Really.....

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JamesVincent
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Really.....

Post by JamesVincent »

This one's for Famspear.... just because.
A couple in New Zealand almost died after spending 13 hours locked inside their new car last month. Now they are speaking out about their ordeal to try and prevent other older drivers from suffering the same fate.

On the evening of November 5, Mollieanne, 65, and Brian Smith, 68, were in their keyless Mazda3 hatchback when they realized they had left their transponder key fob outside of the car. They didn't think the car could be unlocked without the fob. They also left the car's manual in the house.

They told the Otago Times that stress, the lateness of the hour and lack of information from the salesperson all contributed to trapping them in their new car for 13 hours.

Blaring the horn didn't help because of the fireworks from Guy Fawkes night. They also attempted to smash the window with a car jack, but it was no use.

The couple were freed at 7:45am the next morning by a neighbor. By then, Mollieanne was unconscious and her husband was having difficulty breathing. Attending physicians at the emergency room later told the couple that another half hour trapped inside could have killed them.

Brian had methodically checked for a way out of the car, but thought the only way to unlock the doors was with the key fob.

http://autos.aol.com/article/couple-get ... d%3D583099
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Re: Really.....

Post by Famspear »

Whew!

:shock:

I'll admit that I'm not familiar with every new technology in automobiles today, but I'm not that clueless -- at least not yet.

What's weird is that not just one of them but BOTH of them never thought to just pull the door handle as you normally would.

My biggest problem in coping with modern life is trying to remember where I laid my eyeglasses five minutes ago.
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Re: Really.....

Post by AndyK »

Famspear wrote:
...

My biggest problem in coping with modern life is trying to remember where I laid my eyeglasses five minutes ago.
That's what (among other things) a wife is for: "Honey, please find my glasses for me. You know I can't see them once I take them off."
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Re: Really.....

Post by The Observer »

AndyK wrote:That's what (among other things) a wife is for...
I note that the wife was in the car and was equally helpless, so this can't be the ubersolution for what to do when you are confronted by technology that you can no longer understand.
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Re: Really.....

Post by Famspear »

AndyK wrote:
Famspear wrote:
...

My biggest problem in coping with modern life is trying to remember where I laid my eyeglasses five minutes ago.
That's what (among other things) a wife is for: "Honey, please find my glasses for me. You know I can't see them once I take them off."
:lol:

I remember that one comedian years ago (can't remember who it was) said that the hardest thing for a guy is trying to figure out where he laid the remote control for the TV set. What a guy needs is another hand-held device electronic device specially designed to help him find the remote control.....

:lol:
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Re: Really.....

Post by JamesVincent »

Famspear wrote: What's weird is that not just one of them but BOTH of them never thought to just pull the door handle as you normally would.
The part where he says he methodically tried every option and, yet, didn't try to use the door handle. That was just like OMG. I didn't know whether to laugh or be sad..... or both.

Something I want to say everytime I see a story similar to this one, all these new and fancy things are just another thing waiting to break. Kinda why I like my older cars. Car battery dies and the door locks are frozen? Roll the window down manually and crawl out. There's a lot to be said for simplicity sometimes.
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Re: Really.....

Post by Famspear »

JamesVincent wrote:.......Kinda why I like my older cars. Car battery dies and the door locks are frozen? Roll the window down manually and crawl out. There's a lot to be said for simplicity sometimes.
Something just occurred to me: A list of some things that might have the average 10 year old kid today scratching his head.....

1. Manual typewriter?

2. Rotary telephone?

3. Phonograph with 45 rpm and 33 & 1/3 records?

4. Reel-to-reel analog tape recorder?

EDIT: And, for computer technology.....

5. Computer punch cards and punch card reader......
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JamesVincent
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Re: Really.....

Post by JamesVincent »

Famspear wrote: Something just occurred to me: A list of some things that might have the average 10 year old kid today scratching his head.....

Well, I can answer for an above average 14 and two 12 year olds

1. Manual typewriter?Have seen them and used them. I got in a kick a few years ago about pulling antique typewriters out of dumpsters and redoing them.

2. Rotary telephone?Saw one in an antique store. Wondered where you put the memory card.

3. Phonograph with 45 rpm and 33 & 1/3 records?I had an old Seeburg juke box when they were young that they vaguely remember. So their familiar with what it is, about it.

4. Reel-to-reel analog tape recorder?Can't remember if they have ever seen one and known what it was. Old movie projector, yes, but not an audio reel. Cassettes were hard enough to explain.

EDIT: And, for computer technology.....

5. Computer punch cards and punch card reader......Have never seen one and probably won't either. Closest they've probably came was with the fill in the dot test cards that are then scanned.
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Re: Really.....

Post by Pottapaug1938 »

Famspear wrote:

Something just occurred to me: A list of some things that might have the average 10 year old kid today scratching his head.....

1. Manual typewriter?

2. Rotary telephone?

3. Phonograph with 45 rpm and 33 & 1/3 records?

4. Reel-to-reel analog tape recorder?

EDIT: And, for computer technology.....

5. Computer punch cards and punch card reader......
Some 20 years ago, my mother brought my son up to see his great-grandmother. Gram refused to get a touch-tone phone, saying that she was used to a rotary dial phone and was too old (95 or so, at the time) to make the switch. At one point, Mom asked Danny if he wanted to call Mommy and Daddy; so when he said "yes" she brought him to Gram's telephone table (now in my front hallway). Danny stared at the phone; and then he turned to my mother and said "hey, Grandma -- how do you work this thing?"
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Re: Really.....

Post by Judge Roy Bean »

It's only going to get worse, trust me.

One of the things I've done over the years is editing and proofreading, and I can tell you the manufacturers of technologically-dependent things are not getting any better at documentation and instructions (with a few notable exceptions).

Getting techno-geeks to understand that people have certain expectations about ease-of-use and comprehensible (not to mention, accurate) instructions is a constant battle.

[rant=ON]
My dear-lady wife's car has seven separate but interrelated manuals. There are notable errors and omissions that, thanks to the 'net, are mostly temporarily frustrating but even the dealer has a hot-line to the factory for handling issues where the technician's boss's boss can't remember how to work around the problem.

And speaking of the 'net - if your product or application needs an FAQ page to shield your support people, there's something wrong with it. The reason the question(s) are "frequent" is you failed somewhere along the line in dealing with known or foreseeable issues.
[/end rant]
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Re: Really.....

Post by JamesVincent »

Instruction manuals? We don't need no stinkin' instruction manuals.
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Re: Really.....

Post by Famspear »

Judge Roy Bean wrote:.....the manufacturers of technologically-dependent things are not getting any better at documentation and instructions (with a few notable exceptions)....
This is a Microsoft story.

A few years ago, I had purchased a new laptop computer for my wife. It used Windows Vista (we still have the computer).

One day soon after we bought it, my wife was finished working on it for a while, and decided to hit "HIBERNATE" instead of "SHUT DOWN."

Not "SLEEP." We're talking "HIBERNATE."

We almost never got the computer back up and running again. I don't remember the details, but no matter what we did, we could not get the computer back up again.

I got on another computer and googled "Windows Vista" with "hibernate" -- you know, every combination I could think of -- to try to find some instructions on how to bring the computer out of hibernate. Tried searching the Microsoft web site for any kind of instructions on "HOW TO BRING A COMPUTER OUT OF HIBERNATE".

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No instructions or explanation could be found.

Jiggle the mouse? Click the mouse buttons? Control-alt-delete? Hit "ESCAPE" key? Hit keyboard keys at random? Unplugging and re-booting? Cursing and swearing?

Absolutely nothing would work.

Nothing.

As far as we could tell, the computer was somehow locked in hibernate status.

Somehow, we eventually did get the computer to work again, but we were not sure how we did it.

What got me, though, was that something as basic as "HOW TO GET YOUR COMPUTER OUT OF HIBERNATE STATUS" was not even explained by Microsoft on its own web site -- or, if it was, it was so well hidden that we were never able to find it.

To this day, I will not hit "HIBERNATE" on a computer using Microsoft Windows, and I have no idea how to get a computer back up once it's in that mode.

I find the "help" features on Microsoft products such as Word and Excel to be pretty much useless. They're simply not designed to find answers quickly -- even answers to some of the simplest questions about the programs' most basic features.

I do think that the folks at Microsoft have wonderful products with Windows, Word, and Excel, but, in some areas of those programs, the programmers just can't see the forest for the trees. In terms of documentation and instructions, they're great at telling the COMPUTER what to so (i.e., in writing programs) but not so good at communicating with people.
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JamesVincent
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Re: Really.....

Post by JamesVincent »

Famspear wrote: I do think that the folks at Microsoft have wonderful products with Windows, Word, and Excel, but, in some areas of those programs, the programmers just can't see the forest for the trees. In terms of documentation and instructions, they're great at telling the COMPUTER what to so (i.e., in writing programs) but not so good at communicating with people.
I'll tell you what the problem is, and it's not just Microsoft, it's industry wide. The skill level of the average computer user is so low that everything is dumbed down as low as it can go. If they actually included everything into a manual the manual will be 800 pages and it would still miss something. And, in a lot of ways, they are ASSuming that people actually are that stupid. With good reason. If you have ever done over the phone service calls you would know that you are given a list of questions to ask, in the hopes that something on the list will fix the problem without having a tech involved. Know what the first question is on every list I have ever seen or heard of? Is the computer plugged into the wall? Want to take a wild guess on how many times that was actually the reason the computer wouldn't boot? Somewhere around 10%.

To bring a Vista machine out of hibernation you press the power button. Depending on the machine and how it's set up you either use just a quick press or you hold it until the computer starts powering up. In sleep the power doesn't really turn all the way off but in hibernate it does pretty much, only enough power to keep your memory up. Sleep you can get out of by any number of things, hibernate has to use the power button.

edit: Forgot to add that this is the common way for all machines I have ever dealt with that had a hibernate setting. Hibernate actually cuts the power supply so low that the keyboard itself is not powered.
Last edited by JamesVincent on Wed Dec 17, 2014 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Really.....

Post by Judge Roy Bean »

Famspear wrote: Something just occurred to me: A list of some things that might have the average 10 year old kid today scratching his head.....

1. Manual typewriter?

2. Rotary telephone?

3. Phonograph with 45 rpm and 33 & 1/3 records?

4. Reel-to-reel analog tape recorder?

EDIT: And, for computer technology.....

5. Computer punch cards and punch card reader......
How about phones with a crank?
Car radios that had to warm up?
Carbon paper?
CB radios?
Round-screen B&W televisions with 13 channels and no remotes?
Lard?
Vehicles with a choke?
Telephone 'operators'?
Polaroid cameras?
CRT O'scopes?
Kerosene lanterns?
Merthiolate?
Long-distance calls?
Mimeograph machines?
Autoharps?
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Re: Really.....

Post by Famspear »

JamesVincent wrote:To bring a Vista machine out of hibernation you press the power button. Depending on the machine and how it's set up you either use just a quick press or you hold it until the computer starts powering up....
That didn't work for us, so maybe it was an actual hardware problem or something. We were not even sure how we eventually got the computer to work again.

But, you would think that Microsoft people would at least have had the common sense to give the user just that minimal amount of instruction. Back then (six or seven years ago), we could find absolutely nothing at all on the internet (at either the Microsoft web site or anywhere else) about how to get a Vista machine out of "hibernate." Nothing.
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JamesVincent
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Re: Really.....

Post by JamesVincent »

Famspear wrote: That didn't work for us, so maybe it was an actual hardware problem or something. We were not even sure how we eventually got the computer to work again.

But, you would think that Microsoft people would at least have had the common sense to give the user just that minimal amount of instruction. Back then (six or seven years ago), we could find absolutely nothing at all on the internet (at either the Microsoft web site or anywhere else) about how to get a Vista machine out of "hibernate." Nothing.
Could very well be. Vista, for want of a better word, kinda sucked. I never used it, on purpose. Went from upgraded 98 to XP to 7. I agree 100% with the need for a better, more thought out manual and Microsoft has gotten better with it, if for no other reason then there are a lot of other websites out there now who actually look for work arounds and then post them. Some of those pages are actually Microsoft sponsored and acknowledged, they let the geeks figure out the issues and then link them or repost them on a Microsoft page.
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Re: Really.....

Post by Famspear »

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. At the Microsoft web site now, there is a page where a user had this question about four years ago:
Vista 32-bit cannot exit hibernate mode

I placed my Windows Vista Home Edition (HP computer) into hibernate mode. The on/off button blinks. I can hold down the on/off button to turn off the computer. When I turn on the computer again, it goes directly into hibernate mode. I cannot run anything or even see my desktop. My monitor is blank. The on/off button then starts blinking again.
That is precisely the problem we had with our Dell 32 bit machine using Windows Vista. This was six or seven years ago, when we first got the computer.

The "moderator" responded with this:
You may experience this issue if the computer is lacking updated drivers.

Method 1: Log on to the computer manufacturer website and update the latest chipset drivers. Also, check for other device driver updates.

Method 2: Make sure you have the latest Windows Updates installed.
Hello? Earth calling Microsoft...... Anybody home?

Again, the moderator seems to have missed the point that the computer is completely disabled. Blank screen. No cursor. Even if the user could download the drivers from the internet using another machine that is not disabled, how would the user get the drivers on to this computer? How would the user install Windows updates on a computer that is stuck in "hibernate" mode?

I am not a computer techie. Maybe there's a way to do it while the computer is in "hibernate" mode, but if there is, it's certainly beyond my knowledge of computers. And, directly to the point, if there is a way to do it, the moderator should have EXPLAINED how to do that. Again, some computer people are just clueless when it comes to communicating with people.
"My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line." -- David Mamet
JamesVincent
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Re: Really.....

Post by JamesVincent »

Judge Roy Bean wrote: How about phones with a crank?
Car radios that had to warm up?
Carbon paper?
CB radios?
Round-screen B&W televisions with 13 channels and no remotes?
Lard?
Vehicles with a choke?
Telephone 'operators'?
Polaroid cameras?
CRT O'scopes?
Kerosene lanterns?
Merthiolate?
Long-distance calls?
Mimeograph machines?
Autoharps?
Wanna really blow their mind?

Record players in cars
After market air-conditioning in vehicles.
Pretty much anything that doesn't take batteries.
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JamesVincent
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Re: Really.....

Post by JamesVincent »

Famspear wrote:Here's an example of what I'm talking about. At the Microsoft web site now, there is a page where a user had this question about four years ago:
Vista 32-bit cannot exit hibernate mode

I placed my Windows Vista Home Edition (HP computer) into hibernate mode. The on/off button blinks. I can hold down the on/off button to turn off the computer. When I turn on the computer again, it goes directly into hibernate mode. I cannot run anything or even see my desktop. My monitor is blank. The on/off button then starts blinking again.
That is precisely the problem we had with our Dell 32 bit machine using Windows Vista. This was six or seven years ago, when we first got the computer.

The "moderator" responded with this:
You may experience this issue if the computer is lacking updated drivers.

Method 1: Log on to the computer manufacturer website and update the latest chipset drivers. Also, check for other device driver updates.

Method 2: Make sure you have the latest Windows Updates installed.
Hello? Earth calling Microsoft...... Anybody home?

Again, the moderator seems to have missed the point that the computer is completely disabled. Blank screen. No cursor. Even if the user could download the drivers from the internet using another machine that is not disabled, how would the user get the drivers on to this computer? How would the user install Windows updates on a computer that is stuck in "hibernate" mode?

I am not a computer techie. Maybe there's a way to do it while the computer is in "hibernate" mode, but if there is, it's certainly beyond my knowledge of computers. And, directly to the point, if there is a way to do it, the moderator should have EXPLAINED how to do that. Again, some computer people are just clueless when it comes to communicating with people.
lol... There is no way to update drivers with a computer stuck in hibernate. That's kinda funny. The unofficial, "don't try this at home" workaround would be to remove power to the machine and let it reboot. In the case of a laptop that would mean taking the battery out for 30 seconds and putting it back in or letting it sit until the battery is fully dead. In a desktop you would remove the plug for 30 seconds and replug it in. They would never tell you that since there's a chance of harming the computer itself everytime you do it but, with it in hibernate, it would be a very slim chance of crashing the hard drive or of shorting the motherboard.
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Re: Really.....

Post by Famspear »

Judge Roy Bean wrote: How about phones with a crank?
Car radios that had to warm up?
Carbon paper?
CB radios?
Round-screen B&W televisions with 13 channels and no remotes?
Lard?
Vehicles with a choke?
Telephone 'operators'?
Polaroid cameras?
CRT O'scopes?
Kerosene lanterns?
Merthiolate?
Long-distance calls?
Mimeograph machines?
Autoharps?
What's scary for me is that I know what all those things are -- and the only items on the list that I've never actually seen in person in my every day life are the phone with a crank and the autoharp (but I've seen 'em on TV of course).

I am even familiar with the CRT O'scope, though I've never used one. I used to be a radio announcer, and the chief engineer at the radio station always had one near by.

When we were kids in school, mimeograph machines were used quite a bit. Anyone remember the way the ink smelled on the mimeograph test paper that your teacher handed out to the class?

Kerosene lanterns? Most definitely.

Vehicles with a choke? Oh yes. Man, I am gettin' old.......
"My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line." -- David Mamet