Inexplicable Mysteries of Technology
'Stutter' dial tone
I
have
had the call-answer feature on my phone line since about 1990. When
there
is a message waiting, the dial tone goes duut-duut-duut-duut-duut instead of
the usual duuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
Despite the fact that
this 'stutter' dial tone has been in use in North American telecom
systems
for over a decade, I have yet to encounter any equipment that can
recognize
it. Typically, you have to check the little box for your modem that
says
'don't wait for dial tone' or something like that. My satellite
reciever,
which must have been designed no earlier than 1998, doesn't
understand the dial tone, and won't dial into it; which is especially
fun
because the receiver and the phone line are both operated by - more or
less
- the same company. Come on people, get a grip. It's actually getting
worse
- I recently purchased a brand-new Compaq laptop, and of course the
built-in
modem won't recognize the stutter dial tone. Furthermore, there is no
'ignore
dial tone' check box for the modem that I can find anywhere. Whether
this
is a new XP misfeature, or a driver misfeature, I don't know.
It is an utter
mystery
that corporations put a fair bit of effort into documenting this
problem
- the set-top box instructions acknowledge it, the tech support people
know
about it, modem manuals usually mention it - but no-one can fix it? You
just
have to make the
thing
recognize a stutter dial tone
. Come on, you've had
years now! Do it! Stop apologising and fix it.
On-line Bill Payments
When you get to the part where you have to enter your account number,
the form insists that you enter it without spaces or punctuation marks.
At least, this is true in every case I have encountered. So you look at
your bill,
which has an account number like this
00AE-03318-763-29-3201-0-2-00
And you have to enter 00AE033187632932010200.
Then go cross-eyed trying
to make sure you aren't paying someone else's electric bill. Those
dashes are there for a reason - they break up the digits so humans can
grok them easily. So what's the problem with the bank's software people
- these folks can put together an online secure transaction system,
but they can't write a few lines of code to take the dashes and spaces
out of an account number so that I don't have to? It's a mystery.
And why do these account numbers need to have so many digits? This is
the number you are supposed to write on the cheque, so it's a pain when
it's
really long. Are they hoping to sign up individual protozoa as
customers,
and don't want to run out of digits? There's only a few billion folks
on
the planet, people. Twelve or fifteen digits should be enough for
anyone
- 20 or 25 is just being deliberately obnoxious.
Airport Schedule
Displays
Maybe this is only in Toronto, but I doubt it. If the airport authority
is going to spend thousands of dollars on display systems so that
people can
stare at fiction while they are waiting for their relatives to arrive,
at
least they could put up some interesting fiction, like episodes of
Sienfield or something. Often, a flight is shown as 'on time' at say,
1750, and not arrived yet, and this stays up until 1814 or something.
More than once I
have seen people walk out of the luggage claim area before their plane
has
arrived, according to the display. And, far more reliable information
is
available on the internet. Recently - having checked the internet
schedule
- I arrived at the airport at about 1820 to meet a flight which had
been
delayed from 1758 to 1822, and the display at the airport still showed
it
as on-time at 1758. I don't think it changed for at least half an hour
after
that.
So, how exactly are these things updated? Is there a guy in a room
somewhere whose job it is to look at the internet information from time
to time and manually update the local displays? Obviously there is a
database somewhere in the air traffic control system with real-time
information. Why go to
a lot of trouble to create a separate database which shows the status
of
flights in some kind of warped alternate space-time reality? It's a
mystery.
Also, their electrically synchronized digital clocks are usually, like,
4 minutes off. But they are synchronized. Maybe this is to keep people
from figuring out how wrong the flight displays are.
Windows File 'Last Accessed' Time
Since Windows 95 (and VFAT), all Windows file systems have kept track
not only of the time at which a file was modified, but the time at
which
it was created, and the time at which it was last accessed. The problem
is, there is no way (in the standard Windows environment) to find out
when
a file was last accessed. If you look at the 'properties' of the file,
you will see 'Created', 'Modified', 'Accessed'
times, but the 'Accessed' one should really say 'Current Time'
because that's what it is.
It seems that looking at the properties of a file will cause it to be
accessed, thus destroying whatever useful information might have been
available
in the 'last accessed' timestamp (actually, in many cases it will be
accessed as soon as you open the containing folder). So why bother to
have that information in the properties page? It's a mystery. This
strange behaviour was there in Win95 and is still there in XP.
Windows Calculator
Here is another Windows one, and then I'll stop. This one is a complete
and utter mystery. The 'calculator' in the standard accessories folder
is pretty handy, but it would be a lot handier if you could read the
keys.
The decimal point key has a single blue pixel on it. The '-' label is
formed
using two - I counted them several times - two pixels. The
bold,
mighty 'x' symbol on the multiply key is formed out of a grand total of
five glorious pixels. The + sign is made up of a staggering
nine pixels, however all four of these symbols look like
slightly
different smudges
on a typical monitor. The '-' and '.' are actually in different colors,
but who can tell?
Again, this situation has been around at least since Windows 3.1 days,
we're
talking a decade - and at least back then pixels were a lot
bigger. So how come they have time to make dancing paper clips,
and little movies of files flying into the trash, but in 10 years
no-one has bothered to fix this little problem? It's an unexplained
mystery.
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