I am sure that there is little chance that I will run out of material for this Blog. I have a backlog as long as your arm of software-related nonsense to go at and only yesterday was treated to a whole day of installation hell by a bunch of amateurs who think they are running a software company. I shall be tackling that one soon. But I need a little space to calm down before I do so consider this a small interlude.
The software companies that form the bulk of my big backlog have little danger of being forgotten because I am reminded almost daily of their existence by irritating pop-up dialogue boxes. I have just been treated to the latest from our friends at Adobe.
One of the many problems that anyone who uses a computer has to wrestle with is how to handle updates. I have had many helpful people tell me that I am doing it the wrong way and that if I adopted their tactic I wouldn't get quite so irritated. THEY ARE WRONG. Updates are irritating no matter how you handle them.
It comes down to three basic choices:
1. Let the computer get on with updating without reference to you.
I tried this. To a degree it works. I am even currently adopting this strategy on my Smartphone until it goes horribly wrong - and it will. It is just biding its time until it can go wrong with the most effect. I used to let Windows update itself but Windows is an idiot. Whoever was Head of Wrong Decisions at Microsoft at the time structured it so that an update could restart the computer. Just wait a moment and think about that. Restart the computer. What could possibly go wrong?
I build computer models. It is my job. I spend hours, if not days, building complicated meshes that then need to be 'rendered' to create the final image. The rendering process can take hours depending on the complexity of the model with its shadows and reflection and reflections of reflections. So I leave my machines running, often overnight, so that I can hit my presentation deadlines. I think by now you have probably guessed what happens if you do that?
I wake up in the morning not to find all the renders complete but instead a dialogue box saying something along the lines of 'Your machine was updated and it required a restart'. If I had the temerity to render a model that I hadn't completely saved this piled on a whole new layer of pain and why? Because some idiot software engineer had decided that time was of the essence in updating the machine and it didn't matter if there was collateral damage. Thank you Microsoft.
2. Turn off updates altogether.
Not a good idea. You see, software companies write lazy and clumsy software. You only have to remember that Voyager 2 has managed to get into interstellar space after a journey lasting over 40 years with 68KB of memory whilst your average 'modern' program runs to Gigabytes to see something has gone wrong. When we had our first computer you would load programs on using floppy discs. Until the wheelbarrow wasn't big enough to carry all of them and then they moved to CDs and then DVDs and then direct downloads from the internet in the arms race between the hard disc manufacturers and the programmers. Every now and then it looks as if the programmers are going to win and completely fill your hard drive before you get a chance to use it but Moore's Law has kept them at bay and we now have hard drives routinely installed in computers measured in terabytes. Now there's a challenge. The only danger of course is that we will run out of words to name the ever-bigger drives and then all will be lost. But I digress.
The point is that in the middle of all that massive bloated programming there are mistakes. Big ones. And they will come out to bite you if the guys who produce it don't get to grips with quite what it is they have written before the bad guys. So, as they find the errors they fix them usually under the guise of patching a hole in security because that casts them as the good guys. Despite the fact that it was they that sold you the pup in the first place. If you don't keep applying these updates then bigger and bigger holes become available to the less scrupulous and that can be bad. Scrapping-hard-discs bad. If you delay applying the updates they just build up. You don't get to the stage where you save time by not updating. You are just putting off the inevitable.
3. Ask to be informed when updates are available.
This is where we came in.This is my weapon of choice because the innevitable outcomes of the others are too horrible to contemplate Bearing in mind everything I have just said it makes sense that if I am keen to stay safe and up-to-date I will apply updates whenever I am notified. All well and good, but those notifications have come at progressively closer centres and they are now daily reminders that intrude into my life. I cannot turn on a computer now without a string of updates to one bit of software or another demanding my attention. And not just once, these things repeatedly nag until I give in. I turned on this machine this morning to get some work done only to have A
dobe nag me to update their Reader software. Why, for heavens sake do they have to keep updating reader software? They should have been able to fit the whole program inside 68KBs. To put the icing on the cake this 'update' required a reboot. A reboot! Why?
And another thing. Why do they keep putting radio buttons in that default to the option I never opt for? This may form the subject of a future Blog.
So, after having fired up all my working software I now had to shut everything down again and wait while these idiots mess remotely with my machine. It is pointless to delay the reboot because it will also keep nagging with the added danger that it could get bored and restart the machine anyway out of spite. The job I am supposed to be doing is pushed to one side and I am reminded, once more, about the subject of a Blog.
Such is life...
Oh, and by the way. Any solutions that require me to remember anything are doomed to failure. So don't even go there.
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