AIBU to think "Can't you find that out yourself" (Caution ranty)

[mirtzapine]

EG Type It In To Bloody Google.

Especially if they're using the internet.

I just read a thread here where someone asked a question about history and politics.

Why not just type the thread subject line into google/bing/duckduckgo/youtube/dogpile/wikipedia (whichever your preferred search engine is) and open some of the results and start to form an opinion. And then use that information to do deeper searches.

its not just here, in my professional capacity, the amount of IT staff (even the "Senior" ones), who don't know something and don't know even how to search for it.

Is it just plain laziness?

Is it a need to be spoonfed?

In the IT world there is stack exchange its a parent of a load of Q&A sites.

stackoverflow for programming, serverfault for system administration and superuser for user issues.

Any IT person worth their salt should use them, yet the amount of highly paid fuckwits I've encountered, who can't find the basics and expect an answer to be handed over.

Example.
Server Administrator of one of the top five Re-Insurance companies.

Me "Can you tell me the assigned IP address of xyz server?"
Him "Its a windows box, I dunno how to do that, I'm unix"
Me "Well its ifconfig on unix, windows its ipconfig"
Him "Oh! thats really similar"
Me "I didn't know we were running unix here? What flavour? Sun? Sco?"
Him "OH! we stopped being a unix house about 10 years ago and it was RHEL"
Me "Me Ten years ago? Haven't you been on a course, Read one of the Microsoft Press books or serverfaulted?"
I'm actually leafing through the Windows 2008 Server Admin books he has on his desk, while I'm saying that.
Him "Yeh! but I wasn't really interested serverfaulted whats that?
Me leaning over his keyboard typing in serverfault.com into his browser address bar. "That!".
Him, "oooh! that looks interesting I might bookmark that"
Me internally facepalming and thinking... no wonder finacial service firms get hacked all the time.

It often stuns me that people either can't RTFM or google the bloody answer.

I mean if the question was posed... what were your personal experiences of xyz historical event then I could understand wanting to mine the collective wisdom and experience of mumsnet.

Another example, What's Rhodesia?" is not the same as What's your experiences, feeling and opinions concerning Rhodesia_

Grrrr!!!! Gah!!!! Bloody Bloody . G-d!! I enjoyed that rant

Avery it's probably loneliness not attention seeking or laziness. People just want to start a conversation.

at the conversation in the OP! I use stackexchange all the time and computing's not even my job - switching from Windows to Debian on my home computer with no previous unix experience would have been a nightmare without it. It's one of the first sites that comes up if you search for anything remotely technical (at least for unix, not sure about Windows). And a server admin too!!

In general though I'd say it depends on the question - if you have no prior knowledge of the thing you're asking about it can be quite intimidatng just to google it. Computing/scientific stuff especially can seem like a string of meaningless gibberish, even when the person explaining thinks they're doing so at a simple level, just because there's such a massive disconnect between what someone in the field thinks of as 'basic' and what the average person knows (I've been on both sides of that!) In that case it's often easier to ask a 'real' person, whether that's on a forum or in RL, because you often need to explain over and over that no, you don't know what a command line/terminal/operating system is, you're looking at the desktop and can they please describe what the button looks like that you need to click on first Even non-technical things like historical/political situations can seem like they involve an overwhelming amount of detail that you might not know where to start with.

Obviously doesn't apply in the OP's example though!

mirtazapine do you mind if I ask what your job is by the way? Just curious

You've just stopped me from starting a fred in Geeky Stuff. I now know how to save documents written in LibreOffice so they can be opened in Microsoft Word. You've saved the geeks a job.

Corus your post reminded me of this story:

Question: If someone from the 1950's suddenly appeared, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today?

Answer: I posses a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers.

Callani there was a Reddit interview with Tim Berners Lee a couple of days ago when someone asked him something like "what do people use the internet for that you hadn't anticipated?"

His answer: "kittens".

Haha - it's so true. Everyone's just been a secret crazy cat lady until now...

I'm less fussed about people asking questions online (on FB and on forums) as it seems to be more about starting a conversation. BUT I am sick to the back teeth of the stupid work questions.

Today alone I have had the following conversations. With the same person.

Him: do you have an electronic copy of x document (document not related to my role at all. There is no reason I would ever need it or have it or want it).
Me: nope, sorry.
Him: well I don't know what to do then. It's too late to post.
Me: scan it?
Him: I don't know how to do that.
Me: put it in the scanner and press scan.
Him: I'm not good with computers. Can you do it for me?
Me: Um, you literally just put it in the scanner and press scan. I'll show you.

Him half an hour later: I've got another thing to, you know (making sweepy side to side gestures), put on my email.
Me: scan?
Him: yes! Can you do it for me?
Me:

LATER

Him: someone's coming to drop x off for Mrs Y, what if someone else wants to drop something off tomorrow (deadline for 'things' is tomorrow).
Me: put it in her tray? (office practice for all things dropped off)
Him: Oh, but is she in tomorrow? She might not get it if she isn't in?
Me: I don't know, why don't you look in her diary. Or call her and ask?
Him: Oh, I never think to do that.

Me: DO YOU EVER FUCKING THINK AT ALL?!

I just don't understand how people can manage to have facebook, text message their friends and family and STILL not get basic concepts such as 'save' v's 'save as' and how to scan a fucking piece of paper with a fucking desktop scanner.

TheGirlWhoKickedTheVipersNest Professional SAH-D, lowly paid, highly technical and not without its pitfalls that all SAH/M-D's have.

I was in the same building as TBL in the early 90's, as the company I was working for was installing Frame Relay Matrix... yes it was called Matrix. And I guess ultimately it has taken over the (western) world

HopALongOn... That was pure lazy-arsed fuckwittery on a grand scale.

Sounds like he thinks you're his bloody secretary, hopalong. I'd put an end to that bugger!

i agree!!!!! i think some people are just more bored than the most bored person ever/like the make some noise (here?!??!?!)/like the attention of people answering them/are dimwits.

i know someone on facebook who witters on incessantly about how skint she is. i've started answering her with job vacancies in her area. suddenly she's posting less.

bubblegoose I chose that particular example, because it was about a highly paid technical person, who in his stupidity tried to fob off another technical person with absolute and utter shit, and then showed himself to be pitifully unaware of:

A. the books on his desk about the subject matter,
B. the online resources regarding the subject matter
and
C. well... I'll let people invent a C. Just realised that could be massively misinterpreted.

I have made myself look Very Clever on many occasions with my superior Googling Skillz. Therefore YABU.

Hang on - was he a windows admin or a unix admin? Every where I have ever worked they are separate and very few people do both.

Having said that, I came through the unix route but nowadays work in mixed environments so I would know how to find the IP address on any OS and if I didn't would simply type "how do you find the IP address of an X server" into google as we were speaking.

If he is being paid to be a windows SA and doesn't know ipconfig then he should be executed immediately.

trouble with google is it doesnt answer very important questions such as:
"where is that ambulance going?"
"who is that man?"
and other excellent questions posed by 6 year olds….
—possibly misses point of thread--

AgaPanthers then your not the cause of my original post, rather you are shining example to people, who if only would Google. Definitely, not on my rant list

Forago opening a terminal and typing ifconfig was a tough call for him too... When you need a Windows answer, he was unix when you needed a unix answer he was Windows.... Luckily, for me all he had to do was type in the commands or follow my carefully worded instructions with screenshots.

The best one though, I've just remembered was when I was in a meeting with highly paid external third party consultant, who was busily telling the management team that X could NOT be done and if they wanted to have something similar they would have to go away and cost it.

I chimed in with have you read X book from Microsoft press, chapter 7 tells you how to do it... here its in kindle on my phone, take a look, would you like me to ISBN for the book? Yes I know no-one like a smart-arse, but a £30 odd book, someone who can read and follow the steps, would have saved the business a few million.

No not all mirtzapine, my point is if other people would learn to Google, it would put me out of a job. And that's not a good thing.

Be glad that other people are clueless. It makes you look better.

kelper give it 3 or 4 years and Siri will be able to answer that for you. OCR for the ambulance number plate, GPS for your location, Locations of nearest hospitals.

As for who is that man, a bit of facial recognition software, a 4/5G connection, to quickly upload the image and you'll have your answer.

Forago I have also worked with a guru who typed in what's my IP into google, and handed out to people.

Now any of you can try this experiment type whats my IP into google and it does indeed give you an IP address, but note the word public if you try it. Thats the IP address assigned to your router/modem by you ISP (Sky/Virgin/TalkTalk/Bulldog). Not the actual local ip address of your pc on the local network.

mirtzapine that is both worrying and useful to know!