Computers suck.

[turf3]

It used to be you'd enter a Teams meeting unmuted. Then six weeks ago it changed to muted and a lot of people had to repeat themselves. Then last week it changed back and I am sure some people have had to apologise for saying things... None of this seemingly under user control.

Sometimes it uses audio via my docking station, sometimes not. So even if unmuted I might be inaudible. Ditto cameras. I don't use the one built into the laptop as I don't want to have the laptop in front of my big monitor. Apparently, I should, though.

We first started using video links about thirty years ago and it's only slightly better than then. The main improvements are the ability to look like a cat and have AI summarise the meeting minus the two major decisions made during it plus inventing an extra participant called Susan. So, then, everything is better now

Yes! Like I said, probably no one will die because of this unnecessary unwanted change, but it's an annoyance. Clear evidence of someone who doesn't actually know how to do their job, mucking around with stuff.

Honestly, for the vast majority of consumer software, further development except for security could just be stopped now.

"The factory of the future will have two employees, a man and a dog. The man's job will be to feed the dog. The dog's job will be to bite the man if he attempts to touch any of the controls."

 

[SteveCS]

"The factory of the future will have two employees, a man and a dog. The man's job will be to feed the dog. The dog's job will be to bite the man if he attempts to touch any of the controls."

 

[MonetBass]

I've been in IT all of my career (going on 30 years), and from my experience, the issue is usually PEBKAC. If you know, you know.

 

[SteveCS]

I've been in IT all of my career (going on 30 years), and from my experience, the issue is usually PEBKAC. If you know, you know.

That used to be the case, but I think less so these days. Fashionable 'development' approaches* and the ease with which non-computer-literate people can create 'software', or at least cobble stuff together or configure a bunch of 3rd-party components together in the name of development, coupled with the fact that most consumers believe that software should be free, have really 'done a number' on software engineering as a discipline. The idea of engineering rigour in the creation of software is almost totally lost on the current generation of graduates. Ask them about connfiguration status accounting, traceability, structural coverage, data and control coupling or SEU protection and they go "huh?" before glazing over!!

* Just for the avoidance of doubt, I am targetting Agile (which is a management tool not a development life cycle) and all of the BS that surrounds it. It has no place in real software engineering. Even the originators are finally waking up to this, but for different reasons.

 

[turf3]

I've been in IT all of my career (going on 30 years), and from my experience, the issue is usually PEBKAC. If you know, you know.

Ah yes, first commandment of IT, "The Customer's Always Wrong!"

Yep, whatever it is, it's probably something YOU did.

Usually it's that you expected the keystroke sequence you used on Monday would yield the same results on Tuesday and instead something altogether different happened. OBVIOUSLY the user's fault, for not having sufficient mystical intuition to divine that that superficially trivial mandatory unwanted update that forced itself onto the computer Monday night was going to foul up that constantly used command.

Sorry, not buying it. I've fought IT poeple for 40 years now, I know their ways, and #1 through #299 is "blame the user".

 

[MonetBass]

Ah yes, first commandment of IT, "The Customer's Always Wrong!"

Yep, whatever it is, it's probably something YOU did.

Usually it's that you expected the keystroke sequence you used on Monday would yield the same results on Tuesday and instead something altogether different happened. OBVIOUSLY the user's fault, for not having sufficient mystical intuition to divine that that superficially trivial mandatory unwanted update that forced itself onto the computer Monday night was going to foul up that constantly used command.

Sorry, not buying it. I've fought IT poeple for 40 years now, I know their ways, and #1 through #299 is "blame the user".

While your example may be true, what I've found is that because of people's resistance to change in general, their expectations regarding how software will work from one day to the next to remain the same will result in disappointment. Yes, the developers should alleviate that somewhat, but as this thread demonstrates, that isn't happening.

The other thing I see is even some IT coworkers will ask me, "How did you figure that out?" And I will usually respond, "I either looked it up in the Help function, or I started poking around the app with the idea of 'Hey, what does this do?'" The mantra of our company, and is for IT in general, is that the only thing that remains the same is change.

 

[turf3]

"Gee, how did you figure out the brake was on the right and the accelerator on the left with the clutch in the middle?"

"Well, I just started poking around and figured it out."

Software people assume EVERYONE is as fascinated with the stuff as they are and just can't wait to spend hours or days figuring out the new "features" and operating characteristics of Word 9,000 or whatever.

I'll let you in on a little secret here.

99% of us DON'T care about the "new and improved" software. All we want is for the flipping thing to WORK when we turn it on, and we don't want to have to learn where all the commands went every time the MBA-daddies up in Mahogany Row of the software company decide it's time for an ooh, shiny, new user interface.

So when you tell us "you're a bunch of Luddites" you just insult us; when you say "the only constant is change" you try to normalize a pathological thing which is change for change's sake; when you say "it was probably something YOU did" you just frustrate us; when you say "call tech support" you're telling us that OUR time spent on the phone waiting for an endless succession of people halfway around the world to read kindergarten level scripts and not solve our problem, is less important than the time it would have cost for the software company to do the job right in the first place.

Sorry, not buying it. I know we're stuck with this crap, but I do NOT accept that this is the best it can be.

The gadget-obsessed simply CANNOT understand, it seems, that what they call "people's resistance to change" isn't "resistance to all change", it's "resistance to useless change that makes most things worse, doesn't improve anything identifiable, and consumes a bunch of time just to get back where we were before the unwanted mandatory change."

 

[SteveCS]

Ah yes, first commandment of IT, "The Customer's Always Wrong!"

Yep, whatever it is, it's probably something YOU did.

Usually it's that you expected the keystroke sequence you used on Monday would yield the same results on Tuesday and instead something altogether different happened. OBVIOUSLY the user's fault, for not having sufficient mystical intuition to divine that that superficially trivial mandatory unwanted update that forced itself onto the computer Monday night was going to foul up that constantly used command.

Sorry, not buying it. I've fought IT poeple for 40 years now, I know their ways, and #1 through #299 is "blame the user".

I laugh because I remember the first electronic calculator our dad bought for my sister when she started secondary school a couple of years after me - it operated in Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) and had everyone used to the 'normal' algebraic workflow totally baffled. She never went on to be a 'C' programmer!

 

[fdeck]

Granted, I'm challenging a deeply held belief, but I think "people are resistant to change" is questionable. There are many cases of technological changes that have been adopted quickly and widely. Pocket calculators, the electric bass, e-bikes, cell phones, smart phones, processed foods, the Web, and ChatGPT. In many of these cases, the things slowing down adoption were resource availability and administrative inertia. My dad was a research scientist, and the transition from mechanical calculators (Friden 55) to electronic calculators (HP 35) took one week at his workplace.

It's rational to be wary of changes to computer systems, if you've experienced the workplace. The changes that people embrace willingly are those that benefit them. On the other hand, people have a pretty accurate sense of when a change will increase their workload or degrade their ability to do their jobs, or both. These are innate survival skills, a byproduct of evolving in an environment where a "change" might consist of getting eaten.

At the same time, I've noticed that experienced IT people are pretty humble about this. They've seen it all. They know that their own code base is held together with duck tape, and that many of their tech choices were driven by business interests beyond their control. They've experienced change too, such as every new version of the OS breaking their code. IT departments are wary of this -- they are often the last to adopt major OS upgrades.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

My Focusrite Scarlet 2i4 2nd gen started having problems after updating to Win 11. Worked just great with Win 10. I started getting audio echos or dropouts sometimes when opening a file or website with sound. It would straighten up after about 5 seconds. My assumption was a buffering issue. Reinstalled the Focusrite recommended drivers. Messed with USB port hibernation settings. Nothing helped. Worked just great when plugged into a Linux computer. I ended up giving in and buying another interface. An Arturia Minifuse 2, which is working well.

In my research, I ran across a number of posts of people complaining that Win 11 and USB ports had trouble getting along. Great. One the most important I/O ports on the computer and Microsoft screws it up.

The ONLY reason I have a Microsoft computer is a requirement for building and sharing PowerPoint files with others using a feature that does not work in any of the MS Office alternatives (including the online Powerpoint).

After the latest Windows 11 update, I'm also seeing dropouts.

I have got a selection of my Windows VST plugins patched via Carla. Patching with vabridge works and allows me to access them via Linux native Reaper apart from the GUIs not working, but I have a potential workaround to try later in the week.

Unfortunately, I got the wrong TASCAM - US-2000 not 16x04 due to poor research. It doesn't work under Linux with all inputs. My Zoom R16 does, but has one noisy preamp. It works great as a set of sliders, though, for REAPER or DMX lights.

Because of issues with getting my RAID controller to present two 4TB disks as a mirrored pair to Windows, they are a software RAID via storage spaces, so not very accessible to Linux. Maybe I'll look at fixing that and try to at least share the circa 1.5TB on samples and whatnot the VSTs used, plus recordings so I don't have to have a copy for Windows, one for Linux.

If I can sort out the interface conundrum (I don't use all the TASCAM's inputs but it's less noisy) then maybe I only need Windows for an occasional game and (a) I should do music (b) I've connected my PC direct to the router so occasional games over streaming, limited to one hour work and are time limited to one hour.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

(I haven't had the courage to use the Zoom or TASCAM and REAPER for live audio with the ability to spin in sound effects and EQ, reverb, feedback suppression. I now have a Soundcraft Ui16 for it. But I did test it - one laptop on stage, a second connected to it as then at worst it's one cat6 cable rather than a snake. A similar concept works for DMX. But the Ui16 feels a bit more reliable and much less fragile. But a 1u interface and a light PC stuffed into a 2U rack bag would probably do the job headless with Linux).

 

[-Asdfgh-]

(And in theory could replace effects using MOD Desktop and a M-Wave Chocolate Plus and actually run NAM).