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Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine (arstechnica.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine::Google accused DOJ of aiming to force people to use “inferior” search products.

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[–] 11 points 3 years ago (9 children)

Not sure why "old+judge" automatically equals "tech illiterate." The judge in another high-profile Google case taught himself to code

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    The article you link says the judge already knew how to code beforehand.

    He’s been coding in BASIC for decades, actually, writing programs for the fun of it: a program to play Bridge, written as a gift for his wife; an automatic solution for the board game Mastermind, which he is immensely fond of; and most ambitiously, a sprawling multifunctional program with a graphical interface that helps him with yet another of his many hobbies, ham radio.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Yes, because he taught himself.

    “At some point, I looked at the BASIC book and decided I would learn that.” He taught himself straight from the book, which he recalls was “pretty straightforward.”

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    It's because these things work by probabilities. Generally when you think of older people who aren't working as IT professionals, you wouldn't expect them to be great with computers - and you'd probably be right.

    Do you really think that a judge that taught himself to code would be common-place and would be the norm? That judge is awesome, but he is very clearly an outlier lol

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (4 children)

    I think the probability of somebody who had to pass a Barr and likely worked as a lawyer in 2005 knowing the difference between Google and firefox is pretty damn high tbh

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    I really don't mean to be rude however I don't think there's any polite sounding way of asking this, have you worked in IT? You would be surprised how many lawyers, doctors, etc all kinds of genius professionals absolutely do not know how computers work, and even who don't care to learn them.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    You're good, but no I haven't worked in IT, I've job hopped in manufacturing most of my life I just went to high school in the early 2000s and in my experience those particular things were ubiquitous enough to be common knowledge. I fully understand that there's people out there who have no idea how to operate a computer, it also makes sense to me why an IT person would see the most numerous and most extreme examples of this, but I think precisely because of that you have a bias in the other direction because everybody who has to come to you is likely an idiot, that doesn't mean everybody who isn't an IT professional is also an idiot.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago*

    I agree, that's a decent point, but I have a counterpoint. I think with sheer numbers alone, especially when it comes to the context of computers would give more accurate results even if they could be somewhat biased. A larger sample size is more likely to give a more accurate idea of a picture of what's going on. I also think if you compare an IT person, versus a non-IT person, the IT person is going to be able to identify Firefox being a search engine or a browser 10 times out of 10 lol, whereas with a non-IT person, those numbers could be anywhere except for 10/10, most likely anyway. lol

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