Roy Schestowitz

Some academic staff are strongly offended whenever they received junk mail that Has some sexual content. Guys who receive mail about Viagra think it is directed personally at them and express their concerns aloud.

Most people do not know how to reply the simple question: what operating system do you use? Most are unaware of the fact that something apart from Window$ does exist on planer earth.

The ones who can do so like to introduce themselves as doctors or professors. Evidently, it is expected that it hall have an effect on the way support proceeds. However, I find that more prominent people are more polite, humourous and comfortable to interact with.

Retired academic staff sometimes like to call excessively, possibly for companionship. Once I had a call from a retired individual who finally took my advice to connect the monitor to his desktop (physically) in order for it to function. He called to inform me that the monitor works and that he is looking forward to installing Micro$oft Office the following day. Why I should care what he installs on his computer is beyond my comprehension.

Some people are surprised to be unable to connect to the Internet when they have not even acquired an Ethernet card. Some even mistakenly connect a telephone cord to an Ethernet (CAT5) socket or complain that their Ethernet cable does not fit in the wall or their machine.

People have misconceptions regarding how the Internet works or how it can be used properly. Some will invariantly consider the University Web site to be the home of all resources and some use MSN simply because it was the default homepage of Internet Explorer from the very start.

The large majority of people are intimidated by viruses. Some people think it is a physical entity that crawls inside the box. Admittedly, I thought so too until I was about 7. From what I was told many years ago, the term 'bug' goes many decades ago when room-sized computers were affected by organisms such as bugs and resulted in faulty operation.

People are reluctant to have private information on their computer because of intrusion woes. Almost none can realise that paper is far less secure. Even those who are dependent on IT for their academic practice know very little about security, but they all like to repeat again and again one word they know - 'firewall'.