Almost two weeks ago I sent to the Duluth News Tribune about the computer problems with the Affordable Care Act. I had given up on its being published because of the huge number of election letters the DNT has been publishing.
At a meeting this morning, a friend said he liked my letter in the DNT. I was surprised and checked with my iPhone. It was below the last letter I looked at when I read the DNT online this morning. I would have seen it if I had just scrolled a bit further down.
You can find the published version at http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/282477/. Chuck Frederick, the opinion editor, did a good job of editing my letter, adding a phrase and some punctuation. What I actually sent follows:
A major computer system has problems; what's new? In this case, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) software for signing up. I've been working with computer systems for over fifty years and Murphy's law is still in force. If something can go wrong, it will!
Decades ago a customer computer crashed regularly. It was my job to find out why. It took months of asking questions until I received sufficient information from the customer to isolate the problem to a single program. That information allowed me to determine the crash was related to a hardware problem.
Murphy's law is working today in almost every computer and every program we use. How often do you install version x.0 of some software and within weeks you receive version x.0.1?
Those working on the ACA software have my sympathy. May you ask the right questions.
Showing posts with label software problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software problems. Show all posts
Sunday, November 03, 2013
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Why facebook's stock price went down after the IPO
Simply put, facebook's software is too buggy!
Yesterday, I used my iPod and Safari to access facebook. I could not log off! There was no button to do so, and no button gave a drop down menu with log off in the list. When I tried using my MacBook Pro to access facebook, I could log on, but then my news feed was blank. Sometimes I would get a blank area and sometimes I would get a blank area with a spinning ball next to an arrow.
Then today I had three symbols at the top of the iPod window in addition to the three bars, which had done nothing before. One of the symbols had a red number one. It was that I had a message or a like. The three bars now had a drop down menu. Way, way at the bottom of the more than screen-length list was log out (or log off). Dumbly, I didn't click on log out but clicked on the button with the number. I found out that two people liked an entry. Now the three bar menu had no drop down menu!!!
I used my wife's computer to like an item on my facebook page. After several attempts of turning my iPod off and on and other screen changing actions, the three additional buttons were shown on my iPod. I didn't click on them but went straight to the three bar button, scrolled down to log off, and clicked it.
Poof! I was now back to the facebook log on page. Close that window and be rid of it!
I went back to my laptop and logged in to facebook. I now had news feeds, but only a handful from today or last night. I could find no button to look at older items. That means I can't go back to an item that I only glanced at yesterday or that I want to check for additional comments. Up to yesterday, I could look at a week or more of news items.
This is corporate efficiency?
Of course, buggy software does not really correlate to stock price. Look at the way Apple stock has risen since the release of its latest operating system, OS X Lion. Apple announced Lion with great fanfare and the claim that it had 250 exciting new features. What they didn't say there were 300 features that no longer worked or didn't work as well as before. OK, 300 features is poetic license, but I run into annoyances every day. Clicks that don't work on the first try, watching the beach ball spin more than I have in previous versions, resets that later revert to an older setting, and on and on.
Whatever happened to "the computer for the rest of us"? Gosh, and I was once a programmer, have been using Macs since 1984, and I have a hard time!
The next time somebody gives a favorable comparison of private enterprise to government; ask them if their computer does everything they want as easily as they want as fast as they want.
See also "Why Apple's stock price went down".
Yesterday, I used my iPod and Safari to access facebook. I could not log off! There was no button to do so, and no button gave a drop down menu with log off in the list. When I tried using my MacBook Pro to access facebook, I could log on, but then my news feed was blank. Sometimes I would get a blank area and sometimes I would get a blank area with a spinning ball next to an arrow.
Then today I had three symbols at the top of the iPod window in addition to the three bars, which had done nothing before. One of the symbols had a red number one. It was that I had a message or a like. The three bars now had a drop down menu. Way, way at the bottom of the more than screen-length list was log out (or log off). Dumbly, I didn't click on log out but clicked on the button with the number. I found out that two people liked an entry. Now the three bar menu had no drop down menu!!!
I used my wife's computer to like an item on my facebook page. After several attempts of turning my iPod off and on and other screen changing actions, the three additional buttons were shown on my iPod. I didn't click on them but went straight to the three bar button, scrolled down to log off, and clicked it.
Poof! I was now back to the facebook log on page. Close that window and be rid of it!
I went back to my laptop and logged in to facebook. I now had news feeds, but only a handful from today or last night. I could find no button to look at older items. That means I can't go back to an item that I only glanced at yesterday or that I want to check for additional comments. Up to yesterday, I could look at a week or more of news items.
This is corporate efficiency?
Of course, buggy software does not really correlate to stock price. Look at the way Apple stock has risen since the release of its latest operating system, OS X Lion. Apple announced Lion with great fanfare and the claim that it had 250 exciting new features. What they didn't say there were 300 features that no longer worked or didn't work as well as before. OK, 300 features is poetic license, but I run into annoyances every day. Clicks that don't work on the first try, watching the beach ball spin more than I have in previous versions, resets that later revert to an older setting, and on and on.
Whatever happened to "the computer for the rest of us"? Gosh, and I was once a programmer, have been using Macs since 1984, and I have a hard time!
The next time somebody gives a favorable comparison of private enterprise to government; ask them if their computer does everything they want as easily as they want as fast as they want.
See also "Why Apple's stock price went down".
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