Deleting Files, the Dummy Version

Windows recycle bin, empty and full

If there’s any lesson you should have learned from television “hackers” over the years, it’s that moving a file into the trash on your computer doesn’t actually delete it. What: you didn’t already know that? Take comfort in the fact that lots of people, like you, don’t know that “deleting” a file simply flags the file as invisible to the file system and allows the space where it’s been stored to be overwritten by newer files. Well, eHow.com’s Gwendolen Akard didn’t know that, either – but by golly, she didn’t let that stand in her way when she wrote “How to View List of Recently Deleted Files,” now housed on Leaf Group’s Techwalla niche site.

Initializing a GPS For Dummies (Techwalla Week 1)

Typical GPS initialization screen

Congratulations to the folks at Demand Media on their recent name change to Leaf Group (9 November, 2016), although we admit it makes us sad to see their DMS¹ brand going away. It is gone, though, but a lot of their crappy content remains. Their latest trick is to start parceling out all of their eHow junk into newly-created "niche" sites; so this week we'll feature legacy content that has been moved to a place they call Techwalla.com². Without further ado, let's get to one of those; a little piece of content by Techwallan (née eHowian) Kallie Johnson (aka Carrie Catalano) entitled, "Magellan GPS Won't Initialize."³ Presumably, the article should have been a how-to for troubleshooting a Magellan GPS, but Johnson had a problem.

Kallie's Bachelor of Arts in English apparently did not include a whole lot of instruction, if any at all, in how to use a GPS receiver; and, for that matter, probably didn't include anything more technical than how to turn on your Macintosh Airbook® when you get out of bed in the morning. That, we suspect, is why Kallie's understanding of the meaning of "initialization" of a GPS is that "the screen lights up," as one might infer from her introduction:

Learning Technology for Dummies

Modern technology spans the world

Our research staff here at the Antisocial Network are lazy sometimes; though not as lazy as the copy, reword and paste freelancers they uncover. Their laziness takes the form of following serial dumbasses around the internet with google, just looking for their latest stupidities. Once in a while we let them – and today's one of those days. After her fairly lengthy absence from our little corner of the 'net, one of them spotted a blog authored by the site's undisputed champion, eighteen-time winner of our Dumbass award, Joan Whetzel. One of Joan's blog posts more or less explains why she continues to appear in this column: take a look at "Technologically Challenged -- Chapter 2"¹ and see if you agree.