If you know how to turn on a computer, use internet, word process, and send and receive email, you are considered "computer illiterate".

This has to be one of my pet peeves, and I hear it all the time.

You go to do a service call for someone and they sit there and tell you about all the things they do on the computer. Most of which include getting on the internet, making documents of all kinds, working with images, and several other computer tasks. Then, while you are working to fix their issue, they tell you "I am just so computer illiterate".

Just because you do not know how to root out a malware or viral infection does not mean that you do not know how to operate a computer.

Questions to figure out if you are computer illeterate or not:

1. Do you know how to turn on the computer?
2. Do you know how to use a mouse to point and click on things?
3. Do you know how to use a keyboard?
4. Do you know how to open that program you always use?
5. Do you know how to save files in said program?
6. Do you know how to get on the internet?
7. Do you know how to insert the criton into the main synerdrive and start the nightly ID10T batch process?

If you answered yes to everything but #7 (it was nonsense) then you are NOT computer illiterate.

Computer illiterate is when someone asks you how you make the @ symbol for an email address and you say "hold the shift key and press the number 2" and they respond with "where is the shift key?" (true story). It is not knowing the basic concepts of how to use a mouse to point and click. It is having to be told a hundred times how to do basic things, like open the only word document you own and edit, and still have to have detailed written instructions.

The commandment "Thou Shall Not Steal" does not apply to Software and Music.

I know some people on the internet firmly believe this statement when it comes to torrenting music, movies, and other media off of the internet. But, believe it or not, this statement has not been formed by the net pirates I have encountered.

In fact, this statement comes from people I delt with while working at the small tech shop and the big box store in the service department (I got out of sales once I got my A+ certification. Yes..that long ago).