Virus In The Air & Other Stories

India is probably amongst the top countries with IT literacy, but the fact that remains that many don’t even know the full form of IT. Cyber cafés have opened around every corner but they function more like a rendezvous spot for couples or prove useful for terrorists if they want to email threats to the politicians. The owner won’t know what the difference between cracking & hacking is, even if his life depended on it!
Engineering institutes give away laptops to their students and install Wi-Fi in their campus to attract more & more fish into the net. Unsurprisingly all the students ever learn is which websites to download the latest songs from or the advantages of LAN when you want to play NFS. The high-end latest laptops that grace their rooms are full of nothing but the latest movies or songs and experience maximum use for social networking. They might just know enough to install a Turbo C++ but never even Oracle 10g or any other RDBMs s/w…it’s slows down the system & you can’t play any games then!
I am not preaching for my desktop isn’t exactly an exception to the above rules. I just want to share some hard to believe anecdotes with you…So here goes...

Intelligent Aunty: 

This is an anecdote based on a friend’s friend’s Mom’s experience. The servicing guy was the same for both friends and he was the one who narrated this incident. The friend’s Mom was the only one present when the engineer was called to repair the PC. She took matters in her own hands and decided to give the poor man some advice-“See, I was talking to my neighbor. Their son is also a s/w engineer you know. She says formatting a PC is good, na?”  “Err…yes, in case you have some virus or some unnecessary s/w slowing it down” “So, you do one thing, teach my son, ok? Tell him to every morning format the PC before he begins any work.”

Size Doesn’t Matter: 

Now this was one had recently joined an engineering college. Seeing the sleek & tiny wonder pen-drive in everyone’s hands she decided to get one too. Smartly she marched up to the shop & asked for one. “That will be Rs450” “What???” she gulped, put the pen drive down and fled still clutching the Rs20 note in her hand.

Innocent Writer:  

A budding medico, my friend was supposed to bring along the CD with the latest b’day bash pictures in it. I inserted it in, it displayed blank CD. Puzzled and upset my friend again took it home to write it again. Same result. I got curious & finally asked which stupid software was she using anyway? “What s/w? My CD-Writer has broken!! “  “Tell me just how did you transfer the pictures??” “Why, copy-paste of course” she scoffed at me!

And this one is my favourite:

Virus In The Air: 

This happened in my college. My lab partner & I had to transfer some programs for reference before exams. Since ma’am-the chief lab instructor displayed a tendency to switch to her “Maa-Kaali” avatar if she caught sight of a pen-drive, we decided to get a blank CD. The other lab instructor was present in the lab when we entered. When he caught us inserting the CD in, he glared-“No no no.. you don’t do that. See, many PCs spoiled by virus. You naughty girls only bring virus!” 

“Sir, don’t worry it’s a blank CD. We are just copying some files.” I said. 

“No no… blank or not blank CD, there is virus everywhere. Even in the air there is virus!! All spoiling computers you know.”