Computer Challenged

Millions of us. Why do you think that Bill Gates is able to fool us into thinking the next one will be better, over and over and overandoverandoverandover.............

Well, I don't understand women. Does that count?

No, cuz the younger generation doesn't either!

I still have no concept of all of this texting, tweeting, etc. Never will.

What is a "Hopper"?

One who hops.

maybe this?

Boot up old dude....

http://sclick.net/category/best-gadgets-2

Be glad you don't. In the long run, you will have greater peace-of-mind...

As said earlier, there are millions who are not computer user friendly. Even my Dad does face a problem, although it is much better now..The need to use computers for daily work was not something that was done during the pre WWII, but as time progressed people started to ditch the pen and book and started using application in the computer.

I listen to "The Tech Guy" which is broadcast in the u.s. but is also available for free download. Its an entertaining way of slowly picking up whats going on in the computer world and finding out what goes on in other peoples minds regarding tech.

I know stuff....

Thanks for making me feel less stupid. My greatest computer feat to date has been to learn Autocad. I had to learn it on my job, but after years of working with it, I can do things with it that I could never do with pencil and paper. Maybe there are still a few "sparks" left in my brain.

The sparks only start to die when you stop feeding them ;)

I think you should get an iPad Mini or a Nexus 7 and just dick around with it. But not in public, cause someone might grab it. I think you might want to look inside you and see what you want to do in terms of info retrieval from the world. It's all out there and easy to find if you learn how to google, which means typing in keywords and plowing through the results. Practice makes perfect. I don't really know much about computers, but perhaps a lot about finding information I want from real life. I switched from PC to MAC because I was so tired of being forced to pay attention to the guts. It's like cars: I want them to take me places, not bug me for attention. What do you want?

Dont take it so hard. Every day I learn something on the computer that makes me feel like I should have known. The average third grader has me beat by a mile. Life goes on......

There is definitely a balance between staying current enough with technology and knowing how to function without it. How many younger people could read a map if needed?

With GPS, it's no longer necessary for anyone to have to read a map.

I'll take the map any day. It doesn't require a battery, and it's pretty much self-contained. All you need is a compass, or a way to find north. No outside help needed.

I am in a car club in which we often do quiet substantial trips across the country side and EVERY time the navigation of the trip has been left to someone using a GPS device we have got lost or at best taken a rediculous route.

10 minutes looking at a map and planing the journey resulted in an efficient pleasent journey!

When my older sister first got a color TV, she couldn't adjust the controls, but her 5 year old daughter could. Anyway, Ron, at your age you'd forget it next week if you knew it now, so just enjoy life.

Not quite the same boat. Now I feel like I know enough to really screw things up. I did just recently change a hard drive. Took me 3 days to figure out the best way to copy the old drive content to the new one because I didn't know enough about what I was doing.

When I started my engineering career computer use was still fairly new, and at least with PCs you had to be more knowledgeable as an individual user then than now. We had to fix our own problems a lot when I first started working with a desktop PC, but they were less complex. The new tech is so pervasive now, and so complex, that expert service is almost a requirement so more of it is available. Luckily, the devices are more like appliances than they used to be.

I think you are judging yourself with the wrong yardstick.

I progressed through the last 30 years starting out on special purpose and general purpose computers and mainframes (PDP, VAX, SDP's, UYK's, Sun's, etc.). As we slowly progressed to PC-based Commercial Off-The-Shelf processing, relying on less hardware and more software, the old ways of doing business were lost.

But the basis of the "how" still hasn't changed for me. Fourier transforms are still just mathematical formulae, and process/task management has just been condensed so the user can sit in one place for hours on end without moving except for arm and hand movements.

...

If you can still grow your own food; disassemble, clean, reassemble and hunt with your own gun; catch, clean and prepare your own fish; design, build and inhabit your own abode; you are way up on the current generations. They seem to rely too much on technology rather than mastering basic life skills...and learning how to "live".

Just know that you accomplished the levels in your life with the tools that you acquired, and it was enough.

Ronseto,

I use them every day and hate them also. They are tools, but to some they have become crutches or even their "God". How many 20 or 30 y/o people can figure the change due when you purchase something and give the person a bill, then after they enter it into the register you add enough coins to make the change into a simpler or different amount? Not very many, unfortunately--to them it is a crutch or worse.

I have to remind myself that computers are very fast but very stupid. They will try to do exactly what they have been programmed to do, even if it is illogical, nonsensical, or even dangerous. A simple example is the spell-checker in a word-processing program, that changes a perfectly proper unexpected word into a recognized one. Try, for example "contactor" (a heavy duty type of relay) and see it change into "contractor".

When the early Apple IIC came out, I remember looking carefully at its fairly basic link between the keyboard and the monitor, and finding how the typed characters were echoed onto the monitor. I also noticed that almost everybody would be looking at the keyboard while typing and occasionally glance at the monitor to see how it came out. I then wrote a program that separated the two and echoed onto the monitor a simple ditty about the computer, one character for each keystroke. It also kept track of what the person typed. Invariably, the person would look up and be surprised, then start looking at the monitor as each character was typed, and then realize this was a humorous ditty and keep typing (often nonsense). The program ended by asking "Why did you type " and then echo the entire text the person had typed. Lots of laughs, but insightful.

We all-too-often forget or ignore the limits computers have. Hence the experience of one person who was very good with the abacus and realized, in a challenge with a calculator user, that the calculator had a limit in size of numbers being used. After recognizing this limit, the calculator failed at every problem because the numbers chosen were too big for the calculator's program/memory. I was in a 1968 university computer center and watched the main frame's operator groan when the idiot lights and warning sounds indicated a program was encountering digital underflow because the perfectly valid calculation grouped all the division steps before all the multiplication steps in the equation, so the intermediate values were less than the smallest floating point number. The program's user didn't have a clue that the answers to a perfectly valid equation were invalid simply because the program or programmer didn't check for keeping the numbers within an acceptable range.

Similar problems exist when a program expects entry of a number and gets other characters. If it doesn't have the ability to test the entry and blindly attempts to work with the entered "data" havoc can ensue.

Today, I worry about those who rely on "the cloud" for their computing. I don't trust it to be available when needed or to be secure.

--John M.

I suspect you are so correct with your last comment. I wonder what circumstances would cause the whole internet to fail. On the face of it it seems the sort of thing that could happen. Massive EMP? Solar storm?

Herein lies the hitch...

It wouldn't take the entire Internet to fail...just the loss of access for you or me. If one cannot even access the Internet, then one cannot get to the data which is backed up.

A localized incident or massive loss of AP's for any region would be catastrophic for those affected.

When looking for a job these days, companies want people with computer skills over work experience. I guess they figure an experienced person would demand more money and they can get someone just out of college, dirt cheap. A few companies do hire based on experience, but not enough. If I were to look for a job today at 78, they would laugh at me. I do miss working and I think I still have something of value to offer. What I lack in speed, I make up with knowledge. Like so many, we have a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips that the newbies don't have. They are still at the bottom of the learning curve.

"What I lack in speed, I make up with knowledge."

This applies even to the more recently educated: I took 21 years out before heading to Uni and obtaining a degree. During the first year, I had to learn how to use a computer as I had not done so before. One of the first modules involved using the main MS programs: Word, Excel & Access.

Those who came straight from school could type much faster than I can even now, but they did not take the time to learn the tricks that make life easier - headings, page breaks, grouping images/textboxes, etc. By the end of first year, I was showing students doing their final dissertations how to make life less stressful.

The problem I see with the younger generation (and many of my own age group) is that they think(?) they know enough, but are getting just a quarter of the way up the learning curve.

Your feeling of being challenged is, to a large degree, important to you because you have grand kids that you care about, who are immersed in this technological world; otherwise you probably wouldn't feel the disconnect so much.

I had to laugh a bit the first time a young person where I work seemed lost in dealing with a "DOS" command prompt. I guess most generations look on the succeeding one as having lost touch with "important" skills. I wouldn't trade your skills for the ones you think you lack.

The disconnect for me is almost across the board. I am sufficiently technological and hate cell phones. I don't Tweet, Twitter, or compile "Friends." I don't particularly care for most of what passes for humor on TV these days... nor all the movie remakes (and the fact that too many movies are just extensions of video games)... nor the advertising... nor, the ultimate superficiality of it all.

If they are, or become, wise, your grand kids will one day feel very fortunate that they had a Grandpa like you. I hope it is still true that Grandpas can get a more open hearing as opposed to parents.

Not only that, but taking the time to walk through instructions will teach you plenty - and that skill alone is well worth passing to the youngsters. Too many just go out and buy another, rather than repairing what is not operating correctly.

The next generation may be able to operate the equipment faster, but can they do it better? There are many things that are much easier with a bit of forward planning: Few manage that, and end up with more to do, so their speed is no longer an asset!

The next generation may look back at us and say "Keyboard , mouse" really?

And we can smile back, plug them in, and work out why their touch-screen is not responding.

The first computers used complex program languages like Fortran and Cobol to interact with the computer code. They were designed by engineers for engineers. C, C+ and Basic were developed for technical and science applications and are still in use. Later, Apple, DOS, Windows, Mac, etc. came into the business as interphases between computer code and human user. These languages have been designed by young guys, using youth logic. That's why the kids find the current language very logical, intuitive and easy for them to use. Older persons think differently and many of us try to adapt the instructions to our original way of thinking when we were trying to understand those complex languages.

Oh, Lord! Don't make me go back and reprogram the 4k micro-memory again...just so I can chip-and-pin the memory module to the faulty NTDS channel!

That could only be done through the maintenance panel...fugeddabout a keyboard!

I really do miss those days, though.

I stopped watching TV more than 20 years ago. When people ask me why I tell them I know all the theme songs from shows in the 1960s by heart, as well as the commercials. And I found out there is much more to this world that is real and in some cases entertaining, and now find I have no time to sit still and concentrate on fiction. To clutter up your mind with hollywood fantasy makes no sense to me, no matter how popular. Our younger generation would be much better off if instead of video games they had some way to learn of the experiences of older family members. As things stand now in our hectic society where would you find the time to share such things and how could you possibly interest the younger minds in what you have to say? Until the last few years I could not understand why we let the media present such a distorted view of reality to children, but I finally realized that they are shaping the minds of young people to grow them into what the media percieves to be good citizens of our throw away society, citizens who trust the media to tell them how they should live, what to buy, and how to become good workers that are forever in debt and making payments. If computers evolve into this type of media sponsored mind control all is lost. Thats why these forums are such a wonderful thing, everyone can add their own ideas without censorship and we can all learn from each other, and at the same time we dont have to conform to anybodys model of good citizenship.

I think the best we can hope for is the computers to become less of a crutch, and more of a tool, so that people can exist with them without becoming addicted to them. And we must figure out a way to keep the government and/or the media from using our computers against us. Am I making any sense here?

One more thing, my freind Wolf came by the other day. His father is 104 years old. His dad said to him "Son, I am robbing the cradle." Wolf replied "How old is she dad?" Dad says "She is 78"