challenges Previous Bebras tasks can be found online at: http://www.bebraschallenge.org/ Misuse of the software http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-greatest-software-misuses?ref=slate&rel_pos=1 I want somebody read this for us! My mom used a physical calculator to calculate result from two excel cells and put the result to another cell, and repeat for another 200 rows, for 5 years as her end month report job. One day I dropped by her office and helped with the formula. She was wordless and I was loved. There is this girl in my college who deletes the file in the following way. 1.Right click on the file 2.Cut 3.Open Recycle Bin 4.Paste A friend uses the recycle bin as file storage My mother works for the Indian Postal Department- When I first showed her how to email, she was flabbergasted. She said "That's it?" "Who would come to post offices anymore?". The problem was that she would forget her password to her email and started creating a new account almost every other day- the justification being that it was free. I think there are hundreds of accounts in her name. At one point, she ran out of ideas for new names and started having accounts like uttarasmom@ etc. In India, she works with the Central Government. Her entire office with some 500 people used a single gmail account simultaneously. All of them would open the account and pick out the emails that they had to respond to. At one point, I set up a filter for my mother's department and that's how I became tech support for Central Government of India. When she asked me about Facebook, I told her that it was a virus and she would have to pay thousands of rupees as internet bill if she was on it. Thankfully, she still believes in it. I saw a documentary on the same topic where the guy was describing how he taught his 60+ mother how to write an Email. After he went back home, his mother switched on the computer, managed to draft an Email, printed it, stuck it in an envelope and mailed it to him. I've set all my facebook settings to personal and I use it as an unlimited memory sharing website. I have my personal collection of videos, songs, files and everything on my account. Something similar to dropbox but with no memory restrictions. Examples from the sad to the cute to the ridiculous: Example 1: Sad Not so much a misuse of software as a total failure to use software As a university student, I had a summer job in a government office. My boss wanted me to work on a revised version of a 300-page printed training manual, but she didn't have the original source files for any of the text. I thought I would have to reenter all the content in a word processing program (at the time, I knew nothing about scanning and OCR), but the reality was even worse: the boss wanted me to make the revisions by literally cutting and pasting the printed pages. Wherever she wanted a change (be it a few words or entire sections), I would have to cut actual pieces of paper and paste new copy in as neatly as possible, then photocopy the resulting pages. Sort of the way newspapers layouts were done before computers. Nothing I said could persuade her to let me retype the content. I type 90 words a minute; she was making hundreds of revisions affecting every page; having the content available electronically would make it easier to edit in future - none of this mattered to her. I actually went home and cried in frustration after arguing with her in vain, but since I didn't have any other job prospects, I ended up spending the summer with scissors, a glue stick, and the photocopier. Years later, my job involves trying to promote and improve the use of technology in a public-sector organization. Go figure. Example 2: Cute My grandfather, who passed away last year at 97, was pretty adept at using a computer for someone who began so late in life, but one thing he didn't figure out was how to share newspaper articles online. If he saw an article he thought would interest me, he would get the print newspaper, cut out the article, scan it, attach the scanned image to an email, and email it to me. Meanwhile, of course, the article was available on the newspaper's website, bristling with colourful "share" icons... Example 3: Ridiculous I sat down with a co-worker to collaborate on a document. He went to his folder to find the draft, and I noticed that his files looked like this: aaaaaaaadocument1.doc aaaaaaadocument2.doc aaaaadocument3.doc aaaadocument4.doc When I asked him about it, he explained that every time he saves a file, he adds more letter a's to the start of the filename so it will rise to the top of his folder, which of course is sorted alphabetically by filename. That way his most recent file is always at the top. When I showed him how to sort his files by date, he looked stunned for a moment, then harrumphed: "I like my way better." Someone I know once opened an mp3 file using Notepad. You may be wondering why... He wanted to read the lyrics! A girl went to Computer Store with a complaint that her mouse is not working. Salesman: What's the problem ma'am? Girl: I am not able to copy any file from this machine. I need to move this file from my old laptop to my new laptop. Salesman: Can you please show me how did you try to do this? Girl : Yes Sure! Just a min. She fixes the mouse to her old laptop. Copies the file by right click followed by copy. Detaches the mouse from the laptop and carries it to the new laptop and attaches it and clicks "Paste" Girl: See, Nothing is happening! By this time, the shopkeeper is on ground.