Category: Technology

Over-Complexity

Drive Time, Old Fartism, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

The nice thing about getting into a car, back in the day when I first got into a car is that it was like a fork:  everything about it was self-evident, and it was easy to use (hold the end without the pointy bits, stab your food with it and convey said food to your mouth).  It even allowed for different styles of use, e.g. the American (hold the food still while cutting it into baby-sized pieces, then transfer fork to right hand, slide the fork under the food and shovel said food into your mouth).

I pass no judgment about the American way other than it’s fucking stupid and it’s the way a child eats.

Anyway, the same methodology applied to a car of an earlier era:  you open the door with the handle thoughtfully attached to the outside, get in and sit down;  then insert key into ignition and turn the engine on, put the car into gear, release the handbrake and off you go.  (A couple of steps have been omitted for sake of brevity.)  Then when you get to your destination, you pull up the handbrake, turn off the car, open the door with the handle thoughtfully supplied, and get out to go to the pub.

None of the above required a user’s manual or anything other than a thirty-second explanation from an adult.

Compare that simple procedure to this concatenation of silliness:

Jeremy Clarkson was test driving a brand-new Maserati MC20 when he and Lisa decided to drive the motor to their local pub, where they were planning to indulge in a fish pie, but the couple soon realised they couldn’t get out.

Jeremy said: ‘We were in the car and five minutes after that we were in the pub’s car park. And five minutes after that we were still in the pub car park because neither of us could find anything that even remotely resembled a door handle’.

‘Eventually I turned on my phone’s torch and found the little button that you must press to unlatch the door, and then we were out.

‘And then I was back inside very smartly because the car was starting to roll down a hill.’

After finally discovering a button that activated the handbrake, Jeremy thought he had fixed the issue only to hear ‘bonging noises’ when he got out of the vehicle.

‘After an hour of swearing and wondering out loud whether it would have been easier to stay at home and make a soufflé out of ant hearts, I called a colleague, who said that to engage ‘park’ and turn out the lights I had to stop the engine twice.

‘So I pushed the button to turn the motor off, then pushed it again. Which caused it to start. I then called the colleague again, who said that when I pushed the button the second time my foot had to be off the brake pedal. And he was right, which meant that we just caught last orders.’

Let’s hear it for Technology!

As Longtime Readers all know, I have a long and abiding passion for Maserati cars, despite the dreaded which causes fits of laughter among American engineers and drivers.

Now imagine that same applied to a system which (nominally) controls the “hand”-brake and door-“handle” functions, in addition to lights, mirrors, windshield wipers, turn indicators, window- and trunk controls, ignition, transmission and (gawd help us) onboard computer.

Compared to this mobile disaster area, even my old Fiat 124 looks like a dream come true.

Manual everything — gearbox, ignition, doors, windows, seats, rearview mirrors, turn indicators, trunk opener and even, on occasion (!), windshield wipers.

All this modern shit?  You can stick it.

Even for an MC20.

 

Reason #472

Nannies, Technology, Wokism

…why I won’t use Microsoft Word:

The function produces a purple line beneath words or phrases it deems problematic while offering more ‘inclusive’ alternatives, and is included on the Office 365 version of Microsoft Word from 2019 onwards.

Recommended improvements to your usage:

  • Whitelist > Accepted List
  • Postman > Postal Worker
  • Mankind > Humanity
  • Maid > House Cleaner
  • Showgirl > Performing Artist
  • Master > Expert
  • Mistress > Lover
  • Manpower > Workforce
  • Heroine > Hero

For the record, I quit using Microsoft Office decades ago, for all sorts of reasons, among them:

  • Word has too many features that I can’t, don’t or won’t use
  • Excel is a shit spreadsheet program (Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro were far better)
  • Don’t get me started about Outlook, ever since MS killed Express
  • None of the other Office products are of any use to me since I retired, and I preferred Paradox to Access anyway when I was still working
  • MS Office is WAY too expensive for its actual utility.

So I use Apache OpenOffice, which while it has a few drawbacks of its own, is at least free (Writer and Calc work just fine for what I do), and Thunderbird for email.

I remember pointing the Son&Heir at OpenOffice many years ago when he was at college, and he found it worked for all his writing assignments and math homework.  He’s been grateful to me ever since, and I don’t think he’s ever used MS Office (although since he moved to Global MegaBanc Inc. that may have changed, I must ask him).

So fuck Microsoft, fuck their wokedom and by the way, fuck Windows 11, for which I’ve started getting those irritating little spam pop-up messages.

Accursed Menus

Business, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Here’s a rant after my own heart:

I was puzzled, so I checked the website and got nowhere. The password I’d used for the account was suddenly not accepted.
So I phoned the number on the website. And got nowhere. This time the problem seemed to be my PIN.
Or maybe my account number. Or maybe my customer ID. Or my PCN number. Whatever that was. The recorded message didn’t really care. I gave up.
I had become the innocent victim of the new digital age in which the algorithm reigns supreme.
There was a time when a human being with a problem talked to another human being who helped to get it sorted. Those days are gone.
The lives of big companies and government officials are made so much easier if we customers or clients can be kept at arm’s length.

The online experience is bad enough — but when you dare to call the “Customer Care” (ha!) telephone number, that’s really when the SHTF.

A combination of the two above means that I will be changing my Medicare supplemental insurer, because it seems to be the only way I can punish these assholes for their bovine indifference to my situation.

I’ll let Humphrys finish this rant:

Increasingly, we are being deprived of even a semblance of what we once thought of as customer service.
We are left talking to a computer screen behind which sits not another human being, but an algorithm. Or a recorded telephone announcement that may or may not respond to our pleas for help.
It’s as though any human compassion in the relationship between customer and provider has simply disappeared. And that’s very sad.

Or enraging.  Ten guesses which side I’m on.

Tech Update

Technology

Back when I wrote about getting a new phone, I said this:

…and I bitched and moaned about that for a few hundred lines.

Well… GOOD NEWS !!!

I can now report that this can be changed, thanks to New Wife, who asked me if I’d done the latest update.  Of course I hadn’t, so she gave me a gentle slap on the head and said, “Do it now.”

Okay, I can take a hint as well as the next man, so I did that with only some token grumbling.  Then she said, “You’re going to love me for this.”

Gentle Readers, all is well and my equanimity has returned to only mild annoyance and irritation (my natural state).  For those people who have Motorola phones or (I think) use Android operating software, the command string is:

  • SYSTEM
  • GESTURES
  • SYSTEM NAVIGATION
  • [select] 3-BUTTON NAVIGATION

…and the familiar “Back / Home / Show Open Programs” symbols will be restored.

Don’t thank me;  thank New Wife.

And by the way, this option may have been available from the word go, but I never saw it and nor did New Wife.  We think it was part of an update, but we can’t be sure.  Whatever:

Unnecessary Change

Technology, Two-Minute Hate

I am often teased about my resistance to change, but in fact I’m quite comfortable with it, when it is both necessary and/or beneficial.

Case in point:  last week I got sick of my phone performing random changes on me — e.g. switching to “Airplane” mode (a 3-button operation, so not a “fat-finger” or “butt-dial”  phenomenon) without my input — and a battery that had been charged t0 100% but had somehow shrunk to less than 50% by the time I got to the supermarket.  New Wife was having similar issues to mine — also un-prompted but different in type — and as we’d bought them at the same time some four years ago, we decided to get replacements together over the weekend.

Because I have ZERO tolerance for inanimate objects and even less with technology, we went off to the T-Mobile store at the mall so as to preclude situations like me hurling the new phone against the wall.  I had done a little research beforehand and decided on the model already (Motorola 4G something because I don’t trust 5G just yet) and as luck would have it, the store had them in stock — the last two, by the way — and so we sat down and got the friendly young customer service kid (thanks, Carlos) to perform the magic which would transfer the data on the old broken phones over to the new ones.  (It says something for the modern generation that he was able to perform said magic on both phones simultaneously without any hassle whatsoever.)

Of course, there was some work left to do — reinstalling the few apps I need to keep my life organized — but that was no problem because I’d done it before with the old phone, so easy job.

Then as I started to familiarize myself with the new phone’s operation, my irritation started its engine and the rev counter began to head towards the red line.  For starters, the familiar operation buttons at the bottom of the screen

…had been replaced by the inscrutable

…which requires one to swipe up to go back to the Home screen.  The “Back” and “Show Open Programs” buttons?  Gone without a trace, sunk quicker than the fucking Bismark.  You can show the open programs, but that requires two or three non-intuitive steps to get there, and I still haven’t found a replacement for the Back button.

WHY?  What possible user benefit does that change provide?

Next comes the incoming phone call answering screen, changed from:

…with, once again, a single button:

And because I get few phone calls anyway, I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to send the poxy call to Voicemail if I’m busy or don’t recognize the caller.

One again:  WHY?

The older screens were both functional, easy to understand and required absolutely no change, nor time spent in learning how to work the fucking things.

I remember back in the day that when buying a new car, learning how to work the thing required about 30 seconds — where’s the indicator lever, where are the light switches, how does the fan/AC work — and you could drive straight out the dealership and carry on with your life.

Now?  You need a 30-minute tutorial from the sales rep, and you’d better not lose your instruction manual (which itself requires a tutorial on how to use it, because car manufacturers insist on trying to make a single manual cover all the different models at once, rendering the thing as inscrutable as the Rosetta fucking Stone).

The new phone bullshit is even less justifiable.

I haven’t even mentioned the fact that the new phones use the smaller USB-C plugs, thus rendering all my old backup power cords redundant and requiring the purchase of a few new ones, to drive up the transaction cost.

Technological change is fine, but making it more difficult to operate on the most basic level does nothing but cause unnecessary aggravation.

New Wife locked the patio door before leaving for work so that my new phone wouldn’t turn into a submarine (the pool is but a few yards away from our apartment).  She is wise, and knows me well.

The only positive thing about all this is that the new (and larger) phone still fits in my car’s phone holder, so there’s that.

Errrr No Thank You

Technology, Two-Minute Hate

I’ve already griped about the new Win11 OS from Microsoft (motto:  “It would be a great world without customers”), and now all my fears are being realized.  My laptop’s CPU (“brain” for those like me) is probably not going to be able to handle this shiny new gizmo*:

Windows 11 is arriving later this year as a free upgrade for Windows 10 users, but many are discovering that their hardware isn’t compatible. Microsoft has altered its minimum hardware requirements, and it’s the CPU changes that are most surprising here. Windows 11 will only officially support 8th Gen and newer Intel Core processors, alongside Apollo Lake and newer Pentium and Celeron processors.
That potentially rules out millions of existing Windows 10 devices from upgrading to Windows 11 with full support, and even devices like Microsoft’s own Surface Studio 2 which the company is still selling right now for $3,499. Older devices that aren’t officially supported will be met with a warning during the Windows 11 install that the upgrade is not recommended, but the OS should still install.

Nope;  not gonna do it.  I have absolutely no idea what processor I have — oh wait:  according to the little sticker on the laptop bed that I’ve never bothered to scrape off, it’s an “Intel Core17 8th Gen (whatever that means) — so maybe I’ll be okay… [scans link]  okay, there it is:  Win11 will work with the “Intel 8 (Coffee Lake)” WTF does that mean?  “Coffee Lake”?  Why the hell do I have to clutter my (own) memory with their fucking internal buzzwords for a whizbang piece of silicon or whatever it’s made of?

I also note that the Intel 8 is the oldest processor that can handle Win11, so — and forgive me for being cynical — whenever the Microsoft Tech Gods decide that Win11 v3.0 is the Best Thing Evah, guess which processor will drop off the list first?

Then there’s this gobbledygook:

Windows 11 would also require TPM capable of at least 1.2 support and UEFI Secure Boot. Both of these technologies are designed to improve the security of Windows, and prevent malware and ransomware from tampering with encryption keys and other secure elements of the operating system. Now, it appears Microsoft may be mandating TPM 2.0, but again, we’re checking on that.
While Microsoft has required TPM support for OEM hardware certification since Windows 10, it hasn’t actively required Windows to have this fully enabled. That’s changing in Windows 11, and it means if your laptop or PC shipped without these BIOS options enabled then you’re going to have to go searching for a setting to switch on.

And the last bit of fuckery:

Microsoft is also requiring a front-facing camera for all Windows 11 devices except desktop PCs from January 2023 onwards.

As it is, I cover my camera lens with tape except when doing videocalls, so I don’t really care about that — until Win11 mandates that my camera has to be on at all times when using their poxy software… and then:

Just because.

*thanks to Ace for the link