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Technology Turn-Off Time? | 22 comments (22 topical) | Post A Comment
Technology problems[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#20)
by Anonymous User on Tue Oct 19, 2004 at 11:28:22 AM PDT

I made the original comment to Ed. So a few replies.... Advanced technology has been and remains my livelihood. My first cell phone was purchased, for $1500. My first Apple computer came in 1978. My first PC came in 1983. The problem isn't new technology; it is a lack of standards and a lack of proper support. It is also an increasing rush to market which isn't supported by the maturity of the design (not the maturity of the technology.) And when the product doesn't work as advertised, or as the manual details, or as the designer intended - the buyer is out of luck. Far from the "cave" issue, I demand that the technology work, since I do use the advance features. And they must work as a system, the PDA to the laptop, the phone to the PDA and the laptop. And as I said, I can't have one device do it all, since my work doesn't allow me to carry all of the devices everywhere. Sometimes I have to check one at the door, sometimes another. As such, I stress the interconnectivity much more than the average user. As for dial-up having the same problems as broadband, sorry, but the risks of dial-up compared to broadband are like those of getting hit by a car while standing in a parking lot for thirty minutes a day compared to standing in the middle of the freeway for 24 hours straight. The threat comes faster, updates have to come more often, and vigilance must be higher. Until last week I only needed internet access at home to accommodate text e-mail and, formerly, internet banking. My employer provides 100MBS link at work, so I didn't need broadband at home. Things change, and I installed Verizon DSL over the weekend on the four computers I have. But by reducing the problem to all WiFi cards and router from the same supplier, and all else being standardized at minimum configuration, the job went well. And it is the productivity versus time spent in maintenance that this the important issue to me. Each additional function moved into the software/hardware world from traditional venues translates into time spent monitoring, upgrading, etc. And upgrading one app can and sometimes does affect the operation or settings on all. And there is the rub. The companies are not putting out simpler systems to operate and maintain. They are each more and more complicated. Compare that to a TV. In 1960, the TV had twelve controls to twiddle, including various hold functions, and you best believe they had to be twiddled-with just about every time you turned it on. Today's TVs are, thanks to phased-lock-loops, much simpler to operate, with on/off, volume, and channel. (VCRs are another story.) For the economy to expand there has to be increased demand for new devices and applications. But if the old applications have reached a plateau in simplicity, and are becoming more complex, then consumer exhaustion insures the market cannot expand. Plus there is the rising risk of alienation of the user from technology all together. As for the banking snafu, there were two, and they blew away the productivity advantage by ten to one, not to mention being expensive. Right now, I have time to write this because I'm on a netmeeting. The software we invested in to save the five minutes of transferring files via e-mail has proven balky and difficult to use, so this is being written in the wait. Essentially, I have done precisely what some of the comments have said, I have throttled back to those functions I can't get along without. I am computer dependant, having started at the age of 14 with an IBM 1130, and continuing to today. But because of this, to me the computer long ago lost its luster as anything but a tool. And if I spend too much time sharpening the tool, and too little using it - then I turn to another tool that does the job as well without all the fuss. Even if it is a stone axe.

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Formatting options[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#21)
by pfaut on Tue Oct 19, 2004 at 11:45:55 AM PDT

I think it's time to add some inteligence to the posting code.  It ought to be able to detect that there is no HTML encoding within someone's post and treat it as plain text.  The above is quite easy to read if you look at the page's source as the poster expected the site to format his paragraphs for him but instead got his dozen paragraphs merged into one when the site accepted it as HTML instead of plain text.

I know there's a selection box where you're supposed to tell the system if you are posting HTML or not but it seems many people forget to set it.

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