Editing 763: Workaround

{{comic
| number    = 763
| date      = July 7, 2010
| title     = Workaround
| image     = workaround.png
| titletext = I once worked on a friend's dad's computer. He had the hard drive divided into six partitions, C: through J:, with a 'Documents' directory tree on each one. Each new file appeared to be saved to a partition at random. I knew enough not to ask.
}}

==Explanation==
A relative of [[Cueball]] is depicted, who explains how he goes about sending a {{w|YouTube}} video to someone. The relative appears to be a stereotypical 'non-computer person', perhaps the father or grandfather of Cueball. The relative explains how he first saves a web page and opens it in Microsoft Word, then uses the 'Share' feature in Word to generate an email that contains the web page reformatted as a Word document, then sends that email to a service that extracts YouTube videos. Perhaps this service would then email back a link to some extracted file on some server, and this link could in turn be copied and pasted in another email, which could finally be sent to the intended recipient. It's all very complicated.

The premise is that non-computer-literate people will find a clumsy, highly elaborate way of achieving some task on a computer. They will do this by stringing together the functions they stumble upon in the few software packages they have limited familiarity with, rather than taking a more sensible, straightforward route. In this case, a much faster and simpler route would be to copy the address of the YouTube video from the address bar in the browser, then paste the address in an email to the intended recipient.

The caption says that though [[Randall]] encourages his relatives to solve their computer problems on their own, by trial and error, he has to resist the urge of asking them the method they used. That method is likely to be unnecessarily complicated. Perhaps this complexity, inefficiency or illogicality will cause Randall to be exasperated, or perhaps Randall feels it is unwise to tell them why their method is inefficient because of the possibility of humiliating or upsetting them, especially after they have spent a long time experimenting to arrive at this suboptimal solution; it would be disrespectful to correct them. Or perhaps it would take too long to explain an alternative, even a much simpler one, because of the questions that it would lead to or because of the further misconceptions that would be exposed of which the relative should be disabused.

The title text just explains another example of a complicated and elaborate way of working that people who don't understand computers can create. {{w|Disk partitioning|Partition}}s on a hard drive are separately managed regions of storage. Partitions are usually used for recovery purposes or to load different operating systems. It seems that Randall's friend's dad has created 6 partitions for no real purpose, and files are arbitrarily being saved to a random partition.

==Transcript==
:[A relative stands at a computer terminal. Cueball stands behind him with his head in his hands, double-facepalming.]

:Relative: See, I've got a really good system: if I want to send a YouTube video to someone, I go to File → Save, then import the saved page into Word. Then I go to "Share this Document" and under "recipient" I put the email of this video extraction service...

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I'll often encourage relatives to try to solve computer problems themselves by trial and error. However, I've learned an important lesson: if they say they've solved their problem, ''never'' ask how.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]