Grich

I totally agree Ooble.
I have an interesting store about someone who is clueless about how hard some software is to make:
I work two jobs, one is at a retail story, selling clothes etc. But I sometimes get put into the electronics section, selling laptops, printers and all that. One day a person walks in asking about the Eee PC from Asus, a linux operating system laptop for under $500 Australian Dollars. This is the conversation with the guy:
Customer: "I'm just interested in the Asus Eee PC"
Me: "Oh yes:" + add company propaganda here.
Customer: "Cool, can you but XP onto it?"
Me: "No, there is a version of XP you can put on it, but it's a hack" (Later that month an offical version came out)
Customer: [pretending to look smart] "Oh, I can hack, you just change the settings on the computer"
Me: [stund] "I think you would have to emulate the system for that."
Customer: "Oh, I can build an emulator, it's not that hard, I helped build an emulator once"
Me: [confused] "What were you emulating?"
Customer: "ZNES"
Me: "What programming langauge did you use?"
Customer: "I didn't use a language, to build an emulator, you just change settings on your computer"
[At this point I knew he was full of S**t. But I decided to push him, I knew he wasn't going to buy anything anyway.]
Me: "No, I don't think so, you would be making a program that mimics a CPU that the software thinks it's running on."
Customer: "Yes, that's what I did"
Me: "So, what language did you use?"
Customer: "Oh, there's only one language dude."
Me: [laughing internally] "There is over 200 main languages out there, which one was it?"
Customer: [realized I knew a bit about programming] "The main one, can't remember its name, but it starts with B" [picked a random letter]
Me: "BASIC?"
Customer: "Yeah, that's the one"
Me: "That isn't used alot these days, was it the Visual Basic Suite?"
Customer: "Yeah, I build it using that, it runs on Windows Mac and Linux"
Me: "Mmm, Visual Basic is only used for windows environments, you can't cross platform, was it C or JAVA you were using" [still laughing internally]
Customer: "Yeah, C, that's the one, it's easy to learn, I picked it up in a day or two."
Me: "Well, sounds like you know your stuff, what you would have to do is research the entire CPU instruction set for the CPU on the Eee PC and make the instructions imitate the windows instructions."
Customer: "Sounds cool, it'll probably take a day or two."
Me: "Look into Esoteric Languages, they are used alot in programming emulators"
[So I sent him on a wild goose chase]
I found out he comes in alot to work to try and intimidate the sales people. He has never been back since.

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Jabo

Ha, take a picture and make him the Store Stoner of the Day

Grich

Dang! I should have.
I swear, it was one of the most funniest moments of my life.

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Ooble

That's brilliant. I swore I would never work in retail, mostly to annoy my flatmate (who works in PC World, a computer store chain, and thinks everyone should for some time so they can understand how retarded the human race really is). The stories I hear from everyone who does, though, makes me want to go for it.

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Grich

I agree, it's so funny what some people do.
The best thing a customer has said to me was: "I want to return this nav man system because it doesn't play music". ...........why are people idiots. They make me look intelligent.

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