software). He leans over, presses ONE key (must
have been the 'Enter' key), and the display takes ~10 seconds to draw
some 'pie chart' on the screen. Where did the data come from? What
did it mean? What application was that? (It was a Basic demo program
called 'piechart.bas' or similar). But WOW, this computer is easy
to use!!! (I often state that some users shouldn't be using anything
as complicated as a digital watch, never mind a computer.)

Old guy
.



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