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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
To be fair, when you drive in California you really have to apply the Californian traffic laws and not the Canadians.
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.
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.
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…’
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
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.
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 …
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.
what kind of prof is that?
In my country, the vast majority.
Here professors are so underpaid, that anyone with an IQ above 75 is doing something else.
Where is that?
America or post-soviet
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.
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.
Has anybody mentioned yet that tar isn’t even a “compression format”?
Well, neither is iso…
Isn’t that like common knowledge or something?
It says archive not compression.
Table 9.7 Compression Formats
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Fun fact: G in GNU also stands for GNU.
GNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUNU…
GNU Is Not Unix Is Not Unix is not Unix
Nice entry point to recursion :)
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.
GNL
They’ll argue with Stallman about what GNU is.
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?
Could you repeat the question?
🎶 🎵 You’re not the boss of me now! 🎵🎶
We are checking.
As a huge Formula 1 fan and daily Linux user for a few decades now, while also being quite stoned… this fusion broke my brain, haha, well written. I could hear the words in the voice of Lauda, Seb, and Rossberg.
Pastor Maldonado I would assume is a windows user.
Ukyo Katayama was a Xenix user then
can you explain for a casual scroller-by with a less-than-mild interest in both?
A reporter asked a very very long question in a press conference 2-3 years ago. It has become a quaint F1 copypasta due to this. The author took that quote and replaced all of the Formula 1 references with Linux references.
It’s obscure as hell but funny to encounter as a fan of both.
I am pretty sure the long question is used in Netflix’s Drive to Survive series in one of the seasons with Sebastien Vettel. Good show even for a non-F1 fan, but I admit I am biased.
Here is where it comes from: https://youtu.be/FlFt_W4664M
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/FlFt_W4664M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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…
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.
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The “best-case scenario” is adware or malware. Someone didn’t get hugged as a child.
GNU’s Not… Linux
At this point RMS should seriously consider changing the name to GNL.
Might as well make it ANL since the first letter is arbitrary 😹
ANaL. ANaL Not a Linux.
Damn it, it’s now GNL and we have to rewrite all the textbooks!
Nice.
CompTIA is a scam. No job that’s worth a shit will require it.
Not disagreeing about it being a scam but the government uses Sec+ as an IAT level 2 requirement. Helps meet some contract requirements.
have you… seen the state of IT and technology in general in the government? I mean actually that explains a lot.
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.
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.
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).
I had no idea. Thank you
In an alternate universe the sentence reads ‘GNU is not UNIX’ and leaves it at that.
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
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
This whole table raises multiple questions. I guess I’ll never hire someone mentioning comptia on their cv
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.
Am I blind or do they call tar an archive format and not a compression format as you say?
The headline under the table says compression formats
I think you’ll find that’s GNU/Zip, or as I’ve taken to calling it GNU plus Zip.
So much to unpack here.
GNU is not a Linux variant. It is a set of programs and shared libraries.
ISO 9660 has nothing to do with compression. Just calling it ISO isn’t a good idea for an intro class like that because it is a set of MANY standards. They should have put a little side blurb and called it ISO 9660 in the table.
tar is an archive tool. It has no compression.
Why no mention of compression algorithms algorithms vs archive tools?
Why not have different compression algorithms and their tradeoffs?
ETA: jar files are just zip files for Java libs/programs. You can open them with zip file tools.
That line implying 7zip and 7z are different formats has just been pulled out of the air too
Just calling it ISO isn’t a good idea for an intro class like that because it is a set of MANY standards. They should have put a little side blurb and called it ISO 9660 in the table.
This is the only thing here I disagree with. The table is quite clearly putting extensions on the left and intro classes do not need to know about the International Organization for Standardization.
There actually is a compression format that used .jar as an extension, a would-be successor to .arj. It’s quite archaic though, and God help you if you find one in the wild at this point.
GNU is not a set of programs or libraries, it’s an operating system.
GNU packages is what you are referring to. But GNU itself is the name of the OS.
It was intended to be an OS and is if you use the Hurd kernel. In practice, Hurd isn’t really used, so it is just a bunch of programs and libraries. I guess it can go either way.
Agree. GNU Hurd is the OS. GNU Utils is a bunch of libre utilities that replicates the function of the UNIX utilities.
It is not “intended” to be an OS if you use GNU Hurd. That is literally the name of the operating system that launched the entire libre software movement. You don’t engage with it that way because linux comms don’t bother to educate their users at all.
Rms was right, “linux” users don’t care about history and “linux” communties stopped giving a shit.
