Help !

This is a request from Nurse Judy from Anglers Net, she is an old friend & her question is going unanswered over there. Wondered if someone on here could help

 

"Smart" in this case seems a bit of a misnomer :D

A software update may help, see >
Samsung Smart TV - Fixing familiar issues with a firmware update | KNOWHOW

 

any 4 year olds out there?
the instructions usually boast a 4 year old can tune them.

 

I've been a computer programmer for a long time, about 15 years professionally, about 25 if you count my hobbyist and training years. This means I should know my stuff.

What I know is that the technology we have nowadays is mindblowingly brilliant. Common everyday gadgets have capabilities that would have been outrageously ridiculous science fiction just a few years ago. I take my hat off to the hardware developers.

I'd say in general, the software developers have kept up with the pace and produce brilliant software.

BUT, there's a problem, and its a biggy. The marketing people have done their stats, and decided rather arrogantly that people are stupid, and so the fashion in software these days is to hide all of the detail from the end user. Great for some things, not great in other situations.

Whereas one time, if something wasn't doing what it should, you could just flick through the options and see what was what. If something didn't work, you might get told 'such and such didn't work because its not plugged in to such and such', now you don't get told anything half the time, just options and features just get disabled because if they're not going to work, there's no point offering them. The flaw in the logical is that they could work if only you gave the end user a clue as to what might be wrong.

In my one job, we were developing a system that depends on many external factors, and so we have to make our software test for the presence and correct functioning of those external factors, and gracefully handle problems without crashing.

And what has our boss decided should happen if any of these external factors throws a thrombo on us? We display a discreet message saying 'There has been a technical problem'. That means nothing to anybody.

My point? (sorry I drifted off into a mild rant): The latest 'smart' technology might be built by very talented specialist people but the final say rests with people who know nowt, and unfortunately that often means that if something doesn't go to plan, it can be a nightmare trying to figure out why.

 

Us developers would generally love to tell the user what's happened (within reason), but those that pay approve the timesheets insist that we should just say 'its bust' and move on.

 

They probably hope that the user will accept that and buy another one.

The trouble with our commerce is that there are too many managers and accountants and not enough personnel who have come up from the bottom. It's like BT, started having graduate entrants who made the same mistakes that had been made before.