The article unwittingly provides a perfect example by quoting a business owner’s complaints about his employees who rejected new software because “importing an old address list into the new system generated so many errors that [he] had to hire two helpers.”
His diagnosis: “people are afraid of change.”
Look, dude, if something as simple as importing an address list creates multiple errors, the software you bought is a stinking PoS and you are a clueless bozo for blaming your long-suffering staff.
Remind me sometime to tell you the “when the sign company tried to computerize the layout department” story.
As someone in the sign business I must hear that story!
It was the early nineties. The general and sales managers flew to Vancouver for an industry show, and came home with a computer system for the art department, for a whispered 100K or thereabouts.
The goal was to move our tiny two person art/layout department from onionskin and manual pattern making to a CAD design/plotter system. (These patterns were then affixed to lexan sign faces on which semi-transparent liquid mask had been sprayed, and the letters and graphics cut by hand before moving to the paint booth.)
After a couple of weeks sitting unused on the desk, a company rep flew in to provide training. He asked for an artwork sample to work with, and I chose for him what was typically what we got from the customer to work with: a business card. The logo was very simple and graphic, about the complexity of recreating the letters “AB” in Helvetica Black.
He scanned the card, and opened the file (which was naturally very rough) and then set about manually digitizing to clean it up. About 45 minutes later he was finished.
At this point, he explained, the computer would send the image to the plotter, which (after they got it working) would save us inestimable time by drawing the patterns that we were currently creating by hand.
I asked him, “So… have you ever seen someone create a pattern by hand?”
“No”.
I took the same business card he’d scanned and digitized, ran it through the copying machine a couple of times to enlarge the logo 400%. Trimmed the edges from the paper, and taped it to a piece of cardboard. 90 seconds.
Then he followed me downstairs to the layout room.
After setting the card under the opaque projector, I pulled a 6 ft length of white pattern paper from the roll, and taped it to the projection wall. With a black marker set against the wall-mounted, rolling t-square, I ran a horizontal line across the paper near the bottom, measured for the required height and ran a second horizontal line 24″ above it. 60 seconds.
I then turned off the lights and returned to the projector to size and focus the image between the two lines.
The pattern was completed with the rolling t-square, a set square, and the curves drawn by hand with dotted lines, using the projected image as a guide.
From beginning to end took me under 8 minutes.
“Now,” I said, “explain to me again just much time you saved me upstairs.”
If you had been the halfwit son of the manager or the brainless bimbo hired for her big tits and loose morals—the sorts the salesman was clearly used to dealing with—he probably would have saved time, and lots of it.
I’m guessing this wasn’t about saving time but about encouraging Kate to leave because she insisted on being paid what she was worth and refused to sleep with her boss.
How much longer did you stay there and how soon after that did the firm fold? My guess for both is “not long at all.”
I’ll try to make this short. Multi-Head Moulding Machines for wood profiles ie Double Bead Casing, Door/ window jambs w/weatherstripping saw kerf etc. These knife profiles were cut from a thin hand-made template and also sharpened by hand. Company sent the Master profile maker and his protege, (my good friend) to Chicago to learn computerization of templates using CAD. As the instructor was explaining the process for a particular profile, of which they had a sample, Master Rudy sat there with his file and a blank template, held up the finished profile before the computer even had the data entered, and asked “Is this what you want?”
Government grand scale
https://www.couriermail.com.au/extras/qweekend/fff/features/pdfs/338.pdf
Win 8 a classic example. Win10 not much better. Lots of GARBAGE out there….SAP another Excellent example of JUNK.
It’s all about the $$$.
We are seeing similar with Adobe and MSoft among others, demanding Monthly subscriptions now…both of whom I’ve told can kiss my (_i_). I’ll be damned if I am going to pay monthly for 5-6 yr old Software that works PERFECTLY fine, does what I wanted & paid over $350 USD for..!! Not happening.
For Lightroom/Photoshop: Affinity 55 CAD
For Word processing: Corel Word Perfect 259 for the Entire Suite
For .pdf Mark up: Blue Beam Revu (phenomenal software btw)
And if they above decide to join the bandwagon of monthly extortion, there will be others out there with just as good capability or better that wont.
I dont know about you guys but I am beyond fed up of being bonned up the (_i_) by anyone who sees me, A Canadian Citizen living in this country. I include ANY govt – anywhere and the Corporate CarpetBagging Bastards such as TeleCom Suppliers, Dairy Industry and the Airlines – All of whom are protected MONOPOLIES and can charge whatever the Fk they want.
Market economy..? my ass.
Microsoft has been all over the place. XP and Win7 were great. The latter being the best OS ever. Win10 is pretty lame but better than 8 or…Vista. Does Ubuntu run games? I think I’ll just use Ubuntu in future.
The latter being the best OS ever.
Evidently you haven’t heard of FreeBSD. Version 12 is quite stable. Install the system, add a suitable desktop (Mate, Xfce, or KDE), and you have an operating system that’s way ahead of anything else out there.
Does it game?
I’m sure there are games for it. I’m more concerned about using my FreeBSD machines for everyday activities as well as for amateur radio.
As a maybe convert I hear beware of System D (which isn’t in BSD I gather)
Although Linux and Unix operate in a manner, there are some differences, such as you’ve mentioned.
One story I heard was that Linus Torvalds remarked after seeing FreeBSD that he might not have developed Linux had the other OS been around.
More on FreeBSD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD
Your comments about Windows remind me that Apple isn’t much better. I used to be an avid user until about a dozen years ago when the computer I was using had technical problems. I found out that once Apple drops support for a particular machine, good luck in getting any help from them. The company wouldn’t even sell me spare parts.
That’s one reason I decided to go to open-source operating systems and software. I tinkered with Linux for a while but I finally settled on FreeBSD. It does just about everything I need. Unfortunately, I still use Windows once in a while (yuck!) because the things I’m trying to do can only be done on one of those machines. Evidently the companies who produce those particular software packages haven’t moved into the 21st century and ported that code over to Linux or Unix.
Most of the computers I bought in the last few years were second-hand machines or used units that I fixed and refurbished. I got hardware that runs almost as good as new for a lot less than I would have paid for something off the shelf. One day I’ll build my own.
BA.
I’ve had a Lenovo 440P (2nd hand from E-bay no less, for just under 400 CAD), on Win10, that still blows away any laptop any company has provided me in the past 6 years. Great keyboard, Excellent screen – bright and CLEAR – something that becomes more n more important as I age…(eyes turning to shite..!!). Ended up replacing the DDrive for a 550gb SSD & dbled the RAM.
Did the same for my Macbook pro 13″ (2012 edition)..and it’s still running great. But I do hear ya on apple though, in yer face arrogant or what. itnes being a PITA. This unit being the ONLY thing I ever bought from them. I like it and love the Screen I’d sell the Lenovo, but there’s some software that’s simply not avail for Mac OS…Damnit.!
Still rock a few BlackBerry’s. (Z-30 + a Classic, my spares and a Motion, my daily driver). My hands will never own/hold an $1200 CAD iphone.
There’s an Apple store in the shopping centre next to the apartment complex I live in. It’s always busy and I’ve been amazed that people would be so willing to buy that rubbish at horrendously high prices.
As for other toys, I was at a ham flea market earlier this year. I bought a second-hand Samsung tablet, which I’ve largely used for reading while I’m travelling to and from my house in B. C.
Unfortunately, I was a dolt and I messed up the SD card slot, partly because the silly thing was rather flimsy. (Why didn’t Samsung design it to be as robust as, say, the ones on the Raspberry Pi?) I quickly figured out that it was more expensive to have the tablet fixed, so I bought a smaller model for less than $120 brand new. I can still use the other one if I load the files onto the second unit and then transfer them over using Samsung’s software.
If the first tablet dies on me, I’ll strip it for parts and add them to my junk box. Maybe I can find a way to use the touch screen with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi board.
I’ve had similar experiences with laptop computers. If something goes wrong with them, there’s not a lot to fix, so they’re only good as a source of spare parts. I can always use the drives and, for the most part, the LCD screens can be re-used. All they need is a suitable driver circuit and there are places that make those.
“the computer I was using had technical problems”
lel. Apple is all technical problems all the time. My company got one of their over 1000 dollar desktops a year ago. What a piece of crap. Slow. The interface is a messy disaster.
SLOW
I concur about Apple hardware being dodgy. I’ve owned several of their machines over the years and all but one of them had technical problems at one time or another. The one that didn’t wasn’t used all that often for me to find out if it would go on the fritz as well.
With the tower machines I’m using now, I can swap out just about anything in them and replace it, whether it’s a power supply or a motherboard, as the parts are readily available from a number of sources. That’s one thing that Apple never allowed.
I just got a notice today about my monthly Amazon prime charge of $12.95. I was under the impression I was paying like $79.00 for a 2 year membership. Wasn’t paying attention when this switch was done, if I even had notification.. Screw them.
OMG … I am trapped in MSOffice limbo. After working perfectly well for years … my downloaded version of MSOffice suddenly stopped working, and my only answer was to purchase the online version … my system is now trapped somewhere between the two, and all the functions that used to work perfectly are now completely dysfunctional. The most common task I use is to create a pdf from my MSOffice document. This used to be the click of a button … and now it is a mess that often doesn’t allow me to convert the document at all. I now HATE MS … viscerally.
Good for MS … by forcing their customers to purchase ongoing subscriptions … their stock price has more than doubled. Behold American business … building obsceslense into their products and then charging you more $$$ to fix it.
And I loathe Windows 10 as it continues to FORCE me to accept their default program versions. Such as the current pdf program that I hate. Every time I click onto an online pdf document, my Windows 10 switches from my pdf 9.5 to some current version that I loathe. Every “new” product is designed to make us more and more captive to Big Tech’s choices made for us. Forced onto us. For once, I would like to see a program that requires an Opt-in instead of an Opt-out.
The source of your problem is probably their horrendously heinous Office “click to run” system. It is the crappiest piece of crappy crap they’ve ever produced, and that’s saying a lot. I rank it as malware, tbh, and it seems basically a rootkit. If you never cross versions/installations, you’re usually ok, but if you somehow get into that state, you’re almost better to restore your system. You not only have to “uninstall” the older version, you have to manually scour your machine (for all users) to remove every last trace of it (including in the registry), or the updated version gets confused. I speak from personal experience.
If you’re using Edge as your browser, stop. There might be a way to change how it reads MIME types to force it to your PDF reader, but I avoid Edge, so I can’t help there. Chrome does something similar, but there’s a setting that’s easy to change. I can’t remember for Firefox, but it always opens my preferred reader.
Thank you ACM! I am nothing more than your average computer user who is not very sophisticated. I can launch installs of programs … and sof long as it goes smoothly … all is good. If I have to dig into the bios and whatnot … I’m lost.
I did a little search, and I think you’re onto something. I will explore fixing this thing a bit further. Thanks for the heads up.
Depending on how deep you have gone into Office you might find Open Office or Libre will work for you. And they’re free.
You’re welcome, and I hope it helps. It was a huge pain when I went through it a few years ago, and I’m no novice. It seems like Microsoft has tried harder and harder to make it harder and harder for users to exercise any sort of control over their computers.
As Ian says above, there are other options, but they may not work for you.
I have two Windows laptops, one of which I inherited and the other I bought at the ham flea market I mentioned elsewhere.
One thing I find quite irritating is the frequent times in which either machine simply stops operating because Windows has to “update”, often followed by re-booting, doing this automatically.
Win 8 was the last version in which you could disable automatic updating. One of my biggest beefs with 10. The Pro version isn’t as locked down as Home, but you still can’t turn it off.
Libre is your friend, free although you should donate something
Of course it’s a stinker.
It was cheap, because all the actual coding was done in India by the lowest bidder, not by north Americans who knew what they were doing and insisted on being paid accordingly. That stink is the stink of the open sewer that is the Ganges River.
More proof, if any were needed, that there is nothing more expensive than cheap labour.
Many years ago I could not stay in Missouri state campgrounds. I had to cross over and stay in Arkansas. The reason? Whoever programmed the state computer used numeric instead of alpha numeric for the zip code. This meant no Canadian or European could register at the state parks or anything else requiring a zip code because we use a combination of letters and numbers. As someone who does programming in html it was infuriating that such a simple thing had been coded incorrectly. That was almost as infuriating as the government staff who could not come up with any kind of solution to the problem. Let us pay cash. Can’t do that. Put in a fake zip code. Against the rules. Let us stay anyway. Can’t do that. No zip code, no way to stay without violating the rules. So they had to send to nonAmericans to another state. I wrote a scathing on line letter to the governor which could not be sent because, guess what? You couldn’t write to the governor without a zip code either. I haven’t been back to Missouri either.
LMAO..!! that’s INSANE..!!
..but not surprising in the least.
Missouri eh..? yea, not at the top of my RVing list of places to go. I can still hear the Banjo playing …”..tada ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding…” with visions of a lathered pig running scared.
A system for which, no doubt, taxpayers paid a king’s ransom to somebody’s cousin to build—because regulations required the work to be done by American firms—and which the cousin subcontracted to India anyway.
Late globalism in a nutshell.
So what part of the article actually substantiates your blather?
It’s always hilarious being lectured on any technical or scientific subject by some cross-eyed inbred who couldn’t get a degree if his life depended on it, and blames brown people for it.
I have a degree, from an American university in the Midwest of good reputation, if not Ivy League calibre.
If you are a white male of modest family background, much less one inclined to see western civilization as a force for good in the world, it is actually damned hard to get into top universities anywhere in the West, much less graduate, regardless of one’s innate ability. Degrees from those universities, when not bought outright, are badges of loyalty to the ruling class, not rewards for scholarship or even basic competence.
I don’t blame “brown people.” I blame a small master class who don’t want people who work for a living and believe in God to have any real power. The small number of “diverse” people admitted to top universities to serve as window-dressing are just useful idiots.
As for inbred, tell that to your Muslim friends, the products in many cases of generations of men marrying their nieces.
I am not inbred, or ignorant. On the contrary. I know far more about the real world than you seem to want to admit to. I have to live in it. Do you?
You are a troll. Either a Leftist troll pretending (badly) to be a Conservative, or one of the few genuine nut-fringe National Socialist sympathizers still left in the wild. Either way, a troll is a foul-smelling and dissolute waste of oxygen.
Your bridge misses you. You should get back to it as soon as possible.
True tribe.
Phoenix pay system?
My husband recently had a CT. He invented the math used in the CT and has spent his career improving radiological imaging. He was stunned to discover the fillings in his teeth cause streaks in the image. That problem was solved two decades ago. He knows it was because he solved it and the publications on solving it are all over the literature. The people who made the CT machine have never bothered to upgrade their software.
Have you seen the latest Microsoft promotion?
Microsoft Continues Windows 1.0 Promotion for Stranger Things Season 3
I did.
I also noticed the third season was released on the Fourth of July, when normal Americans have better things to do than watch Netflix.
Someone apparently wanted to give the woke sitting alone in their bedsits (having been disinvited from family events for being leftist bores, perverts, or both) the option of emigration by television from Soviet Trumpistan, at least for the day. How thoughtful.
Never mind that people in small towns like the one in Stranger Things overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump—having learned the hard way that the Deep State is not their friend.
something as simple as importing an address list? lol, it’s not simple, because there are a comma separated lists, semi-colon separated lists, Unicode, UTF-8, rich text, plain text, carriage returns or no carriage returns, xml, lists saved with excel, lists saved with word, and so many more ways of storing a list on a computer. Being able to auto-import an unknown address list with unknown separators and unknown formatting without errors is not easy. At all.
When mass contact lists first became common, back in the 80s and early 90s, people were quite careless in entering addresses and contact information; even telephone numbers. A smart S/W should be able to deal with these but often the problem is unrecognized and the S?W required complexly uneconomic. I got suckered into fixing these problems on a job of providing a new data base. “Oh please enter the old data” “OK responded the sucker”.
I miss Microsoft Bob.
I miss Microsoft Bob.
But your aim’s improving?
Oh, dear, I’ve long forgotten about it. It came with great fanfare and faded away without a lot of people noticing.
And then there was OS/2. I tried it once while I was a grad student. I wasn’t impressed.
Now, for real die-hards, does anyone remember BeOS?
About 15 years ago I did substantial business with a +30 Mil import company in LA. They decided to “upgrade” their inventory, order entry etc system. However, they went live on the new platform without ever testing the data transfer protocol. It was GIGO and no way to go back. In less than 6 months they were bankrupt. In was one of the nails in my company’s coffin too. Very sad.
I went thru this a bunch of times incl THREE major mainframe upgrades in the golden age, and a bunch of times with various desktop software both DOS and Windows based.
it always appalled me the s/w vendors REFUSED to offer a slate of one-time data conversion utilities to match whut ya got with whut ya want.
ahhhhh but the games games games games games games games. THOUSANDS of them available.
another utility I suggested in various circles would ONLY read the contents of a system/hard drive/directory/file etc wtfever,
*merely to check the bits were ALL legible* ie it mattered not a hoot wtf it was, even encrypted stuff, fine !!!
ALL I WANNA KNOW IS THE BLOKE RECEIVING THE MEDIA ABLE TO REAAAAADDDDDDDD THE BLOODY THING WHEN THEY GET AHOLD OF IT.
oh the bitching and snarkiness. ‘yawell yawell yawell, jussssssssttttttt INSTALL IT an finna out dat vey !!!
?
really? a friggin hour long fckin process when you may not even have the disk space for a full install?
jeezuz murphy you dumfcuks, I JUST WANT TO ENSURE ALL THE BITS ARE READABLE before I ship the goddamn thing!!!!
argue argue argue about how ‘dumb’ the idea was.
p.s., THIS is a PERFECT example how someone like myself with a form of autism tries to cover ALL contingencies while the rest of them go on assumptions, limited experience, guesswork, laziness, etc etc.
anyway, I dont have to put up with that kind of nonsense anymore. let them ALL get sucked into da ‘sosha medja’ vortex
and begone, begone, begone with all their snarkiness.