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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?"
Ugh, the worst feature ever. It would turn on silently if you held down one of the outer buttons (which my pocket did, by itself, frequently.) Then, when a call came in, it would shout, over speakerphone, "Call from... <silence, because I hadn't entered any voice recognition names>"
Thankfully, they removed it from the more recent models. It was so damn disruptive...
I have a microwave that refuses to start cooking until it scrolls a 30 second message on a 1 line display.
I SO want to get out my jtag programmer
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
In some newer GM vehicles, the door chimes and "possibly" some other features (some rumours have floated around about airbags, although I highly doubt it) are tied into the radio unit. If you want to upgrade to an aftermarket deck (such as an MP3 unit), you either need to have the radio unit installed in parallel in the trunk with a special wiring kit, or have a module installed that takes over that functionality. That module costs an extra $150, i think.
When I asked GM about the stupid design, they told me that they weren't sure if it was even technically possible to install an aftermarket deck, and that this is something that the majority of consumers want.
Gore-Tex in running shoes. The water will get in at the top of the shoe (as it is only 3cm high), and never get out, since Gore-Tex is watertight. Besides, when running, my feet sweat, so water will end up inside the shoe even if it isn't wet outside.
Handsfree with short cords. I still haven't found one that allows me to have my phone in my side pocket in my pants. And I still haven't found a bluetooth handsfree with traditional lanyard design.
DVD-covers. They are larger than CDs for no good reason.
Flatscreen TVs with grounded powerchords. Apparently they cause fires because the antenna is grounded too, only not to the same "ground".
I think that's it for now
My first sub-brick-sized mobile phone was a Samsung flip phone. The "flip" section was designed to only cover the keypad, leaving the screen, menu nav keys, and send/end keys exposed at all times. It also had a key-guard that, by default, would automatically engage when the phone was closed. Clever, right? (Well, for its day, it was.)
There was only one problem: To disengage the key-guard, you had to hold down the always-exposed menu select button! Worse, if the key-guard was disengaged while the phone was closed, it wouldn't turn on again until you opened and re-closed the phone.
I don't know how many times I killed the key-guard as I leaned against a desk or something. Most of the time, I just ended up deep in some unexpected menu, but I recall at least two accidental phone calls initiated while the phone was in my pocket. Eventually, I got a case, and tucked some paper under the button area to make it harder to accidentally kill the key-guard.
Samsung must have gotten the hint, because my next phone didn't have any exposed keys when the flip was closed.
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Speaking of Slashdot, you know when you browse at -1, nested mode in a story that has 400+ comments and it gets broken up into multiple pages? So you click on page 2, and there's the very same comment that started out page one. Then you click on page 3 and still the same damn comment starting the page? Same thing with page 4 or 5 or 6. Go to the HOF and click on a story with 4000 comments. You have to click to about page 25 before you see a comment that is not the first or second post from page 1.
That's been a Slashdot bug for years. I even reported it like 10 times at source forge. It just gets closed with some snide comment, like "stop submitting this bug" or "this is not a bug". It's a bug, they could at least leave it open or mark it unfixable.
You know the single molecular layer stuff with infinite strength that is used to encapsulate CDs, or the thicker and even stronger stuff that small electronic devices like CF drives come in. I once broke a pair of scissors trying to cut one of those open. I am surprised some smart lawyer doesn't do a class action lawsuit against the manufacturers of that sort of packaging - there must be lost of people who have injured themselves trying open these packages.
Symbols without text for interfaces. Most people don't want to have to hover their mouse over every damn button just to figure out what it is. I don't care if it is an animation. I just want to know what the button does. Motorola and Samsung are horrible about this... making animated menus that take forever to navigate because of picture loading time. Favorite phone ever was a Sanyo 8200 that had distinct buttons for the most important features (camera, contacts, etc.) and allowed you to reprogram almost all of the buttons on the phone. Biggest pet peave: phones that have hard coded buttons to optional (only 19.95 a month) features that many people choose not to get. I hope Verizon is listening here, because I don't want 4.99 ring tone shortcut as the biggest button on my phone.
It's not an issue on the "new Discussion system", which just puts them all on one page anyway. Perhaps that's why they didn't bother fixing it recently (although it's been around since *long* before then).
Yeah, it's also not an issue if you view in threaded mode too. But I want to see every single comment expanded when I read Slashdot. Threaded and the new system collapse them. Nested is the only way to have them all open (at least that I know of.)
As far as submitting the bug, I think the last time I submitted it was around 2002 or 2003.
The entire user interface for Adobe Acrobat (the full version, not the free reader) is a nightmare. I have used thousands of GUI programs and never found anything that comes close to sucking so much. How a company that has produced so many other great interfaces managed to push that turd out confounds me every time I have to use that awful program.
I remember something like this on my father's computer. He was running NT 4.0 and had a program he wanted to run that required DOS. He had space on his hard drive and booted the DOS 6.2.x installation floppies. The floppies automatically detected his system and determined that the partition table was screwed up so it automatically repartitioned and formatted a new DOS partition... on top of the NTFS partition. Fortunately there was a tiny partition in front and I was able to rebuild the original partition table without any data loss since the DOS format only overwrote the very beginning of the partition.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Why the heck can't it show me the size of directories in detail view? When I need to find out which program has suddenly eaten the remaining 12GB of hard disk it's tiresome to recurse through every directory, right clicking and checking the size.
That is a good one. It reminds me of Logitech's web site. If for some reason you need to re-install your mouse driver because it is not working you can conveniently download it from their web site.
After the 30 minutes it takes to navigate the site using the tab key (since your mouse is not working) you get to their friendly download link, which uses some javascript or something to make a download button that can only be clicked on by a mouse. Brilliant!
Cars that bing at me are my pet annoyance.
Let me explain. I have a Toyota Camry, 1993 vintage. No Bings. When you leave your lights on, the car _turns them off for you_ when you open the drivers door! Nice stuff, works very cleanly, and I only turn my headlights switch off occasionally.
My parent's car (Ford Falcon) does bing. "Well turn the stupid things off yourself, then!" is my standard response.
One day, progress will move forward. But I am not holding my breath.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
On that note I'm going for IE, versions 4 thru 7 (the only ones I have experience with.)
And before MS fans get all pissy, I'll admit up front that I'm completely and totally biased. See, I was introduced to the 'net in the Netscape 2.0 days (yeah, I'm not very l33t, sorry) and that was the context wthin which I learned what a browser, the internet, WWW and email is. In fact, if memory serves, pretty much everybody I knew in those days who had a PC and a 'net connection was running Netscape. I'm not even sure if they were even bothering with such stupid shit as "browser market share" yet.
Anyway, it was a good year or so before I even touched IE, because Netscape started crashing a whole hell of a lot. And I just plain didn't like it. It did nothing special that Netscape didn't do, and there were plenty of things it didn't do that Netscape did. Hell, it even crashed on a regular basis. Oh, and it was slow as shit, which was hilarious considering how it was tied into the OS. Page rendering was a joke. The menus were typical MS WTF? It was bland. I hated it.
There were a few lean years there. Even with NS 4.79, it was still flaky on both Mac and PC. iCab was cute but twitchy, then Mozilla gave hope then Firefox released their non-crashy version and everything was muuuuuch better.
I looked in on IE from time to time, as circumstances warranted, and even with its belated tabness is still does shit that irritates from way earlier versions.
I have no doubt that IE can one day be a good and even great browser, a thousand monkeys and all that. But so far, it represents years of stagnation, which is sad considering the clout and the talent behind it.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Most people I've known have really liked the new interface. And I'm not talking about Microsoft fans, either. Much cleaner and more intuitive.
I'm not MS fan, but the Office 2007 UI is about the last thing I'd bash them for.
Old motherboards tended to intermittently fry a capacitor or so if you plugged in a PS/2 keyboard while the computer was running.
That's what my previous phone would do. Turn the backlight on HIGH, and beep.
Then, with its dying gasp, it would play the shutdown animation and music, which also would turn on the backlight.
Really now, why do cellphones have these long, stupid start-up/shutdown animations?
The other stupid thing about my previous cellphone was that it didn't have any sort of keylock, so when I'd put it in my pocket, I'd end up with 2 dozen shots of my keys in the dark.
Cellphones, overall, are a bad technical feature.
Funny thing is, you start paying for the call as soon as you get the "answering machine" talking to you. So basically if you waited too long for the person to answer and you didn't hang up, you will pay without any regard to whether you leave a message or not.
In Israel the latest Minister of Communication decided to put a stop to it and forced the telecom companies to place a voice warning you that you are about to get the "answering machine" so you have time to hang up before you pay for the call.
Now listen and be amazed. When you listen to automatic message for free, the companies don't joke around, it goes something like "youwillbetransferedtomessagingservicenow". The whole message is said in about 2 seconds top, I am 23 years old and I doubt I am always able to hang up on time. I really doubt older people can hang it up on time to be "excused" of payment.
My dad bought the Taurus when it first came in out '84 or so. He spent extra to get the electronic LED dashboard. Had all sorts of nifty things like different computational settings to show how many miles to the gallon you were getting, average speed, etc. Well, unfortunately the bulb for the panel didn't last very long. After about 8 months or so, it would burn out. The bulb itself wasn't too expensive - maybe $3. However, getting to it required 2 mechanics 2 hours to remove the entire dashboard, 1 minute to replace the bulb, and then another 2 hours to put the dashboard back.
One time he got pulled over by a cop. The cop asked "Do you know how fast you were going?" to which dad honestly replied "No." The cop saw that the dashboard was burned out, and let him off with a warning.
Here are a few I can remember:
- Cordless phone with backlit display. When you press a button, the display lights for several seconds. So, when press end to hang up, the display lights for several seconds, making you think the phone is still on. My dad always got confused by this, and rightly so. The display even lights when you press an ignored button while the phone is off. "Hey, lighted display even though I'm off!"
- Electronic version of the De Longhi portable oil-filled space heater. Terrible user-interface with hard-to-press buttons and a button layout that seems more guided by aesthetics than logical arrangement. Lost power to the thing, even for just a second? No heat for you until you re-program it. Give me an electro-mechanical thermostat and power switch any day over this electronic crap.
- DVD player often refusing to respond to my commands. Oh, wait, that's intentional.
- Just to contrast, once I got a small programmable electronic outlet timer at a garage sale and had the thing figured out in just a few minutes without a manual. Somehow they managed to pack in something like 14 independent program slots, each able to turn on and off at set times either daily, weekdays only, weekends only, particular day only (separate days for on and off). It only had around 7 buttons (no numeric keypad), yet was logical.
Navigating hierarchical menu items with a touch pad is my pet peeve. On any platform.
It reminds me of the tilting marble maze game, or the old "Operation" game.
Click on the "File" menu. Slide to "Open Recent ->", then the recent list pops up next to the file menu item. Now I have to slide the mouse pointer to the right, making sure that I do not stray above or below the line, otherwise the submenu disappears! Some applications have multiple levels of submenus! Why can't I just click on the menu item and have the submenu 'stick'?
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
A while back, I went to work at a new place, and they gave me a Samsung cell phone. I carried it around in my pocket. One day it rang. I answered, and the person on the other end wanted to know if everything was OK. I was confused and asked them who they were. Turns out they were the 911 (emergency services) operator, and they claimed I'd called them and hung up. I told them I certainly didn't do it on purpose, that I was OK, and that I was sorry for disturbing them.
Then the same thing happened a few more times, and there were other occasions on which I took the phone out of my pocket and saw a display asking me to confirm whether I wanted to dial 911.
After several calls to the carrier, I talked to someone who tracked down the problem. Seems that Samsung had put in a feature where if you hold down the "9" button for several seconds, it dials 911. And in their infinite wisdom, they were concerned about what might happen if you had an emergency while key lock was on. So they made it so holding down "9" dials 911 even while key lock is on.
Thanks, Samsung. I love "features" that might get me fined or imprisoned when someone concludes I'm making repeated prank calls to 911.
WHY is the eject/close button below the tray on pretty well every CD/DVD drive out there? I suppose this is convenient for those who keep their machines overhead. But there's this tiny group of us who keep computers on our desks (or on the floor beside the desk). We find it hard to locate the button once the tray is open. So we resort to shoving the flimsy little tray closed rather than groping around blindly to find the button.
Yeah, my door chime stopped working one day when the little button on the door wore out. I thought it was good, too, until one morning it was really stormy so I turned on my headlights on the way to work, where they remained on all day, and I got to jump the car, in the rain, in a huge puddle after work. Then I did it 3 more times. I can jump a car in 45 seconds now.
I turned down an offer to have the button fixed for $50 figuring I could do it myself faster and cheaper. I was wrong on both counts. I bought replacements for not much less, spent 3-5 hours in 80-90 degree 80% humidity weather losing parts inside my door, breaking grounding wires, debugging wiring harnesses with a volt meter, and basically losing my mind.
But it works, damnit.
Of course this meant that as the phone bounced around in your pocket or purse, it would hit random buttons. All of these would be blocked until a 9 was pressed. It would bounce around some more until a 1 was pressed. And so on for the final 1 and 'talk'. So basically the keyguard assured that pressing random keys would always result in a 911 call.
This is one of life's great mysteries, I guess. Why on earth are the 1-9 keys on my numeric keypad be completely the flip of the keypad on my telephone?
The weird part is, I don't know about others, but it has become second nature when using either keypad, without looking, I still know where the digits are.
(yet another one of life's great mysteries)
HEX offender mugshot ID: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Back in the AT days when the keyboard was more important than the mouse, there existed a "key lock", which was a physical lock on the front of the machine that disabled the keyboard. Insert key, turn, remove key, machine is now useless. I'm explaining this in detail because I'm sure some whippersnappers out there have never encountered it.
In a perfect world, both wires leading from the switch behind the lock would be isolated from the lock body. On our 386, one of them was common with the metal lock, which was mounted in the plastic front panel. Since the plug wasn't polarized, you had a 50% chance of getting this wire connected to ground. In our case, this wire was apparently connected to the keyboard controller. Thus, scuffing across the carpet and then touching the lock resulted in the machine freezing. One day, it also resulted in a funny smell and visible smoke from the power supply fan.
So we immediately shut the power off (back when men were men and power switches actually interrupted the AC input!) and opened the machine to see whence the magic smoke had come. The metallic sticker on the keyboard BIOS chips was shriveled and charred, and even after the time it took us to get the cover off, it was still hot to the touch. Uh oh.
Just on a lark, we decided to fire the beast back up and watch the fireworks. With the cover off and safety glasses all around.... it booted! As if nothing had happened! We unplugged they keylock from the motherboard, put the cover back on, and the machine served us well for many more years. I'd have to check which mobo is in the basement DOS box but I think it might still be with us.
So what the heck happened? IANAEE, but I think it was a textbook case of latchup.
As the article states, hot-plugged connections often result in unpredictable power sequencing, which can also result in latchup. This could be one of the failure modes when hot-plugging keyboard with DIN plugs. Note that the power and ground contacts in a USB connector are longer than the data contacts, ensuring that they make first and break last. That's proper sequencing, and prevents the data lines from acting as surrogate power conductors for a portion of a mating cycle.
Some Volvo's have the same feature. Were I worked a couple of years ago, the manager went over to get his brand new Volvo. The salesman (also a manager) was showing all the nice features of the car. They were admiring the nice exterior of the car when suddenly there was a "click" and the doors locked. Too bad the keys were on the front seat and the spare keys in the dashboard compartment. I don't know exactly what they had to do to get into the car, but he returned without his shiny new car.
Also fun are the keyless cars (Renault has them here in Europe). You get a credit card size "key" which on some models just has to be near the car to be able to start it. A friend of mine was testing a couple of Renaults for a magazine which had this feature. Accidentally he switched keys with another person. They both were able to start because they were parked close together and the range of the "keys" was large enough. Sometime later my friend had to stop while the other person drove on. After stopping the engine and trying to restart it he discovered that he had the wrong key. He quickly phoned the other person and told him NOT to switch off the engine and drive back. Later models have a warning system where the car starts to beep and shout that the key is out of range. Long live progress :)
My personal best is 14 inches, straight up.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
So a few years ago, I bought a BMW 530. My wife took it to the mall for the first time with my daughter who was about 6 months old. Upon returning to the car, she put my daughter in her car seat, and in doing so tossed the keys into the driver seat. She closed the door, walked around, and lo and behold, the BMW had locked itself up before she got to the drivers door.
The AAA locksmith shows up some time later, my daughter stuck inside a VERY hot automobile. They have no idea how to get in. So they used one of those airbag things to split open the driver door to stick a coat hanger or something inside the car to get it unlocked.
I have to call the dealership and ask where the unlock button is.
After I find out where it is and relay that to my now very panicked wife who fills in the locksmith, we come to find out that the car has detected a break-in and disabled the unlock button.
All the while we are yelling at them to just take a hammer to the window to break in. Apparently the damn car has some sort of unbreakable glass.
I finally get through to BMW's version of on-star and guess what - they can't unlock the car via satelite. As it turns out, the only thing BMW on-star is good for is asking for driving directions (there's a GPS in the car) and reserving movie tickets.
In the end, after consulting with the dealer again, I have to tell the now on-scene fire department that they CAN break the glass on the short split section of the passenger side rear window - apparently a feature designed just for these situations. Of course, that's exactly where my daughter is sitting, but thank goodness we had window shades that were drawn up.
So my wife brings my 1 day old car home that I haven't driven yet and it takes 6 weeks to get a new window. Of course, when the 6 weeks comes up and I discover they haven't ordered the window yet, they are all of a sudden in abundance and it only takes 24 hours.
So... pointless/counter-productive/bizarre features?
1) auto-locking doors
2) overly extravagent security
3) satellite communications link for directions in a car with a GPS
4) a window designed to be broken
Of course I haven't even mentioned
5) voice command (more distracting than buttons)
6) GPS Volume button is the radio button. You have to adjust the volume WHILE the GPS lady is giving you directions.
7) A radio that mysteriously reboots.
8) An integrated car management system that disables radio, air conditioning, and navigation when it doesn't boot properly.
9) A flat tire sensor that has presented at least a dozen false alarms and has never actually detected a flat tire.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
Seconded. It's a piece of crap and we hate it at work. So much so that we purchased a bunch of 2003 licenses we don't need so that we don't later get stuck with '07 when '03 isn't available any more.