*sigh*

[shadesong]

Does anyone else see anything slightly amiss with the fact that I just had to help a computer science professor figure out how to save and print an incompatible document?

Comments

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

I used to do that all the time. I worked in (and hung out at) a computer lab at school. My favorite CSCI professor only used MACs. He didn't know his way that well around a PC, but if you need a number translated into hex right away, he's your man!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Profs are among the most likely people in the world to understand extremely complex issues but not remember how to do simple things. I remember correcting my freshman chem prof, an obviously brilliant nuclear chemist, on simple equation balancing.

[fiddledragon]

*chuckle* I used to be the absolute wiz at any word processing or spreadsheet software...Now, I get lost in both...the more into *writing* software I get - and systems design, etc, the more I forget the easy stuff...bah...

[mightywombat.livejournal.com]

A Comp Sci degree has a Math prereq, does it not? *grin*

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Not always. We @gatech only had to take two math classes other than the core Calculas (the "as" bit is a Tech thingy... see, there were these two Tech freshmen, Smartas and... :) .... that was Boolean Algebra and Probably Sadis... err, Probablility and Statistics.

My sister the Psych major (Tennessee) about turned green when she saw that even the (Applied) Psych majors at Tech hadda take the requisite five quarters of Calculus.... only the Manglement types could get away without it, and they weren't held in very high regard.

Re:

[mightywombat.livejournal.com]

Yeah... Psych at an engineering school is just scary. It's less how to analyze and treat a patient, and more how to wipe and reprogram a subject...

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Actually, ours was neither. My prof was part time; his day job was as an ergonomicist at Lockheed Martin. The idea was to figure out from a psychological point of view what made the most sense when designing the controls on a fighter aircraft. A very simple example would be the layout of the keys on a telephone touchpad. It seems that Bell Labs (back when there was such a thing) spent a whole lot of time and money verifying that the three-by-four layout, with 1 at the top and 0 at the bottom center, actually made the most sense and was least confusing to the average Joe. (Despite the fact that people had been doing ten-key with 1 at the bottom and 9 at the top for years.)

Something else I noticed was on the X-Box. The standard layout for the controls is that when you push forward on the joystick, your character goes up. But there is an option called "inverted" where that when you push forward, your character goes *down*, because that's what all the flight sim folks are used to. Needless to say, skydancer, pilot of many years, sets his controls to "inverted".... :) Not so much programming the subject, as programming his *environment* to make sense to him. Which I think is a laudable thing to do.

[ex-ilk.livejournal.com]

Happens all the time. Sometimes, paper is just paper.

[martinhesselius.livejournal.com]

LOL!
I wish things like that it were more rare, but they're not.
I sometimes help lawyers with state laws and regulations.
::Grin::

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

I was working in the CS lab. PPP was pretty new, and we had just set up a departmental dial in server to provide PPP for students and faculty. Cutting edge. One of the professors heard about this and came down to our office and demanded his PPP account information be set up this instant. Then he needed to know how to use it. When we explained that he had to set it up on his home machine he was furious. He wanted to set it up on his office machine.