Month: January 2006

Horde and IMP

Squirrelmail was getting getting on my nerves.
Sadly its development seems to have stagnated in the last few years. A pity really, it wasn’t bad software.

I hadn’t used IMP on the Horde framework in a couple of years so I thought I would give it a try. The (old) version in FreeBSD’s ports collection was buggy and that gave me some trouble at the start, but after I realised and got the latest version installed down installation was pretty much a breeze. Considering how much code there is in Horde in general, and how complex said code is, the speed of the applications even over modem links continue to amaze me. Those guys have talent.

At the same time I upgraded to WordPress 2.0 I wish I could make my software look as good as these two.

Why does technology suck so much?

No really, why?
I moved a hard drive from one computer to another, faster computer, and in the process had to:

      Change the modem, because the new motherboard didn’t like it
      Remove the extra USB ports PCI card because it wasn’t liked either
      Reinstall Windows because the old installation didn’t like the new chipset
      Fiddle around with the Master / Master with Slave / Slave / Cable Select options on both hard drives because the old motherboard was OK with one configuration but the new one wasn’t as tolerant.

The Top Ten Design Bugs list has been going for several years now, and illustrates how user UNfriendly modern computer systems are:
http://www.asktog.com/Bughouse/10MostWantedDesignBugs.html
The list includes problems such as “If the computer loses power for more than a few thousandths of a second, it throws everything away” and “Designers offer no way for users to discover why a given menu or option has been dimmed (grayed out), nor how to turn it back on.”

Come on people, fix these damned problems already. Computers really should “just work”. I should be able to flip the power off on my computer, flip is back on and pick up where I left off.
I should be able to move a hard drive from one computer to another and have it “just work” every time, regardless of differences in hardware.

Make it “just work” already, I’m getting tired of this.

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