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Feb. 28th, 2009 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickLast night TJ called me with a computer question. This is not entirely unheard of and I'm generally amenable to fixing the problem with a side order of snarky attacks upon his computer literacy and general worth as a person.
The problem this time was that his friend Lance had some .mp3 files. The friend Lance (not the wrecks-trucks Lance with the heroin problem, a different Lance.) had the songs on his computer. TJ wanted the songs for a party last night, so his friend Lance "made a playlist" and then copied the playlist to TJ's Sandisk stick thing. (I think it's a usb memory stick thing. He wasn't clear on how it connected to the computer b/c of not knowing what the fuck a USB connector looks like. *gah* Kids today...) TJ said that the playlist would play on Windows Media Player if the Sandisk thing was in Lance's computer but not if the Sandisk thing was in TJ's computer.
Oh, fuck, where to even start with this?
1. Playlists are for stupid people. A playlist is a LIST of your songs. It is not THE SONGS any more than a grocery list is the actual food. You can't eat a fucking grocery list and you don't have the actual music if all you've got is a playlist. Asshat.
2. Windows Media Player is for stupid people. Use something other than that. WinAmp didn't used to suck, though I haven't seen it in ages. I don't know what you should use. Try searching on google or something. But not Windows Media Player, okay?
3. DRM-capable music is for stupid people. At least his friend Lance had the good sense to steal his music using Limewire so that what we had to work with was clean, basic, undrm'd mp3 files. I also suggested buying un-DRM music from amazon as opposed to doing iTunes b/c drm. No. Just... no.
4. To move the songs, you must FIND the songs. Find where they actually live on the fucking hard drive of Lance's computer. The best way to do this is to go into Limewire and find the settings and read what the saving-things-in directory is called.
5. Once you've got the location, go to My Computer and fucking drill down through the damn directories (Sorry. My bad. Folders, TJ, they look like folders.) until you get to the fucking location where the mp3 files are stored. The words that tell where the saving-things-in directory is located are called a PATH because those words tell you the PATH TO GET TO THE FILES, starting at the top where you always start so that you can get there every fucking time. Fuckwit.
6. When you are LOOKING at the song file that you want, you right click on it and then left click COPY from the dropdown menu. This takes the song and puts a copy of it (because the command is COPY, y'know) in the computer's pocket.
7. Go to where you want to move the file to, in this case, the Sandisk drive. Open it up, make a folder for this purpose because it will save time later. (He didn't know how to make folders, either.) Then right click, select paste, wait for file to copy. This takes the copy of the file OUT of the computer's pocket and puts it in the folder where you want it to go. Because it's a magic pocket, you can take endless copies of the same file out of the pocket using PASTE over and over and over again if you want to do that. But, the next time you use COPY, the new file will be in the magic pocket and the old file what was in the magic pocket, it will be gone. The magic pocket only holds the most recent instance of COPY, yo.
8. Move the rest of the songs using the COPY-PASTE methodology until you are done with the songs you want to move.
9. Take the fucking Sandisk from Lance's computer. Put it into the new computer. TJ says, "I got it from here." I say, "Ok" and hang up the phone.
I wait ten or fifteen minutes. TJ calls back. I kind of figured he would.
"I loaded the songs into my iTunes but they won't play..." I cut him off... "Unless the Sandisk is attached to the computer, right?"
He was all "Wow, how did you know?" *sigh* Putting songs into iTunes does not make them "be" in the computer. It is more like "telling iTunes where to find the songs." What TJ did there was give iTunes directions to the songs on the SanDisk thingie. Then, when he took the SanDisk thingie away, iTunes could not find the songs because it tried to follow the directions and dead-ended at "Look on the SanDisk thingie" which was no longer there. D'oh.
What he NEEDED to do was to move the songs FROM the SanDisk TO his computer by COPYING the folder from SanDisk and PASTING it into his hard drive somewhere. THEN he could load the songs into iTunes.
The lack of clue going on here fucking floored me. TJ is probably twenty. His friend Lance and his other friend (whose name I do not know), both of whom were in the room at the same time, are of a similar vintage. I fear for the future, here. I thought young folks were supposed to be all kinds of good at the computer and technology mojo. How can there be three twenty-ish young men in a room and NOT ONE OF THEM knows how the fuck to move mp3 files from one computer to another using a thrice-damned usb flash drive?
The problem this time was that his friend Lance had some .mp3 files. The friend Lance (not the wrecks-trucks Lance with the heroin problem, a different Lance.) had the songs on his computer. TJ wanted the songs for a party last night, so his friend Lance "made a playlist" and then copied the playlist to TJ's Sandisk stick thing. (I think it's a usb memory stick thing. He wasn't clear on how it connected to the computer b/c of not knowing what the fuck a USB connector looks like. *gah* Kids today...) TJ said that the playlist would play on Windows Media Player if the Sandisk thing was in Lance's computer but not if the Sandisk thing was in TJ's computer.
Oh, fuck, where to even start with this?
1. Playlists are for stupid people. A playlist is a LIST of your songs. It is not THE SONGS any more than a grocery list is the actual food. You can't eat a fucking grocery list and you don't have the actual music if all you've got is a playlist. Asshat.
2. Windows Media Player is for stupid people. Use something other than that. WinAmp didn't used to suck, though I haven't seen it in ages. I don't know what you should use. Try searching on google or something. But not Windows Media Player, okay?
3. DRM-capable music is for stupid people. At least his friend Lance had the good sense to steal his music using Limewire so that what we had to work with was clean, basic, undrm'd mp3 files. I also suggested buying un-DRM music from amazon as opposed to doing iTunes b/c drm. No. Just... no.
4. To move the songs, you must FIND the songs. Find where they actually live on the fucking hard drive of Lance's computer. The best way to do this is to go into Limewire and find the settings and read what the saving-things-in directory is called.
5. Once you've got the location, go to My Computer and fucking drill down through the damn directories (Sorry. My bad. Folders, TJ, they look like folders.) until you get to the fucking location where the mp3 files are stored. The words that tell where the saving-things-in directory is located are called a PATH because those words tell you the PATH TO GET TO THE FILES, starting at the top where you always start so that you can get there every fucking time. Fuckwit.
6. When you are LOOKING at the song file that you want, you right click on it and then left click COPY from the dropdown menu. This takes the song and puts a copy of it (because the command is COPY, y'know) in the computer's pocket.
7. Go to where you want to move the file to, in this case, the Sandisk drive. Open it up, make a folder for this purpose because it will save time later. (He didn't know how to make folders, either.) Then right click, select paste, wait for file to copy. This takes the copy of the file OUT of the computer's pocket and puts it in the folder where you want it to go. Because it's a magic pocket, you can take endless copies of the same file out of the pocket using PASTE over and over and over again if you want to do that. But, the next time you use COPY, the new file will be in the magic pocket and the old file what was in the magic pocket, it will be gone. The magic pocket only holds the most recent instance of COPY, yo.
8. Move the rest of the songs using the COPY-PASTE methodology until you are done with the songs you want to move.
9. Take the fucking Sandisk from Lance's computer. Put it into the new computer. TJ says, "I got it from here." I say, "Ok" and hang up the phone.
I wait ten or fifteen minutes. TJ calls back. I kind of figured he would.
"I loaded the songs into my iTunes but they won't play..." I cut him off... "Unless the Sandisk is attached to the computer, right?"
He was all "Wow, how did you know?" *sigh* Putting songs into iTunes does not make them "be" in the computer. It is more like "telling iTunes where to find the songs." What TJ did there was give iTunes directions to the songs on the SanDisk thingie. Then, when he took the SanDisk thingie away, iTunes could not find the songs because it tried to follow the directions and dead-ended at "Look on the SanDisk thingie" which was no longer there. D'oh.
What he NEEDED to do was to move the songs FROM the SanDisk TO his computer by COPYING the folder from SanDisk and PASTING it into his hard drive somewhere. THEN he could load the songs into iTunes.
The lack of clue going on here fucking floored me. TJ is probably twenty. His friend Lance and his other friend (whose name I do not know), both of whom were in the room at the same time, are of a similar vintage. I fear for the future, here. I thought young folks were supposed to be all kinds of good at the computer and technology mojo. How can there be three twenty-ish young men in a room and NOT ONE OF THEM knows how the fuck to move mp3 files from one computer to another using a thrice-damned usb flash drive?
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 03:10 pm (UTC)That was, I'm sorry to say, truly pathetic on their parts. Damn.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-28 03:31 pm (UTC)But I'm using your magic pockets terminology to explain to the next person who can't understand why the file they emailed me is no longer the same file as the one on our server.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-01 03:18 am (UTC)iTunes doesn't do DRM on music any more. Well, they do a bit - a few songs are still DRMed - but 80% were drm-free as of Jan 6, and they promised the rest will be un-DRMed by the end of March.
Putting songs into iTunes does not make them "be" in the computer. It is more like "telling iTunes where to find the songs."
Depends how iTunes is set up. settings -> advanced -> "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library". I'm not sure if it's the default, but it's possible TJ/Lance are used to using a system where that's turned on, and "putting songs into iTunes" does indeed "make them be on the computer".
Possible. Didn't say likely.