I used to totally love computers but I'm getting sick of always having to mess around with drivers and figure out how to get shit to run properly. I used to just think it was because it's all cutting edge and I liked being able to figure out hard junk but now I think there is just a culture of shitty quality in the computer world and they just dump garbage on us and use the public as their testing ground. It's like computer people have no concept of scale, each unit of error they fail to fix before it hits the public gets multiplied by freaking thousands. This time, I'm having a "No Audio Output Device is installed" problem and I'm just thinking back on all the times I'm dealt with things like this over the years. Imagine if your car had like a 5% chance of breaking down every time you drove down a new road or used some parts in a new way. "No Power steering Output driver is installed" your car has completely stoped turning left and right because it automatically installed an update and broke itself overnight; walk your ass to the dealership and download a driver. We lost a Mars mission over this crap, the one with the unit conversion error. And we almost lost the Huygens too. And that other Mars lander with the Radar out of an F-16. It's just stupid and I hate it. Ok I feel better, thanks.

7/23/2008 6:32:40 AM

WUT

Uh...

Hey! Perhaps you could buy a different brand of sound card and never use what you're having problems with ever again. :E

7/23/2008 7:03:57 AM

7/23/2008 8:06:40 AM

You should give up.


Computers aren't the future, tomatoes are.

7/23/2008 8:11:24 AM

7/23/2008 8:13:34 AM

om nom nom nom

I feel your pain. No I don't have computer issues, but it totally sucks relating it to automotive issues

7/23/2008 9:59:31 AM

Quote :

"We lost a Mars mission over this crap, the one with the unit conversion error. And that other Mars lander with the Radar out of an F-16."

Not even on the same scale as personal computers, or cars! In fact, with regard to NASA stuff, the precision of calculations, complexity of software, and perfection of build quality far surpasses pretty much any cars currently on the road today ... and especially surpasses anything personal computer related.

Don't be knocking the NASA people, they are really good at what they do.

7/23/2008 10:20:21 AM

Quote :

"I'm having a "No Audio Output Device is installed" problem"

are you really having that much trouble with this?

7/23/2008 10:21:57 AM

^^^^So I can enjoy all my games and cad software on an apple right?

7/23/2008 10:30:51 AM

^

I find it hard to believe most techies/enthusiasts don't have both by now. It's just like the PS3/360 argument these kids spew all the time.

7/23/2008 10:37:13 AM

You mean both apple and a pc? Sure I eventually got Leopard working as a dual boot on my desktop but i have no reason to ever boot it up. Although i do like the itunes album art slide show. Wish windows had something like that.

[Edited on July 23, 2008 at 10:39 AM. Reason : .]

7/23/2008 10:38:47 AM

why would I need both?

7/23/2008 10:39:43 AM

^

i think I saw a kid in a CSC class of mine with a t-shirt of your band, do you make T-shirts?

7/23/2008 10:43:17 AM

Quote :

"why would I need both?"

So you have more leverage when debating.

7/23/2008 10:48:41 AM

^^ yessir we have had a variety of shirts over the years.

^ heh. If I was wanting to game but also have a small music studio (something I would like to do at some point) I could see myself having both. But I think by the time im working on a studio I wont be gaming much.

7/23/2008 10:59:10 AM

i just love that constant stream of people in and out of the apple stores complaining about this or that.

the genius bar must be swamped. people lugging their really expensive paperweights around.

at least a lot of mac buyers choose laptops.

7/23/2008 11:11:31 AM

Quote :

"I find it hard to believe most techies/enthusiasts don't have both by now. It's just like the PS3/360 argument these kids spew all the time."

Most techies/enthusiasts are completely one way or the other on the whole divide.

7/23/2008 11:13:03 AM

^lately i've been trying to split it more.

^^yeah every person i know who owns a mac always has constant problems. My mom can't even use hers without screwing something up. My friend works at the Apple Store in southpark and tells me about the various issues.

7/23/2008 11:17:49 AM

^ It's strange how people who's job it is to fix computers, happen to have a lot of computers to fix. You'd never think that...

And, for the problems noted in the first post of this thread, a Mac would definitely help out a lot WRT driver issues.

BUt, it's really pathetic how Dell/HP/Sony/IBM make the driver process a PITA. They are able to make custom install CDs, it shouldn't be too hard for them to make a unique disk for each model, with exactly what that model needs to be up and running.

7/23/2008 11:54:42 AM

^my dell laptop came with a disk that had the OS plus all the correct drivers on it. Is that what you're talking about?

7/23/2008 12:09:53 PM

^^dell does an insanely good job with those on some systems. i had to install a new HD for this girl once and i was thinking oh god i'm gonna have to try to find all these drivers and all this shit now..

couldn't have been simpler. they included a CD with the new HD that had every driver and a self-installing setup. i just put in the CD and it did every single thing for me. a 3 year old could have done it it was so easy.. I very rarely have worked on any Dell's so I don't know if that's common but I was actually pretty impressed

in the mean time i got laid

7/23/2008 12:15:40 PM

its been that way for a while

7/23/2008 12:19:21 PM

Quote :

"Moved alot as a kid. Never needed to conform or work hard for anything so I'm not very well equipped to deal with school. I'm happy though"

You don't seem happy

7/23/2008 12:20:49 PM

^ huh did you post in the wrong thread or sometihng?

7/23/2008 12:44:36 PM

i thought that too lol. it took me forever to find that. but he took it from the OPs user info

7/23/2008 12:45:18 PM

==> {(do=quote), [color=red] "Not even on the same scale as personal computers, or cars! In fact, with regard to NASA stuff, the precision of calculations, complexity of software, and perfection of build quality far surpasses pretty much any cars currently on the road today ... and especially surpasses anything personal computer related." }
Output error: you forgot to say please, and you forgot to put a semi colon after your input, bitch.

NASA does all the hard stuff great but guess what brings them down every time? Some damn software error. I think a messed up part breaks and there's evidence. But when software breaks it's so easy to fix that nobody is held accountable and nobody looks deeper into the fundamentals that led to the mistake. It's like software is made by just going crazy with duct tape until the car can go down the road without falling apart. Then they see "working" working car and just distribute their "design" to everybody.

7/23/2008 5:03:34 PM

^Lay off the crack, it's bad for you, mmmkay?

7/23/2008 6:39:54 PM

7/23/2008 7:41:56 PM

what is that big chrome New York City emblem about?

7/23/2008 8:05:21 PM

it's about pretending your computer doesn't have just as many problems as any other computer

7/23/2008 10:07:04 PM

not to mention with the dells, if you enter your service key online, it gives you a list of what your computer has, doesn't have, and you can download specific drivers and software easy. They've been doing that since my first xps 600 system although their customer service is much better these days. Their online IM chats are actually helpful.

And to the OP, I didn't read a single ounce of it. Please use the enter key to partition your large ass paragraph. Also, in the future, tdub tech talk isn't a blog. Please use chit chat or GTFO.

[Edited on July 23, 2008 at 10:13 PM. Reason : enter]

7/23/2008 10:12:42 PM

I paid $4200 for an XPS D300 so I can parse (or not) my shit how I please

7/23/2008 10:16:17 PM

wut? A Dell XPS D300? That's like 1998.

7/23/2008 10:22:01 PM

ordered it 12/97 but was too cheap to pay the $150 fedex to get it before Xmas so I got it like 2 weeks into 98. I remember it well because it was the LAST time I believed in Santa. Now I pay hte Jews whatever they tell me to.

7/23/2008 11:47:40 PM

what does that have to do with this thread?

7/24/2008 12:23:02 AM

Obviously the Jews are preventing him from being smart enough to install his sound card drivers.

7/24/2008 12:35:22 AM

maybe the reason why he's having all of these problems is that he's still using the same Dell xps from 97 and trying to run vista on it... The only logic I can see from this

7/24/2008 12:38:22 AM

Quote :

"I think a messed up part breaks and there's evidence. But when software breaks it's so easy to fix that nobody is held accountable and nobody looks deeper into the fundamentals that led to the mistake. It's like software is made by just going crazy with duct tape until the car can go down the road without falling apart. Then they see "working" working car and just distribute their "design" to everybody."

This is fundamentally wrong.

The reason you feel like computers are more complex and error prone, is because they are complex and error prone. PEOPLE write software, not machines. The more complex a system gets, the more errors there WILL be in it. There have been theories and studies on code complexity and bug rates. Modern PC software cannot be error free. If you spent 100 years on a complex application doing nothing but bug fixing, it would still have bugs. The same thing applies in hardware as well.

There are "real time" computing systems out there which are millions of times more reliable than your car, making your first example wrong as well. But these systems are extremely simple in comparison to a modern desktop PC's capabilities. They are also extremely expensive and inflexible.

7/24/2008 12:38:56 AM

not to mention that a certain %, a very small %, of data in stream can and will get corrupted. Even volatile RAM storage can get corrupted data. Shit, it's really a complex guessing game and chance that happens to work 99.98% of the time

7/24/2008 12:41:35 AM

i would also like to add, if you drive "a car" from 1997 now, chances are you are going to have a lot more problems with it than say "a car" you purchased in 2005, the probability of something going wrong increases as you try to do more stuff and add more to it...

7/24/2008 1:34:31 AM

cept for hondas....

7/24/2008 1:35:44 AM

^^^ Not to mention the way that computers deal with and manipulate numbers adds inherent error to them. Sure it's predictable and small in most non-pathological examples, but that's not always the case. It's one of the reasons there's so much theory and study around better ways to do matrix multiplication and eigenvalue problems with code.

[Edited on July 24, 2008 at 2:04 AM. Reason : ]

7/24/2008 2:03:41 AM

yeah, left over time, Tape drives & HDD lose their magnetism and therefore you get corruption of data. That is why you should refresh Tape drives every so often, like every 18 months - 3 years.

7/24/2008 2:46:21 AM

Quote :

"The same thing applies in hardware as well. "

NEVER!

Those get classified as software errors . Hell the software guy will believe you!

7/24/2008 8:34:35 AM

I FINALLY fixed it. I'm not sure what, in the end, did it but the last thing I tried was literally unplugging the puter and holding down the power button until the light in the back went out. I think the BIOS changes just never really went into effect until the power went all the way out.

7/25/2008 12:35:55 AM

Quote :

"i would also like to add, if you drive "a car" from 1997 now, chances are you are going to have a lot more problems with it than say "a car" you purchased in 2005, the probability of something going wrong increases as you try to do more stuff and add more to it..."

yes but a car from 1997 is 100x easier to fix than a car from 2005

[Edited on July 25, 2008 at 8:41 PM. Reason : ]

7/25/2008 8:40:14 PM

The problem is BAACK!! No Audio Output Device is Installed I didn't do anything to it!!! it just broke all by itself overnight, AGAIN. I wish I could remember what I did to fix it last time. I don't know why I'm even telling you people, the only ones that even care are the ones plotting ways to irritate me. I wanna go back to the days when a computer was a low rent Math major too sickly to go in the Army.

9/1/2008 5:15:33 PM

OMG!!!! REALLY!??!

9/1/2008 5:57:23 PM

Oh god, not this shit again.

9/1/2008 6:05:37 PM

The situation these days is A LOT better than it was 10 years ago. When was the last time you were asked the IRQ, DMA, or IO of your Soundblaster 16 card?

9/2/2008 4:10:01 AM