[paulette449]

A guy i worked with called me over to try to help him figure out why his apple wireless mouse wasn’t working. I replace the batteries, restarted bluetooth, restarted the computer - i’d spent quite a bit of time working thru my mental checklist when the guy just started moving the mouse furiously, as if he expected that would re-animate it, and the cursor. It didn’t. But out of the corner of my eye i noticed the cursor moving on a screen two desks away, a desk whose occupant was out to lunch. I asked the inevitable question and the guy admitted that his mouse had stopped working, figured the batteries had run out (they had) and he was in a hurry so he grabbed somebody else’s mouse instead. To this day i don't know whether i’m more flabbergasted that he omitted to mention this when he first called me over, or that he thought the act of placing a mouse in front of his computer was all it took for the pair to communicate.

[userbinator]

or that he thought the act of placing a mouse in front of his computer was all it took for the pair to communicate.

If his mental model of "wireless" is "IR remote control", that makes perfect sense. Some other RF remote controls work by proximity-only too.

[ProllyInfamous]

Whether or not intentially, the client is almost always lying to you.

I've seen the same wrong machine interface happen at checkout lanes with the handheld scanners (you'd think they'da kept them corded to their base station?).

[bruce511]

>>Whether or not intentially, the client is almost always lying to you

There's a TV drama called House. It's ostensibly a medical drama with the titular Dr House having to diagnose people who provide incomplete information.

It took me 3 episodes to realise its actually a show about IT support (but who would watch that right?)

His catch phrase was "everyone lies" - and the first rule of IT support is that you should never believe a word they say.

These days remote desktoping almost takes the fun out of it. I now last about 2 minutes before demanding TeamViewer (or whatever.) The days of spending 45 mins on the phone listening to someone not tell me about the big prominent error message on their screen are over.

So next time you're watching House remember, this is an IT support allegory.

[atoav]

To be frank if swapping is a possibe problem in a place with more than two periferals add a label that ties it to a machine.

[mcfedr]

And to be fair, that's how a Bluetooth mouse should work.

[lmz]

Have you really thought of the security implications of automatic unprompted pairing by proximity?