A list of tech-y hates

I thought I'd post a list of things that computing people say or do that I hate. I'm sure a lot of people will agree with at least some of them.

1) Sensible, educated people referring to their computers as "boxen"., e.g. "looking forward to getting my windows 2000 boxen to talk to my Debian box". It's a computer, a PC, possibly even a machine (though to me that suggests something with a lot more moving parts), not a box. And if you are going to use box, use a plural that actually exists.

2) Linux/Windows/Mac zealots who think that they're choice of OS is the be-all-and-end-all of any computing decision. Erm... nope. None of them are perfect for everything, they all have advantages and disadvantages.

3) People who want to go against the flow... when everyone loved Windows and hated Linux, they were deliberately talking up Linux. When everyone started loving Linux, they suddenly start to point out it's weaknesses and fall back to Windows. Changing your mind is fine, especially over many years, but I'm sure most people who do so do it just to be "different" and obviously more clever than those of us who are just catching on to new trends.

4) People who go out and buy every bit of hardware or software possible, those who have used every OS, every application, every processor and every motherboard. More money than bloody sense. The expert is the one still chugging happily along with a 486 who can do stuff with it that you can't on your shiny new 10GHz.

5) Similarly, those who believe you have to have the latest and greatest because it's obviously better and everybody should be able to afford it.

6) Those people who don't know how to agree to disagree and have to win every argument.

7) Those people who have to swear, curse, use every "noob" word or insist on using that lettering style where numbers replace letters and no word is ever spelled correctly. Speak English, if you want to learn new words don't learn them from your twelve-year-old "hacker" friends.

8) Anybody who joins any sort of online team game and pisses about without actually trying to play properly. If you want to play about, go do it on an empty server, or with your own mates or in a single-player game.