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What's the Worst Technical Feature You've Used?
kooky45 asks: "In an effort to make our lives easier and more entertaining, technology designers pack more and more features into electronic devices, but often they're more nuisance than they're worth. An earlier article on LEDs discussed some of these. Another example is my Nokia 6320i mobile phone which has a back lit screen that drains the battery life at an alarming rate. When the phone is not in use the back light is off; if the battery starts to run low, it gives me regular warnings by beeping and turning the back light on! What other examples of designer stupidity have you seen?"
Or just call the dealer you bought the car from, give them the VIN, and they'll give you the code over the phone. I've been doing this off and on for a decade, and haven't had to give them anything else.
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
Speaking of Microsoft (Clippy), back in the days of DOS 6.something (6.2 ?), when upgrading from a previous version of OS, if the Mircosoft installation program detected something besides a DOS partition, it would blithely inform you that it had detected something non-Mircosoft and it would take care of it for you!
That was a disappointment.
I lost a lot of work until I found the work-around.
Best regards.
In Handspring Treo 180, there was a "World Clock" program that could display time in any timezone. It allowed to change my current timezone, but it would not change the time! So I move between timezones, I would need to update the timezone AND the time. Perhaps the software was not tested on real word travelers.
You are experiencing a bug with Microsoft Update, not WGA. It's been driving us crazy here at work for months now.
Thankfully, Microsoft finally released a hotfix for it.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
http://www.myopenx.com/home.htm
I've broken scissors too. Never again! Never again!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
It's a pretty big tank. One US gallon. Seems like a good idea, since I'm in the US, and windshield washer fluid is sold by the gallon. Just buy a gallon, fill the tank, done.
Except that's not how it works. I've got a "washer fluid low" sensor and light on the dash. It comes on when there's about 1/10th of a gallon left. Plenty of time to put more in before running out.
So I go to the store, buy a gallon, pour in (by now) 15/16ths of the bottle, and now the tank is full. And I'm left with a 1 gallon jug with 1 cup of fluid in it. So the almost empty jug has to sit in the garage or the trunk until I use a little fluid.
Sure would have been nice to have a 1.1 gallon tank.
I am not a crackpot.
Since I'm posting as an AC, I doubt this will get seen, but what the heck:
This is not the fault of Motorola, it is the fault of your wireless company. Motorola allows the phone company to add any features to the phone that they want, and allows them to "lock" several features so they cannot be changed/deleted/etc. There is no way to get around this on the phone itself, however if you connect it to your computer there are several utilities that can fix the problem. Check out http://www.motomodders.net/ or http://wiki.howardforums.com/index.php/Motorola for details on the fun stuff you can do with a computer link.
There is a reason those messages are so laborious with unnecesary pauses and bad order of menu options etc...
... another 10-20c... so one excahnge = 4 minutes of talk time. 4 minutes on the phone could accomplish a lot more... and uses way more bandwidth, but once again the tel-co's have it setup so that the more laborious the process, the more it costs you.
The time you spend with your answering machine is money to the Tel-Co. If you have Pay-As-You-Go it DEFINTLY counts as 10c/minute. Considering that they bill you for two minutes even if you hang up at 61 seconds, its a very easy way for them to make millions.
No joke, the more time you spend on the phone going through the various menu's the more time gets racked up, even if your on a plan your still burning minutes just trying to leave a message on someone elses phone.
Text messaging is almost worse in its cost vs value, a singel text message is generally 10-20c (sending party and recieving party), and generally requires at least one reply
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
It's actually "Paper Cassette".
Because I know you care. <3
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.