It's stupid and pedantic to be as bothered as I am by this, and it got me thinking; what else is HN up tight about?
Ah since we are doing this, I have to share a story. I worked as IT support for a university while I was an undergrad. I had a professor call me demanding that I recall an email that he sent to all of his students (outside of the university email system) because he sent out social security numbers by accident. When I told him that wasn't possible, he flipped out on me, because it was my fault. There is no reasonable response with the exception of laughing...which is what I did after he hung up on me.
I had to share that as my support days flashed before my eyes reading this thread.
"Go to www.ourlamesite.com BACKSLASH user".
What's most interesting about the error is that it's almost always one error only (slashes referred to as backslashes, not the reverse, as if "back" makes it correct usage), refers to punctuation we all see and use on a regular basis, and involves extra syllables.
It's also counterintuitive. Asking yourself how to write "3 slash 4" will almost always result in your correctly figuring out what to call the two symbols even when you're not sure. It's a bit like dyslexia, I suppose, but in reverse. You wouldn't hear a dyslexic call a forwards f "backwards f", I wouldn't think.
"I have a million pound idea, you can make it for me and I'll give you 10% of what I make with it?"
"You're a programmer so why can't you figure out why my laptop is over heating?"
"Can you make me a website? It'll probably only take a couple of hours."
"Programming is easy, all you do is sit at a desk all day" - An accountant, July 2012
Family tech support.
Referring to IE, and Chrome, and Firefox as 'the internet'.
Googling full URL's (this is extremely common for non-technical people)
Moving a 200GB iTunes library from one computer to another
However, as others have mentioned, folder is the proper terminology in a Windows environment.
People that think ".org" is still an obscure TLD and say every letter [oh-are-gee]. I listen to jazz at http://kcsm.org and they're a huge offender in my daily life.
It's like taping a picture to a piece of paper, putting the paper in the envelope, and snail mailing that to me. Instead of simply putting the picture in the envelope and sending that.
EVERY. TIME.
</rant> :)
I mean, I get kleenex, hoover, and tarmac as generic terms - but "iPhone".
I even heard one kid talking about her Android BlackBerry - which meant her phone had a physical keyboard.
This does not mean I agree.
However, I have at one time done all those thing and more. To me, pure IT is great fun but it's way too easy and not challenging. It's not until I move up a step to building web servers and coding that I really get that feeling of accomplishment.
I think IT is kind of a master of use of software, and hardware. You can build the hardware, and use the software, though you may not know what's behind it. I think this is why people assume "IT guys" can fix anything. To some extent, they can, but only because they've seen similar things. IT is a whole lot about seeing something before, and knowing how to debug and troubleshoot.
Pure IT is very fun, if your company has the budget to fund it. There are some very hard bare metal problems that need to be solved, including network topology, disaster recover, failovers, automation, and process efficiency improvements. Again, most of this stuff happens when you have lots of IT infrastructure, not when you're small.