ICSI has hosted numerous talks by many of the World's top computer scientists. Topics covered have ranged from the completeness of NP to the incompleteness of modern speech recognition systems. However, none of these talks have directly answered the most common question in computing: "Why doesn't my computer work?".

In the talk, the ICSI System Manager will attempt to attack this, and related, problems. He will go over answers to some typical user requests, and in the process illustrate some of the features and limitations of the ICSI computing environment. There will also be some discussion of architecture and future plans.

The talk will aim to provide information to help ICSI users in their work, but failing that we will also explain:

- why NT is better than Unix
- why it was a good idea to by CISCO stock two years ago
- illegally setting up your own E-commerce site at ICSI

There will be an open question session at the end of the talk followed by a brief tour of the ICSI computer room.