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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?"
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.