The Technical Twit

A rather unusual incident occurred last night: MBH, another close friend and I had gone out to Hawalli’s Bin Khaldoon Street to check out some computer hardware prices. While browsing, we entered one of the shops where a foreign man wearing a shirt and trousers was standing at the salesman’s desk asking for good antivirus software. His facial features resembled that of an Arab, however his english was better than most of the foreign workers here.

If you don’t know by now, as Linux and Mac users, my friends and I are considered ‘geeks’ when it comes to computers, so it was only natural for one of them to recommend Kaspersky to the customer. When the man heard that remark, he turned around to face him and that’s when it all fell apart.

Without quoting him, he said that the suggestion was either based on personal opinion, or a marketing opinion, but not a technical one. My friend assured him that it was not a marketing one as they have deployed Kaspersky software at their own workplace and it is proven secure. The man demanded to know what industry my friend was working in as he began to raise his voice. My friend replied that he works very close to the IT department of a local bank and that he is certain of his information.

At this point the man starts rudely yelling that he is working on a, “big project” that could, “save the economy” and he doesn’t want my friend’s opinion because he would rather speak with the technical people —and by technical people, he means the poor Bengali selling computer peripherals— insinuating that he was interrupted.

My friend calmly asked him why he had raised his voice and if he spoke arabic so that he could make himself clear. The man replied with a few words in arabic, then muttered something else in another language which none of us could identify. Thought he could impress us perhaps?

In the end, we let him be and walked out. MBH was quiet the whole time, my friend was furious from the reaction that he got but kept his cool —he was only offering advice after all— while I couldn’t help myself but laugh at the idea of a madman running a “big project” on an already-flawed operating system using only an off-the-shelf antivirus as a means of security!

If by any chance that idiot happens to be reading this, I suggest doing your own research before lashing out at others. What a pity; that anger must’ve stemmed from his own frustration with Windows’ malware and spyware.