Taken from the CompTIA IT Fundamentals Exam Guide book (2nd edition, published 2021). I’m not sure if they fixed this in newer versions, if at all.

  • Ocelot
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    9 months ago

    These textbooks are trash and written by morons. When I was in college one of the required books said very clearly that sleep and hibernate are exactly the same thing. It said that both suspended to RAM and hibernate was just some lower power version of sleep. It was even a question on an exam that I got wrong for some reason. I argued with the professor about it and proved to him thats not the case by taking one of the lab computers, hibernating it, physically taking the ram out and swapping it with another computer and resuming into the same state on power on. He said “Well thats what it says in the textbook so I have to mark it wrong”

    It really highlights that there are probably a lot of other inaccuracies that I didn’t notice. This is the standard of education nowadays.

    • @gomp
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      1319 months ago

      He said “Well thats what it says in the textbook so I have to mark it wrong”

      The mark of a great teacher. It’s nice however that he had the patience to wait for your experiment (or maybe he was expecting it to fail miserably?): no prof of mine would have went along with something like that (not to mention, I’m pretty sure we couldn’t take apart the lab PCs at our leisure).

      • @evatronic@lemm.ee
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        459 months ago

        The mark of a great teacher.

        Perhaps not great, but effective. This attitude is exactly how working in the corporate world works. Reality and being right are rarely, if ever, the important thing. Following the rules, doing what you’re told, and sitting the fuck down and shutting the fuck up? That’s what this teacher was teaching their students.

        • @BaconIsAVeg
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          279 months ago

          They’re not testing you on what you know, they’re testing on did you study the course material. I had the same problem when trying to pass my written motorcycle test when I moved to California after riding in Canada for years.

          • @erwan
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            9 months ago

            To be fair, when you drive in California you really have to apply the Californian traffic laws and not the Canadians.

            • @BaconIsAVeg
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              189 months ago

              It wasn’t the rules/signs portion of the test. They litereally had questions like:

              Which is more dangerous when riding beside a row of parked cars?

              A) A car pulling out.

              B) Someone opening a car door.

              C) A child running into the street from between two parked cars.

              It’s not an opinion question, personally I’d rather hit the car and the door over the child, but they want to know the answer that the study material gave.

              • @erwan
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                129 months ago

                Oh yes, I remember the paper test in California and it was really stupid. Things like “what should you do in foggy weather?” And the correct answer was “stay at home and don’t drive”.

                Their whole booklet was a joke, instead of clear rules it was a mix up of actual rules, advice and trivia with no meaningful organization.

                • @tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk
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                  9 months ago

                  In the UK all our questions were things like ‘You are about to drive into a wall, do you (a) honk your horn, (b) speed up, © stop’.

                  The rule was if there was a ‘stop’ answer, use that one, otherwise use the ‘slow down’ answer. You’d pass easily.

                  I always wondered if one day they’d throw in a curve ball… ‘you are being chased by a hoard of zombies…’

                • @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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                  29 months ago

                  What a bullshit question. If they don’t want people to drive in fog they should make it illegal. Otherwise, they should just acknowledge that people are going to do it and not coerce them to lie on a test

        • @uis@lemmy.world
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          28 months ago

          Following the rules, doing what you’re told, and sitting the fuck down and shutting the fuck up? That’s what this teacher was teaching their students.

          Sadly, this is opposite of what teacher should teach.

    • @travysh@lemm.ee
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      479 months ago

      I went to college early 2000s. The textbook said something along the lines of “The fastest RAM is 100 MHz”.

      DDR was still relatively new then. I took a clipping of an ad showing higher speeds, and he literally claimed I faked the printed ad …

      • @AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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        259 months ago

        Missed opportunity to amend and reprint the textbook every time a faster RAM was launched and force all the students to buy the new edition.

    • KroninJ
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      149 months ago

      That’s messed up. When this kind of thing happened when I was in school the instructor would mark both answers as correct since the book did state it. I highly appreciated that.

    • @Nintendo@lemmy.world
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      89 months ago

      most CS “textbooks” are a scam these days I’m general. a huge red flag when I scan resumes now is actually if they have a textbook published without some sort of advanced degree or qualification to write a textbook. I get resumes of people a year out of college, work a junior position, and have a “Advanced JavaScript” or “JavaScript the not boring way” or “Complete guide to typescript” or some other quirky textbook name. if you actually click into any of these books, they’re complete nonsense written by somebody who just copied another textbook from another idiot who knew nothing. all these people are over confident resume padders. in practice they don’t know shit and didn’t legitimately write a lick of the book. I’ve had some of these applicants claim their books are used by professors too.

    • @Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee
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      199 months ago

      GNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNU…

      • glibg10b
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        99 months ago

        GNU Is Not Unix Is Not Unix is not Unix

  • @redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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    639 months ago

    If someone send this to Stallman, he’ll write a stern email on emacs to the book’s author reminding them that gnu is not linux.

  • @4am@lemm.ee
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    539 months ago

    Gentlemen, a short view back to the past. Thirty years ago, Niki Lauda told us ‘take a monkey, place him into the chair and he is able to use the computer.’ Thirty years later, Sebastian told us ‘I had to start my computer like an F1 car, it’s very complicated.’ And Nico Rosberg said that during the compile – I don’t remember what compile – he pressed the wrong button on the keyboard. Question for you both: is Linux today too complicated with twenty and more buttons on the keyboard , are you too much under effort, under pressure? What are your wishes for the future concerning the technical programme during the development? Less buttons, more? Or less and more communication with Torvalds?

  • @TheImpressiveXOP
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    499 months ago

    Here’s some more excerpts from the book that I found amusing:

    As you learned in Chapter 1, Linux is an open source operating system, meaning that anyone can download and modify it. Open source operating systems can benefit from improvements contributed by thousands of programmers. Some people choose open source operating systems out of an anti-establishment spirit; others choose them as a practical matter because they are free.

    “Anti-establishment” isn’t the word I’d use, but I guess that fits.

    One of the most popular distros for casual users, Ubuntu, comes with a DE called Unity (shown in Figure 5-16)

    That hasn’t been true since 2017.

    Be suspicious of free apps. In the best-case scenario, the app does what it says but installs ads or other software. In the worst-case scenario, the free app is, or contains, malware that might steal personal information from your device, encrypt your data files and demand a ransom for decryption, or monitor your device usage. Installing an app sometimes asks for specific permissions that the app will use. Be selective in allowing app privileges to items such as contact lists, GPS location, e-mail messages, and so on.

    Okay, I’ll admit this is good advice if we’re talking about “freeware”, but there’s also free/libre/open-source software, which has all of the benefits of freeware, and also gives you the freedom to read/mofify/share the source code, if you wish.

    As for that “malware” you speak of, you might as well be describing Google Chrome.

    No media player supports all formats, so it’s important to find one that supports the formats of the clips you want to play.

    Clearly, these people haven’t heard of VLC.

    Codec is short for “compressor-decompressor”

    It actually stands for “coder/decoder”.

    And that’s just one page…

    • @DryTomatoes@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Paid apps can also steal user data and also I’d be way way more concerned about ‘free’ mobile apps than open source programs.

      Mobile apps can and will get a jarring amount of your data just for being installed.

      • Fedora
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        29 months ago

        Or the paid app doesn’t even exist. Carders now trade your credit card information. Achievement unlocked.

    • Dem Bosain
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      139 months ago

      The “best-case scenario” is adware or malware. Someone didn’t get hugged as a child.

  • @const_void
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    369 months ago

    CompTIA is a scam. No job that’s worth a shit will require it.

    • PLAVAT🧿S
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      119 months ago

      Not disagreeing about it being a scam but the government uses Sec+ as an IAT level 2 requirement. Helps meet some contract requirements.

      • Ocelot
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        39 months ago

        have you… seen the state of IT and technology in general in the government? I mean actually that explains a lot.

        • PLAVAT🧿S
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          39 months ago

          I’m just saying that government contracts == money and so my point is that while Comptia may be (read: most definitely is) a scam/racket it can make a person eligible for a paycheck. Agreed that it doesn’t mean they’re competent.

    • Ocelot
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      9 months ago

      not entirely. It makes it easy to filter out the kind of applicants that would put that on their resume. Very useful for hiring managers. Saves lots of time.

  • @tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk
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    369 months ago

    Missed opportunity to talk about tar being a tape format that we just happen to use on disks too (so it’s accessed linearly, and in fact if you cat two tar files together they make a valid tar file… or you can create a multi volume tar file that’ll prompt you to change the tape).

  • Cait
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    309 months ago

    GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix GNU is Not Unix

  • darcy
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    279 months ago

    id like to interject for a moment. what your referring to as gnu, is actually linux/gnu, or as ive taken to calling it, linux + gnu

  • @_s10e@feddit.de
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    239 months ago

    This whole table raises multiple questions. I guess I’ll never hire someone mentioning comptia on their cv

    • @turdas@suppo.fi
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      179 months ago

      Failing to mention that JAR is just a ZIP file with special contents and calling tar a compression format sure is a bit incompetent for a textbook.

  • Hot Saucerman
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    9 months ago

    I mean, it’s technically correct? The G does stand for GNU, and GNU tools can be used to build Linux. It is indeed worded very badly.

    • @erwan
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      129 months ago

      No, that’s a big confusion.

      I hate the RMS rant about how you’re supposed to say “GNU/Linux”, but here we’re talking about a GNU package that can be used without Linux. It’s on FreeBSD and even macOS.

      • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        39 months ago

        It just goes to show how important it is to come up with a good name. Recursive acronyms are clever and all, but if no one likes saying it they aren’t going to. T

    • @Bye@lemmy.world
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      109 months ago

      No basically all Linux uses gnu Coreurils as a foundation and is therefore best called gnu+Linux. There’s a great RMS rant about this , it’s what the title is referring to.

    • NormalC
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      99 months ago

      GNU is the name of the operating system. GNU packages like glibc and gcc can be used for an operating system. Gzip is a GNU package.