Meet the village idiots of 24hoursupport.helpdesk

Chuckcar (a.k.a. "Chucktard")

If you should ever find yourself posting to the USENET newsgroup 24hoursupport.helpdesk, asking for advice or help with anything, beware any replies you may get from the poster called "Chuckcar". This person is one of the most dangerous types of computer "experts": the kind of person whom those in the business describe as "knows just enough to be dangerous". He is the loud idiot who thinks himself always the smartest person in the room, no matter the room or who else is in it.

He will typically reply to a question with something totally inane, and then drop from the thread immediately when called on it. His most common solutions to any type of computer problem are, in no particular order:

Often his advice is completely wrong, and sometimes his response will have absolutely nothing to do with the question asked. It is for these reasons he is commonly referred to as "Chucktard" within USENET newsgroups. It is very much a pejorative name, and most probably not meant to offend anyone with any actual mental disabilities (excepting Chuck himself).

Chuckcar never admits to any of his mistakes, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence of misstatement. As already noted, when proven wrong he will simply vanish from the thread and begin wreaking havoc in another topic.

He should not be mistaken for a "troll". Trolls intentionally post incendiary remarks or idiotic nonsense to newsgroups, hoping to get a reaction from the regulars there. Trolls know that they are full of shit - that's the point. This is not Chuckcar. Chuckcar actually believes his own tripe, and believes that he is right, all of the time!

Following are just some of his more notable recent postings.

Non-sequiturs (and just plain bad advice)

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non se·qui·tur: a reply that has no relevance to what preceded it

That would describe many of these responses by Chuckcar to questions posted in the group.

(Some of these may be paraphrased for brevity and/or readability. All have links to the actual posts.)

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010Google Groups link

Q.One channel on one cablebox keeps comming up as "channel not avaible[sic] try again later". The rest of the channels are fine.

Chuckcar's Answer:Well did you try replacing the cables connected to the box with new ones? they *do* wear out you know.

A bad cable keeps ONE CHANNEL from coming in, dumbass?!?

Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010GG

Q.I created a DVD photo slideshow [...] When played back on a TV, the images flickered [...] Can anyone suggest a solution?

A.What are you *playing* the slideshow with? Try using Irfanview if you're just going to use a computer anyways.

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010GG

Q.I have a netbook (no CD drive) that I believe is infected [...] Can someone recommend a bootable anti-rootkit program?

A.Any AV program running off a closed session CD?

Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2010GG

Q.In XP, there was a Startup Folder [...] Is there something similar in Windows 7?

A.Same *exact* place almost certainly - c:\windows\start menu\programs\startup.

Except that directory doesn't exist in any version of Windows, post-WinME.

Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010GG

Q.What I need is a PDF viewer that can switch from one file to the next with a button/arrow on the toolbar.

A.xpdf is a package for linux. It has several command line utilities... [snip]

*Good job*, chuckTard!! Recommend a Linux program to a Windows user! -- Beauregard T. Shagnasty

Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010GG

Q.I loaned my laptop to my son. He signed in to a hotel's wi-fi connection with their password. He returned it to me yesterday and now I cannot login to my wi-fi connection. I "have no idea what my password was."

A.Call the front desk.

The front desk?
Of his HOUSE?!?

Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010GG

Q.What PC monitor would make a good "TV" when used with a cable box or external TV tuner?

A.What are you going to do for sound?

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010GG

Q.Everytime I boot my computer, I get a message saying "window explorer has stop responding" than another window comes up saying "window explorer is restarting". How could I stop that?

A.Wait for windows to finish loading and *then* disable startup.

Date: Mon, 31 May 2010GG

Q.My mp3 player won't copy mp3 files from my hard drive.[...] I've uninstalled and reinstalled the driver, it just has me screwed!

A.Have you tried physically removing it's[sic] drivers from device manager and rebooting so that clean drivers get installed?

"Thanks for playing, chucktard." -- Evan Platt

Date: Sat, 29 May 2010GG

Q.My next step is to reinstall. I have a choice between Vista and Windows 7. Which do you guys recommend at this point?

A.XP

Is that Vista XP, or 7 XP?

Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010GG

Q.How can I sort email messages into designated folders I have created for different senders of emails using Windows Live Mail?

A.No email client from Microsoft will do that.1 You need something better. Xnews, Agent and others will do it.2

1Except that "Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail will do that." -- freemont
2Since when does Xnews do email?

Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010GG

Q.Could anyone tell me why this acer aspire laptop won't keep the realtek ethernet NIC program in memory?

A.Don't use a wireless connection to the internet if you can at all avoid it.

Who said anything about wireless?

Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010GG

Q.A few weeks ago, the display broke up and the system froze on my newest computer (Asus netbook w/ Windows 7).

A.Just try replacing the hard drive data cable with a new one.

"Good advice. Just one thing though, where is the data cable on a netbook?" --Oldus Fartus

Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010GG

Q.[Subject:Red x in pictures] I am using Windows Vista for an OS and am having problems viewing photos on some sites.

A.You *do* have adobe flash installed right? How about Microsoft .Net or Java (only *one*)?

We need Flash, .Net or Java to see pictures instead of a red "X" on websites, Chuck?

Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010GG

Q.Please, how do I go about this [make a clone of my C:\ drive using Norton Ghost 2003]?

A.And your operating system is?

What has that got to do with anything? The rest of Chuck's answer here is worth a read as well. He goes on to insist that identical models of hard drive must be used for a clone, explains how to do a file copy on Linux, how to do backups on XP, and ends by (of course) telling the OP to disable everything in startup.

Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010GG

(Posted in news.software.readers)

Q.Are there any newsreaders that allow selection of multiple non-contigious blocks of text?

A.*Any* editor I've ever used, you mark *one* block of contigous text and then work with that block. I sense a misunderstanding of how editors work on your part here.

Way to describe a posting style instead of addressing the actual question, Chuck.

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010GG

Q.Does [privoxy] also stop text ads from google?

A.If you don't want GG posts, see below:

Who said anything about Google Groups posts?

Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010GG

Q.Does the faster transfer rate of an 80 [wire] cable not work with a DVD drive?

A.If you want higher bandwidth from your drives, Go SCSI.

That's not what they asked, Chuck. It's really not even close.

Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009GG

Not exactly a non-sequitur, but typical of the lame-brained advice one can expect from Chuck.

Q.How do I remove this partially installed XP PRO SP3 setup, delete the boot partition, and reinstall XP Pro without losing all my valuable data?

A.Use the CD to boot a dos prompt and format the drive.

Yes. Formatting the drive is the safest way to protect the data.

Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009GG

Q.Does anyone know of a good little freeware drag & drop to-do list for XP?

A.Calendar that *comes* with XP maybe?

And here Chuckie linked to Microsoft's feature on the new calendar app that comes with Vista, and which is not available for XP. There has never been a calendar app included with Windows prior to Vista.

Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009GG

Q.Any ideas how I can read/access these files (such as mail) WITHOUT having a palm pilot?

A.Not finding his Palm would be something the lawyer handling his estate should be immediately informed of.

I guess this was Chuck's way of explaining how to access the files.

Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009GG

Q.Can someone reccomend an audio-player that will play the streaming audio that this link points to? It's WTEM 980 in Washington DC...

A.Perhaps if we knew what specific station (and city/zip code) you tried to listen to and whether you have tried updating to the latest codec package for whatever operating system you're running you might actually get an answer.

Chuck fails twice with the same sentence. In a smarmy, smartass, know-it-all tone, he totally misses that the OP has stated clearly where the station is located, and also mistakenly diagnosed the problem as one of physical location. What the hell has a zip code got to do with a computer's ability to play streaming media?

Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010GG

Q.I am now wondering if the motherboard is capable of handling 2Gb?

A.What OS are you running, and have you tried disabling startup?

Ummm... Oh, this speaks for itself. And it is quintessentially Chucktardian.

Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010GG

(Posted in news.software.readers, but too good to leave out)

Q.Is there an easy way to find a specific post in alt.binaries.tv?

A.Google groups.

Earth to Chuckcar, the computer expert: Google does not archive binary groups.

Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010GG

Q.Why would you be able to connect to any web site , but one?

A.Can you open any other web pages?

A. Yes
B. No
C. Both
D. Neither

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Truisms

Stamp of Bullshit Verification

Statements presented as fact, despite their obvious inaccuracy

Duh! ⇐ favorite

Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2010GG

“A theory is a hypothesis proven by mathematics [...]”

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010GG

“A hard drive is *never* a vaild backup device.”

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010GG

“Cookies keep track of what you do *on* a site, not which sites you go to.”

Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010GG

“[To display a Web page, the browser] logs onto the DNS for the web page and then does what amounts to an ftp.”

Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010GG

“[Surfing the net is] *all* outgoing [connections]. If you knew *anything* at all, you'd know that.”

Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2010GG

“*Everything* has drivers with the exception of audio speakers and printers.”

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010GG

“The keyboard is *always* unusable when MS windows is loading with one exception: the <esc> key.”

Date: Wed, 26 May 2010GG

“One word: msconfig. It comes *with* any version of windows after 95.”

Date: Sun, 23 May 2010GG

“Put a commercial music CD in the drive and see if you hear music. If you don't, your sound card is dead.”

Date: Mon, 10 May 2010GG

“Computer monitors haven't had speakers for decades.”

Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010GG

“All bookmark files are html.”

“html is as close as you can get to a scripting language without branching and iteration.”

Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010GG

“[Email clients and newsreaders are] the same thing.”

“[Thunderbird is] a MS IE clone.”

Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010GG

(Posted in news.software.readers)

“Only an ftp site displays a directory when you access it.”

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010GG

“You can't even buy 80 gig drives new anymore.”

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010GG

“Drivers are never loaded or even *used* in safe mode, much less detected.”

Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010GG

“Ipods could never be considers[sic] real computers. By anyone.”

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010GG

“An mp3 uses MPEG3 compression. Hence the name.”

Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010GG

“Wireless is unreliable in locations where there are walls as it uses microwave frequencies. You know like they use for RADAR and TV rainfall maps. It bounces off of rain and planes, so do you think solid walls are going to be easier? No.”

Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010GG

“Some sites use flash or java code instead of a simple hypertext command.”

Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010GG

“There are two things that go wrong with hard drives: the spin motor fails and/or they get bad sectors.”

Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010GG

“There is one reason and one reason alone why computers slow down - they are being used to do something else.”

Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010GG

“DOS exists on every computer.”

Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009GG

“A calender[sic] program has been part of MS windows since Millenium[sic].”

Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010GG

“Intel drivers won't work on name brand computers.”

Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010GG

“It [WiFi] uses a frequency that is largely used because it doesn't penetrate solid objects.”

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010GG

“CDROM/DVDROM drives don't appear or work in safe mode.”

Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010GG

“[Hiding the address bar and clearing history will] make it completely impossible to go anywhere else.”

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richard (a.k.a. "RtS", a.k.a. "Richard the St00pid")

Richard's Facebook :-D

Richard is pretty special. He says things that defy logical thought. And like his soulmate, Chuckcar, when he is confronted with inarguable evidence and overwhelming denunciation of his claims, he simply disappears from the thread in question. And he will never, ever admit any mistake.

A sampling of his "wisdom" follows. Welcome to the mind of Richard the St00pid:

RtS

Richard's mug shot

Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2010GG

OE also does not use IE to read html email. So the email file will not open with the browser. Idiot.”

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2010GG

“I buy a music CD in a store. Make a copy of it. Give, or sell, you the original. That is 100% legal.”

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010GG

“Somewhat like the ads I see on tv where the drug maker says "Not to be taken by women who can become pregnant". Well duhhh, that means about 80% of women can't take the drug.”

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010GG

“The only noise made by an electronic computer is the noise from the hard drives.”

Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2010GG

“Actually, Columbus never set on foon that soil.”

Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010GG

“You need to watch some of the shows on the History channel and get yourself a real education.”

Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 — Richard describes his law enforcement experience. — GG

“Hell, I've taken a man down with my bare hands and feet. Wrestling style. Works quite well. I've seen a 5 year old take down a guy 6 feet tall and drag him across the floor.”

Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2010 — Richard explains how a user can get his laptop to reconnect to his home router after a format and reinstall. — GG

“You do the same thing now that you did originally to make the router work. Formatting destroys what you needed to make it work. So the machine does not yet know there is a router.”

Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 — Richard educates us on the difference between 40 and 80 wire PATA cables. — GG

“I'm amazed that you could even get the 40 wire cable to connect to the same connector as the 80 wire. They're generally designed so that you CAN'T do that.”

Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 — Richard explains what a "bridge modem" is, in his own inimitable way. — GG

“A standard modem generally uses a regular cable line and can hook up into your computer via USB. A bridge modem basically connects to that other larger port that is neither the USB port nor phone line connector.”

Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 — Richard insists that scripting is necessary to view EXIF data from a photo on a web page. — GG

“... exiff[sic] data must also be displayed on the page via a script.”

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