The most painfully complicated methods to do simple tasks?

That XKCD comic kind of reminds me of back when my best friend and I were roommates and roleplaying D&D in IRC together, and during the sessions I would actually communicate with him in /queries on the computer... instead of simply turning around, as our computers were in the same room, just facing opposite walls.

^ So? I do that quite often with my wife, while we're playing Minecraft, and back when we both played Star Wars Galaxies. Helped out a lot when she was recovering from dental surgery and couldn't talk properly.

He liked to pick on me mercilessly about it. Plus D&D isn't too intensive an activity to turn around during, unlike actiony games.

I'm not sure if this fits exactly in with the thread topic, but I can't believe I forgot to mention this before...I have seen a great many people who really didn't understand how search engines fundamentally work simply input questions into them. Google was of course not designed to magically be able to answer your questions, which is why vague search terms are always a better start. This was in years past...nowadays, I think you can put in simple/common questions and it can answer them, though I still don't do it.

I hadn't thought to type in questions like "how do I defragment my registry" into the search field until an IT friend of mine managed to get more or less what he was looking for doing pretty much just that. I tended to just input "defragment" and "registry", and mostly sttill search like that.

Related; I tend to email LMGTFY links to those who ask me to google stuff for them.

People who use sneakernet in lieu of a LAN, and then complain when the incorrect filesystem on the USB drive mangles their file, killkillkillkill.

I sometimes just Google questions. Some recent examples include "how much does a prostitute cost in Russia?" and "How much money does Sepp Blatter make?"

...and both of those were for posts in these fora. The former was in the thread about Harold Camping, when I wanted to find out how much hookers and blow he could get with $80 million (I picked Russia because it seemed obvious he'd flee somewhere, so I just picked a country at random.) The latter was to determine whether of not Sepp Blatter is rich (he makes at least £1 million a year, so he certainly is rich.)

I had one today. I was helping someone who had difficulty opening a PDF (the pdf file type had been associated with MS Word) so was remote controlling her workstation and could see what she was doing.

The PDF in question was a scanned image from their Multi-Function printer which scans to PDF and emails it to her. We got the PDF open and she then went to use Adobe Reader's internal "Send to email recipient" to send it to someone else.

I told her that she could have just forwarded the email she got from the scanner that already had the PDF in it and she got shitty with me and hung up.

Some people, it seems, prefer to do things the painfully complicated way.

It could be interesting to know what is their motivation for this and reveal the reason and mechanism behind this phenomenon.

Anyone got links about studies/articles? Or can anyone answer the question? Why can't people apply Occam's Razor?

There are some clients at my work who often send Word documents containing screenshots of their mail program containing screenshots of their computer problem.

I think it's linked to the first time they see something done: It burns itself in their mind, and if it was initially done in a clumsy way, they have a really hard time un-learning it.

edited 2nd Jun '11 3:42:16 AM by Medinoc

For some reason, my mom thinks that before you can close the browser, you have to go back, page by page, to your homepage, until hitting the "back" button doesn't take you anywhere any more.

Also, for some reason, she thinks that if you google something, and get no results, then you should just add a few more keywords, and then google again. I tried to explain to her countless times that that's not how google works, but she just doesn't listen.

Also, back when I was twelve, I asked my classmate a ridiculous question: "How many internets are there?" I was very disappointed when she said "One."

I'm sure no one showed her that method! In this case, the previous explanation doesn't hold water. It has to be some analogy/intuitive idea that occurred to her. It's completely illogical in the computer environment, but it has to come from somewhere...

In the case of having to go back to the home page by effectively retracing your steps mirrors real life where that's how you generally get back home when walking unless you're going around the block.

Or perhaps it's like rewinding a tape to the beginning before ejecting it.

What's a tape?

(Though I remember what a tape is, nothing common has worked like that for almost a solid decade.)

edited 3rd Jun '11 5:15:24 AM by Yej

We've had a camcorder with cassettes for quite some time, you know. Even in the digital era.

edited 3rd Jun '11 11:07:14 AM by Medinoc

I was thinking more of video tape than audio tape - and the stern warning label (most ours were large fluoro stickers with bold black writing) saying to rewind the tape before returning it to the rental outlet...

I remember reading a study once where people were asked to type numbers into a keyboard, and if they hit upon the right string of numbers (which could be any length) they'd get 10 cents. The winning string was simply '1'. But everyone thought up very long, convoluted strings that ended in 1 instead. (In a related study, pigeons did exactly the same thing to get birdseed, and the same results were found.)

"The winning string was simply '1'. But everyone thought up very long, convoluted strings that ended in 1 instead."

Can you give me an example of a convoluted string that ends in 1? I'm not sure I get this.

To be fair, the participants of the experiment couldn't have known that the task is simple. But I agree that they should've begin with the string 123456789 to test if the length is only one number or not...

This post was thumped by the Codfish in a Derby Hat

^^ Something like 3657839091, I presume.

It thought that too, thanks

Also bump, maybe someone else has a cool story...?

And another bump, maybe someone has an example now...

Pykrete: 2

The first is Awesome, but Impractical. The second is plain stupid

The other day, I got called out by my mom on my occasional habit of finding an establishment of Google Maps as a way to get its information (from the little business icon, if there is one) rather than by simply Googling it. Hey, I like maps!