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:
- "Disable startup"
- "Flash your BIOS"
- "Format your hard drive"
- "Run a virus scan"
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)
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 2010 — Google 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.
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 — GG
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 2010 — GG
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 2010 — GG
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.
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 — GG
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]
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 — GG
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.
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 — GG
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 2010 — GG
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 2010 — GG
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?
Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 — GG
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
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 — GG
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
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 — GG
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.
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 — GG
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.
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 — GG
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*)?
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 — GG
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?
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 — GG
(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.
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 — GG
Q.Does [privoxy] also stop text ads from google?
A.If you don't want GG posts, see below:
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 — GG
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.
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 — GG
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.
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 — GG
Q.Does anyone know of a good little freeware drag & drop to-do list for XP?
A.Calendar that *comes* with XP maybe?
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 — GG
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.
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 — GG
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.
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 — GG
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?
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 — GG
(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.
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 — GG
Q.Why would you be able to connect to any web site , but one?
A.Can you open any other web pages?
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Truisms
Statements presented as fact, despite their obvious inaccuracy
⇐ favorite
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2010 — GG
“A theory is a hypothesis proven by mathematics [...]”
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 — GG
“A hard drive is *never* a vaild backup device.”
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 — GG
“Cookies keep track of what you do *on* a site, not which sites you go to.”
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 — GG
“[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 2010 — GG
“[Surfing the net is] *all* outgoing [connections]. If you knew *anything* at all, you'd know that.”
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2010 — GG
“*Everything* has drivers with the exception of audio speakers and printers.”
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 — GG
“The keyboard is *always* unusable when MS windows is loading with one exception: the <esc> key.”
Date: Wed, 26 May 2010 — GG
“One word: msconfig. It comes *with* any version of windows after 95.”
Date: Sun, 23 May 2010 — GG
“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 2010 — GG
“Computer monitors haven't had speakers for decades.”
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 — GG
“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 2010 — GG
“[Email clients and newsreaders are] the same thing.”
“[Thunderbird is] a MS IE clone.”
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 — GG
(Posted in news.software.readers)
“Only an ftp site displays a directory when you access it.”
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 — GG
“You can't even buy 80 gig drives new anymore.”
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 — GG
“Drivers are never loaded or even *used* in safe mode, much less detected.”
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2010 — GG
“Ipods could never be considers[sic] real computers. By anyone.”
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 — GG
“An mp3 uses MPEG3 compression. Hence the name.”
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 — GG
“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 2010 — GG
“Some sites use flash or java code instead of a simple hypertext command.”
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 — GG
“There are two things that go wrong with hard drives: the spin motor fails and/or they get bad sectors.”
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 — GG
“There is one reason and one reason alone why computers slow down - they are being used to do something else.”
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 — GG
“DOS exists on every computer.”
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 — GG
“A calender[sic] program has been part of MS windows since Millenium[sic].”
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 — GG
“Intel drivers won't work on name brand computers.”
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 — GG
“It [WiFi] uses a frequency that is largely used because it doesn't penetrate solid objects.”
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 — GG
“CDROM/DVDROM drives don't appear or work in safe mode.”
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 — GG
“[Hiding the address bar and clearing history will] make it completely impossible to go anywhere else.”
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RtS
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2010 — GG
“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 2010 — GG
“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 2010 — GG
“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 2010 — GG
“The only noise made by an electronic computer is the noise from the hard drives.”
Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2010 — GG
“Actually, Columbus never set on foon that soil.”
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 — GG
“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.”
