Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine
arstechnica.com
Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine::Google accused DOJ of aiming to force people to use “inferior” search products.
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So we have two options:
A 52 year old federal judge is somehow tech illiterate in a way that would imply they have absolutely no idea about the fundamentals of modern technology.
A federal judge is asking a large number of extremely basic questions to get their answers on official records so that the cases parameters are clearly defined. He is taking extra care because there's not a lot of direct precedent on these issues.
I'm heavily leaning towards number 2 here. The internet likes to pretend everyone over the age of 40 has no idea how a computer works. The year is 2023. A middle-aged person today was fairly young when computers started to be incorporated into all aspects of society and is well versed in computer literacy. In some ways they are actually much more tech literate than the younger generations. It's almost certain that he knows the difference between Firefox and Google.
I'm a 53 year old IT person, and I'm leaning towards 1. The level of technology incompetence in the general public is astounding. My wife only knows "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?" And that pretty much makes her a member of the help desk at her job.
My mom uses a computer at her job but confuses the terms computer, internet, browser and email on a regular basis. I wonder what would happen if I restarted the internet as she tells me to sometimes. I could install Linux and she wouldn't tell.
Still better than her father, who had her operate a casette player for him when she was 2.
I always cringe in horror as both my parents still double click links on the internet.
Mine are not that old but they absolutely need access to assistance every day. Mom cannot turn the computer off if anything other than “Shutdown” was previously chosen in that awful Windows dialog. Dad fell for a basic “unclaimed delivery” phishing email even though he found it in the Spam folder that has an explicit warning. Fortunately, his gut told him something was fishy and he told me right away, and we suspended his card before it was abused.
What's wrong with double click?
On a link? Everything.
I still don't understand. IIRC, it's click once to select, click twice to open. Why should hyperlinks be different?
Or maybe you mean machine gun clicking until the page loads, that's, eh, wrong, yes.
Links only need single clicks. Always have.
Icons on the desktop, or files in a listview need a double click to open, because single clicking just selects them.
Unless you are using something with modern UI, in that case even folders are single click to open.
I think it is the idea of clicking some random link on the internet and not the act of double clicking itself. It caught me for a second too.
Boy, do I understand the cringe.
I always described these users as "unable to distinguish between an icon an a button". Modern Windows UIs don't make it easier, though.
Works with grandparents. They don't even suspect they have Gentoo on their computer.
The law is nuanced out the ass. I sit through depositions every day, and terms of art are a plague, and you can say something, but it can be interpreted differently because in such and such a field it's a term of art, etc. That's my hope.
I am fully on board with we need more judges, we need younger judges. But I don't think that's because they're incapable of learning. In fact, I think there's be value to someone going in blind, being given all the facts, and making their determination that way. It just sucks that something we value so highly can be determined based on the presentation of counsel.
It's always amazed me of the learning gap.. we learned how to get stuff working by hacking config.sys and our peers can it seems barely spell computer.
It's even worse as people get younger, even though it shouldn't be. How computers work should be in peoples DNA by now, but they still think you've deleted IE if you hide the icon..
Next step: "Is it even powered?"
To be Dennis Ritchie was born in 40-ies. He would be 80 y.o. if he didn't die in 2013. And he is most literate person on this planet.
Agreed. If it has a positive effect as in 2, I'm all for it, but trusting that a non-technical user really know what's going on with his computer is a serious gamble.
Honestly same. The passage of time is weird
People think 52 is like super old.. but really that's just Gen X
Hell you really wanna know how warped our perception of time is?
Most people think 20 years ago Mario was an 8bit platformer that revitalized interest in video games after Atari killed the medium with oversaturation and nonexistent quality control.
What was Mario 20 years ago? An aging mascot with a divisive summer themed pollution game that I loved but others seemed to hate, on a console that only did well with diehard fans... 20 years ago Nintendo wasn't the big man on campus, that was Sony with the PS2 despite it being weaker than GCN and Xbox.
Currently playing through Super Mario Sunshine. Looks pretty decent with HD textures.
Dude SMS was such a great game, big part of my childhood. I loved Luigi's Mansion, too.
I was very disappointed with Luigi's Mansion sequels. I like that the original Luigi's Mansion was able to have a genuinely haunting atmosphere, that still managed to feel in place with the Mario universe. I was disappointed that portrait ghosts never really made a return, and that our ghosts were downgraded from actually scary premises like a baby that can warp dimensions to generic cartoon antics. Like this really was baby's first horror game. A Fatal Frame for the kiddos, or is it more accurate to say that Fatal Frame is Luigi's Mansion for the non kiddos? I think Fatal Frame came after Luigi's Mansion
Luigi's Mansion 3 is especially bad with this because although I do like the main villain a lot, most of the ghosts you see are just the standard blue one again and again, you don't have the rich variety that even Dark Moon pulled off. And oh boy did I love the ghosts of shy guys in the first game.
Kinda lost me with Mario
I agree, none of that comparison made sense. It relies too much on prior knowledge/association.
Lemme break it down then..
Most people, if asked what a Mario game, one of the most iconic and best selling franchises in gaming history... beaten out only by Pokemon (owned by the same company) was like 20 years ago, they'd describe this - https://youtu.be/7qirrV8w5SQ
When in reality, Mario 20 years ago, was this - https://youtu.be/WIHFSgPv3Ak
This is due to how bad of a perception of time we as humans seem to have... It works for other things
20 years ago "Ah yeah that's when we were using floppy disks right?"
Heck my brother's a pretty sharp guy, but at one point he seemed to think my dad's generation grew up with black and white silent films, and not... Friday the 13th or Ghostbusters
Well, in the 1970/1980 there actually were still a lot of black and white movies on TV. "The Streets of San Francisco" "Kojak" "Dragnet" not to mention the endless reruns of Stan and Laurel.
For reruns in Argentina, nothing beats Disney's Zorro. It's a full-on revered classic here.
Wow, I remember that one too from my child hood. The German TV played it once, the Austrian TV played it like over and over again. Don't ask me why but the Austrian TV was always miles better than the German TV. Living close to the border allowed us to watch both, sometimes even the Swiss TV which was usually attrocious.
Well you got me there, plus when my dad does like to watch Mash, it says go to when he I just want some noise. Which I can understand, I usually have a let's play of some game going. My grandmother has a recording of rain, I have a recording of the Blair Witch volume 1 Ruston Park going. And know that he's not what the character is called, speech to text is being a bastard and I can't use my hands right now
Wow, I'd never come across super Mario sunshine before - cheers!
In the 1990s if you wanted to play a PC game you had install it manually with a CD, typically configure ini files in a text editor and fix irq requests for your peripherals just to play. In the contemporary world a zoomer only needs to tap the install icon on the screen, Gen Z may have more experience usually technology than any previous generation, but the days of asking grandma to fix your computer seem a certainty on the horizon.
Yep, the digital illiteracy of the z gen is terrifying. Apparently contemporary teens have no understanding of the folder structure. Like, at all. Of the concept of files having their location. It's all because they were brought up with iPhones for everything just is, and iCloud where everything just is.
Maybe they imagine tag-based filesystem or content-addressed?
Like porn sites.apparently they imagine a huge dump of stuffs which just exists
I met numerous 20- and 30- somethings in the 90s who had no idea either. When asked why they didn't know where did they save the documents they "lost", they usually answered that they hadn't studied Computer Sciences and therefore they didn't have any reason to know (!).
Appelations to learn to use better their tools usually got nowhere.
It's a bit like how cars used to be really unreliable but easy to work on so a lot of people learned to fix some basic things, but now it's more complicated and difficult to fix anything so even a lot of handy people don't bother.
To be fair a lot of things are as easy or easier, but vendor will never let you use diagnostic software
It’s easier to build a PC in 2023 than it was in 1993. Modern motherboard’s typically don’t require separate cards for sound, network and video (unless you’re gaming). It’s mostly integrated now and you don’t need hours manually manipulating jumpers and trying to affix terribly designed IDE cables now replaced with SATA. I’d much rather work on repairing my modern PC vs trying to troubleshoot a Compaq 486 20+ years ago.
Ide? Sata? M.2 baybeeee
I work as a website developer and I think number one is so, so much more likely. The average person barely knows how to use a computer at all, let alone how it works and different terminology.
An older, non-IT person - an actual judge, yeah I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt here - they likely don't know lol
Not sure why "old+judge" automatically equals "tech illiterate." The judge in another high-profile Google case taught himself to code
The article you link says the judge already knew how to code beforehand.
Yes, because he taught himself.
It's because these things work by probabilities. Generally when you think of older people who aren't working as IT professionals, you wouldn't expect them to be great with computers - and you'd probably be right.
Do you really think that a judge that taught himself to code would be common-place and would be the norm? That judge is awesome, but he is very clearly an outlier lol
Knowing how to code doesn't mean you know the difference between a search engine and a web browser.
I have soon a PhD in computer tech related subject, program for living, and am a lot younger than the judge, and if you ask me if Mozilla makes a search engine I would say I have no idea, they've made a lot of stuff. And if you asked me how Google's SEM tools work I would ask wtf is SEM.