Comments on: Technology's 10 most inexcusable failures

ZDNet's David Berlind has his dander up about half-baked technologies that still don't do what they're supposed to.

[Philips]

C'mon!

He is not only lame journalist - but he is lame user too: who else would use M$ Outlook?

[little_mean_pixie]

Why don't you?

Did you completely miss the point of the article? Why would
someone use MS Outlook? Why not? The fact is MS Outlook
should be good enough to use. There should not be these
problems.

[katamari]

What's M$?

Multiple Sclerosis?
Mangled String?
Mahogany Shelves?

Re: My Sandbox: Grow up, else crawl back into the hole from whence you came.

[Peter.Nitz]

I can take care of a minor one for you...

Save the following as 'PasteURL.vbs', make a shortcut to it, and assign Ctrl+Alt+V to it, and when you copy URLs w/ line-feeds in them, just hit Ctrl+Alt+V, and a new IE Window will pop up and navigate to the cleaned URL...
---Begin VBS File---
'Script to Paste/Navigate to URL after removing linefeeds
dim strURL, WshShell, objIE
set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set objIE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")

objIE.Navigate("about:blank")
strURL = objIE.document.parentWindow.clipboarddata.getData("text")

'Pull Out CRLFs
strURL=Replace(strURL,VBCRLF,VBNUL)

'Browse to fixed URL
objIE.Navigate(strURL)
objIE.Visible="true"

'Maximize IE Window (remove this line as desired)
WshShell.SendKeys("% x")

WScript.Quit
---End VBS File---

[sanjef]

VBS script attachments in Windows??!

You couldn't pay me to run a VBS script attachment on a Windows machine - that's how viruses and worms are spread! We should all (by now) be well trained not to open such attachments.

[zaznet]

Very Nice!

Yeah, this is a goodie, I've saved it down to a .VBS file on my system. Thanks for the trick!

For those who are worried about a virus, read the code, understand the code, and point out what part does anything malicious... Then do the same for any EXE on your system and since you CAN'T see the code you won't be able to.

[Raymond Paul]

Long URLs

Why aren't people using the services like snipURL.com, or even better why don't email programs have the same facility to shrink addresses?

[little_mean_pixie]

Because you shouldn't have to

That is the whole point of the article... you shouldn't need to use
workarounds at all because there should be nothing to work
around.

Why do you expect people to know about these things? People
do exist that basically use their computer "as-is" because they
don't know how to change it or about what to change. Using a
computer "as-is" should work 100%, there shouldn't be these
problems that requires add-ons etc.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Why are URLs broken in the first place

What fool keeps writing software that limits line lengths to 80 characters or inserts line breaks as if the whole world were still using fixed length dumb CRT terminals? It's time that the originating software stopped trying to format the email for the destination, the destination system already has to format the email anyway so why should the originating system be doing that too?

Good article...

You took the words right out of my mouth...

The cell phone carriers and manufacturers can provide so much more service and functionality if they wanted to...But they seem to be interested in bringing out new models that seems to have more hardware and no changes in the functionality...Hope manufacturers are read it and make these features available on all their cell phone models..

Welcome to the Wild West

The reason the other nations of the world (even the 3rd world!) have Cell technology 10 years ahead of the US is those countries have a STATE OWNED telcom infrastructure. Every vendor creates products that comply with a set of STANDARDS that work throughout the country, or even the hemisphere. Here in the "free" market we have the Balkinization of competition and a capitialistic privatization of the public air waves. Being 10 years behind in technology is the price we pay for our "capitalistic freedom."

Caution: Do not hold breath waiting for change!

To go with your palm/calendar problem

Why don't the different systems work together as one? Where I work we have a calendar system, they have a program that says it will sync it to the palm/pocketPC, but the company has a warning of not to use it, because chances are high it will wipe out the database on the palm/pocketPC. It has cause the problems were a lot of people don't use the calendared program, while others are trying to push every one to use it for the ease of scheduling meetings. The problem with it is since it does not sync to the palm/pocketPC, user A might thing they got a good time for user B and schedule the meeting, while user B never uses the calendar system, and never knows of the meeting, or user B might see the meeting and have to mail back that the time is no good since he/she has a prior appointment, that is not on the calendar system but in his/her palm/pocketPC.

Another tech disappointment

I remember, before the days of computers, when I could dial only 4 or 5 digits to call my next door neighbor. I live in rural Mississippi and now I have to dial 10 digits to call my next door neighbor who has the same area code AND prefix. Why can't the phone switching computers be smart enough to automatically assume the same area code and prefix as the origination of the call when only 4 digits are dialed?

right on

There was a big problem here in Pittsburgh a few years ago, we use to be able to dial only the last 7 digits, now we have to dial all 10, and in some cases if we want to dial long distance in the US we have to dial 1 + the 10 digits, since the phone system is setup to trap any one that might dial only a prefix, and some prefixes are the same as some area codes. It is annoying to have to dial all ten digits just to call next door. I do like your idea of only having to dial the last 4 digits for the same prefix. I don't see what would be so hard about programming the computers to get all the digits, if there is a 3+ second pause, assume the number has been fully dialed, look at the # of digits that came in, examine the originating number and then route the call as needed, it would be a simple subroutine.

Long phone numbers

This was brought up when the Philly burbs went to 2 area codes.

Back in Indiana, when they split area codes, we were notified that in 6 months, everywhere outside of the Indianapolis metro area was going to 765 from 317. Everyone made that transition.

But in Philly, they decided to keep the old area code and just add a new one. So people across the street from me in the new housing development are 484 and I'm on 610. Talk about confusion...

My feeling if you dial a number more than once, you put it in your cell phone phonebook. All 10 digits. Thank God its only 10 digits.

Maytag- depndabilty

Why is my computer not as dependable as Maytag?
I can tell you, you will soon see the fruits of my labor and never again have fear of virus, software corruption, or lost data again. Right out of the box machine that will be as reliable as turning on the lights or water.

TJR

[frankwick]

OS/2

Perhaps the most promising operating system of our era, and the IBM marketing machine let it wither. IBM's best marketing effort was to rename the OS to "Warp." Give me a break!!

If OS/2 had succeeded, we would be light years ahead of where we are now. I like XP (with SP2), but IBM had many of the same features nearly 10 years ago!

To be fair to IBM, it wasn't all their fault. The hardware requirements (which are paltry to today's standards) were considered outrageous at the time. When most people only had 1-2 MB of RAM, OS/2 needed much more than that (was it 8MB?).

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Great marketing, miserable support

The reason OS/2 failed to take the world by storm was simple, the tools required to develop software for OS/2 were much more expensive and cruder than the tools available to develop software for Windows. Since it was less expensive and simpler to develop for Windows, OS/2 found itself in the position of having less software and trying to catch up. By the time the development tools and such finally came up to par with the Windows tools it was already too late, the market had already chosen Windows.

system migration

I haven't tried it personally, but my new IBM ThinkPad came with a System Migration Tool which appears to do exactly what the author requests. It says it works only with IBM machines, but covers desktops as well as laptops.

http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/think/thinkvantagetech/systemmigration/

[katamari]

Living in the past.

Why're you talking about OS/2? You know, all you need is a Sinclair ZX-81.

Better yet, get an abacus. I'd rather use one than OS/2...

RE: OS/2

I used OS/2 2.1 in a production environment for about 2-1/2 years, and I can say that it was rugged, reliable and an absolute pain to install.

IBM has a history of brilliant ideas gone bad, like micro-channel architecture, java thin client workstations, and selling their PC business.

[Elbowgeek]

OS/2 Indeed!

It was truly way ahead of its time. It
approached working with files from a
document-centric point of view, in which one
worked very much as one does in a real office:
You pick up a piece of paper and start writing
on it. It was brilliantly conceived as a total
object-oriented environment.

It was sooo obvious that M$ nicked a lot of the
bare concepts for their GUI from OS/2 without
the brilliant thinking and conceptualising
behind them, so that we're mired in the
patchwork hodgepodge that is Windoze XP
today.

[zaznet]

Idea for IBM...

IBM has embraced "Open Source" but has yet to release OS2 (or the parts they own) as open source. If they were to do this, it would revive the forgotten OS.

I still feel that OS2 has plenty of strengths over Windows XP as far as stability and multi-tasking goes. My reason for using XP is the availability of software for it. IBM would do well to throw it out and let everyone have at it to tear it apart and build it from scratch. A true server OS that can run some Windows code!

The big problem is how much of the code they own, some of it was licensed to them by Microsoft who was a partner in the OS initial development that ditched IBM on the sidelines as soon as a new possibility came around.

[ordaj]

Helllllo? How about...

...security? It needs to be done right...and simply. And be hardware based, so we don't continue to have crack-of-the-month and leaked corporate data. Obviously, software alone isn't cutting it.

[zaznet]

Hardware isn't cutting it either...

There are plenty of hardware based security controls in place, but they also fail just as much as those we refer to as software based. In the end it is all software, the hardware is just pre-programmed with it's own software.

[tennapel]

Editing phonennumbers while keying in the number

If you'd go for a Bang & Olufsen telephone, you get a mobile phone like telephone book, with an iPod like interface to scroll through the number and you can edit a number while keying in. If you have more than one of those phones, the telephone book will be distributed to the other phones if you edit or add an entry on one system. (and the phones double as a volume remote for your tv, so you can turn down sound without having to find the remote of the tv first)

The technology is there, you just have to pick the right vendor.

You missed the point I think

He is saying that this stuff should be standard by now.

[post.messages]

Computers are not User Devices

There is so much to say here about this topic. But here is a short example so I can get back to work: I have a Linksys Media Extender. I love it. Except it is still a computer. Can you believe that sometimes it freezes up and that I have to reach BEHIND IT to flip a tiny power switch to reset it?????

The first freakin VCR's 25 years ago that weighed 40 pounds didn't require grandma to bend behind the TV and unplug it when something went wrong! And even then the only thing that went wrong was a physical tape getting jammed or whatever.

They've eliminated the physical problems and added these electronic problems that are far more difficult to understand and deal with for the average user.

Another example before I post: portable music players! How many times has your player froze up trying to play a song? The old Walkman would either eat your tape or just keep on playing until the batteries died. Simple and user-friendly.

[Steve Jordan]

Huh?

Today's devices give you reset buttons, instead of eating your media... and you have a problem with that? I'm all for reset buttons! They just need to be better at resetting, i.e., recovering from a specific problem WITHOUT restarting your PC as if you unplugged it anyway.

There are two problems....

1. Lack of standards. What would happen to the automobile indutry if every vehicle model produced ran on a different grade of gasoline? We blithely accept the lack of standards in the computer industry on everything from the basic formatting of a word processor document all the way up to the way relational tables and fields are built in large, mission-critical databases. Interaction between programs written by different vendors is nearly impossible.

2. "95% right is good enough" This attitude seems to pervade every aspect of the computer world. If a vendor delivers 95% of what the sales demo promised, their job is done, right? Now multiply that scenario times dozens of vendors in a large shop and see how many buisness processes actually make it from start to end. Four nines should be the MINIMUM standard for completion of a project.


Of course, then there are the sales weenies constantly pushing for a new release, a new feature, something to sell their presentation, and to heck with whether it actually works or not....

[ordaj]

Oooooh. AMEN. AmenAmenAmenAmen.

Did I say, "Amen?"

[katamari]

One small mistake...

The reality of the "WE NEED STANDARDS" argument can be summed up by Andy Tannenbaum, via the following quote:

"That's the nice thing about standards -- there's so many to choose from."

And if this doesn't suffice, try George Morrow:

"I believe in standards. Everybody should have one."

RE: Standards

Counterpoints in reverse order:

2: As a rule of thumb, every nine of reliability doubles the price, and you get what you pay for. The market determines what quality is tolerable, and if there were a market advantage to be gained by 99.9% quality, don't you think M$ would be using that to drive up prices (and associated stock valuations)?

1: The phrase "competing standards" seems destined to join "military intelligence" and "customer support" as infamous oxymorons.

standard front panel mb connector

I think it is time for the industry to adopt a single, standard motherboard connector for attaching case power switches, lights, usb ports, firewire ports, etc...

We have software bios but still have 20 little connectors you need fingers the size of a gnat to be able to connect.

Lions, Tigers And Bears, Oh My!

For an article on Tech's Top 10 Flops, this article has to be #1. If this is all the author could come up with then he should have choosen another topic. Surely there are some flops of real consequence. One could just look at CNET for all of the "Next Big Things" that never happened.

The author's choices seem to be little more than pet peaves about making his gadgets work. I wonder if he has heard the phrase "Get A Life".

I agree

Yeah, when I started to read this article I thought I was going to be reading about real failures, not a bunch of peeves.

Some of these things aren't bad ideas, but *top ten* failures of technology?

Talk about a misleading headline.

[TV James]

Now that you mention it...

Yeah, you're right. I didn't realize that until I read your comment, but yeah, these aren't big picture failures. A lot of them are seemingly stupid shortcomings that it's sometimes incredulous that they still plague us, but yeah, there are some bigger problems out there.

If I switched from Blockbuster to Hollywood Video, I wouldn't need a new DVD player.

[David Arbogast]

No offence, but...

Wow. I was expecting an article about technology shortcomings... no offence, but I think every complaint you've mentioned sounds to be a failure on the part of you and your planning. I honestly have a *simple* solution to nearly every problem you bring up. And some of those problems, like the phone dialing gripe, aren't even real. Plenty of phones work that way, but probably not the *free* one you got from your phone company. This really does sound like a nitpick list of "what's wrong in my life." If the technology has failed on these particular issues, it is because it was not obvious enough to get your attention.

Good subject..

The topic of the article is ripe for discussion.
I'd point out that a number of your issues are
solved simply by changing the applications you
use (for example, the address book and e-mail
issues). The problem for you is, how are you to
know that? Would you go as far as switching to
KDE on Linux if it solved your problem? The
answers are "you can't" and "probably not",
respectively.

Some of your complaints are functionality based.
You have a different opinion of how things
should work than the people that designed the
tool. That's to be expected because commercial
software is about profit maximization (aim for
largest available target demographic, minimize
development costs, increase margins, release
early, etc.). Commercial software will get the
majority of users the majority of the
functionality they want, and no more. If it's
not behaving right for you, chances are that
someone has written their own solution. The key
is to find it, and there's a good chance that
it: is open-source or shareware or Linux/UNIX
based, not well documented, and/or requires some
sort of semi-advanced knowledge to setup and
use. Finding something polished like Kontact
(KDE-based answer to Outlook, does most of the
things you ask) is fairly rare.

The problem isn't standards, either. There's
plenty of those. Standards are only adhered to
if the customer demands, unequivocably, that
they be. Why? Well, for the same reason there's
closed-source software. Conventional wisdom is
that if everyone agreed on how to do something,
you won't have a value added. Calendaring is a
good example. iCal is a standard that works
great and is widely supported in free-ware but
is largely ignored in the commercial
marketplace. Not that iCal can't do what the
user wants or the software is capable of, but
because if everyone used it, where would the
necessary product lock-in be to turn a profit?

The cell phone? There are all sorts of
regulations in the US that prevent a lot of
innovation there. Compound that with poorly
planned out networks, a multiplicity of
technologies, poor management, and an
environment where people are trying to figure
out why their phone has a video camera and an
MP3 player in it but can't make a simple phone
call with a stable connection and decent
reception. Why? US providers aim for phone
features over service because of long contracts,
and high cost of providing adequate service.

Why do we need to carry a computer?

There are computers almost everywhere I go. We should look towards creating a small device to carry with us that stores our encrypted log-in information. When I get to a computer it would wirelessly recognize me and allow me to securely connect to my home or work server like a remote desktop. Stop trying to redesign the wheel and start repaving the road it runs on.

No patches

Why can't someone develop software that works when it's first released. Why do I always have to download a half-dozen software patches as soon as I buy any type of software?

Well. . .

. . .probably because as complex as most software is, companies would probably go broke if they took the amount of time required to fully test their software in all conceivable environments.

I will grant they should do a better job, however, but I seriously doubt you'll ever see the end of patches in our lifetime--well, unless we develop software that can correct its own bugs. :)

[rickr765]

Daylight savings time.

It doesn't save any "daylight". It doesn't have any economic
benefit whatsoever. It costs the country huge amounts of money
in confusion, besides the monumental effort of changing
millions of clocks. It's boneheaded stupid, and things only seem
to be getting worse.

Actually. . .

. . .there is a demonstrated savings in energy costs as a result of daylight savings time.

The painful truth is that it does make economic sense.

And, to those who live a traditional nine-to-five working lifestyle, it *does* save daylight from their perspective. Who cares about the daylight you have while you're sleeping.

This also the reason it saves on energy costs. People don't have to turn on their lights for another hour, so that's an hour less they have them on at night.

Trust me, I wish there was no benefit to daylight savings time. That one 23-hour day really messes with my body's rhythm for the next few days; I'd rather not have it, either.

Are you kidding DayLight Savings is great

It is nice to have the extra hour of day light at the end of the day when most people are off of work (a normal 9 to 5 job)

For me I use it to get 3 hours of biking in at the end of the day. And still get home with out having to deal with the boneheads in the cars tring to kill me in the dark.

I will admit when I was younger I did not understand it, and I hated it, now that I have a reall job (9 to 5) I see daylight savings as a great thing.

[landlines]

...and it only exists because Congress didn't get the joke!!

Legend has it that Ben Franklin proposed changing the clocks to "save daylight" as a joke.

Unfortunately, he was talking to members of Congress at the time....and....well, some things haven't changed a bit!

[zaznet]

I Second That!

Daylight Savings Time causes more problems than the "Y2K Bug" and we do it to ourselves twice every year!

There are a dozen ways to program around it, the best being to keep all data in Standard Time and convert just to display. This still costs money to change the clocks on the billions of displays. I have at least 10 clocks in my home counting clocks on computers, VCRs, oven range, stereos and alarm clocks and wrist watches. My wrist watch has a handy dandy feature to switch to "time 2" which is NOT set to the DST offset (I have it set to my "work time zone" that differs from the timezone I live in) resulting in having to change the time manually anyway.

To compound matters even more a company that spans the entire US market has to change clocks multiple different times in a wave effect over the nation. In an instant you can lose billions of cumulative hours.

If you want to save energy, just tell everyone to get up earlier! That's exactly what you are doing anyway. It's not that hard really. I work an 11PM to 7AM (midnight shift) but that's if I were on the East coast. So at 9:00PM it's 11:00PM to my "work clock".

I've been working in the tech industry for more than a decade and have never seen DST be a "non issue" anywhere I've worked. It is doubly troublesome for those who work during the time change.

The cry of the masses..

Ponder for a moment the real issue at hand here.. The people crying and complaining about these little issues are the people that have to have "everything" yet want to know nothing.

Heres a thought.. stop being the sheep and start being the wolf. Think about how stupid someone looks standing on the side of the road looking at their broken car or flat tire that they have no concept of how or why it works... they just want to get in and drive.. well guess what.. stupid is as stupid does..

You want a computer.. you want to store your important information on it.. grow up.. open your mind a little and learn WHY and HOW things do what they do.

Im sick of people crying about things they dont understand. Heres a quote that most intelligent people live by.. learn it.. live it.. and if your really smart.. you may even figure out where it came from.

"We can never see past the choices we don't understand"

Bob

Short-sighted

Here's the problem.

If I learn my way around Outlook, that info is useless as soon as I move to another email product. Heck, it decays with every upgrade of Outlook itself! Ask yourself, how many packages can you be an expert in? How does a professional, whose real job is writing contracts, find the time to stay adept in three or four differnt software packages? Now what does that employee do when the company moves to a different product?

Once you learn how to drive a passenger vehicle, you can adapt to 95% of the cars on the road within an hour of use. Software companies had better wake up and start moving towards the same paradigm. The idea that it's acceptable to yank people out of the field and away from their primary buisness focus to train them to use products is going to go the way of the dinosaur.

If your product requires a three day class in order for an end-user to navigate comfortably, here's your sign. You have a problem.

[TV James]

Ignorant Idea

I wanted to start a whole T-Shirt company around ideas like this...

"If everyone drove faster, we wouldn't have rush hour."

Your posit that if we all learned how the computers work, maybe we wouldn't have these gripes. That might work for the kinds of people we are, reading these posts. Wouldn't work for people like my wife or the 100 staff that my team supports.

We have a saying around here: "Don't Make Me Think." Comes from a really great book on web design: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0789723107/qid%3D1113517131/002-7251720-8145646

Basically, if you have to think, then we haven't done our jobs correctly in IT. Their job is to answer phones or run departments. Our job is to make sure they can send e-mail or view their boss' shared calendar. They shouldn't have to know why Microsoft asks them to do it a certain way. They just need to know that they can reliably expect it to work. And work the same way tomorrow that it did today.