Yes, that old English idiom, which basically means if something is working perfectly well for the majority of people, then please don’t go round by trying to improve it because more often than not it achieves the direct opposite.
In this case my line of fire is directed fairly and squarely at those cunts at Microsoft HQ. We all know about their half-baked operating system releases over the last few decades; we all know how they fuck about with their headline applications such as SQL Server (which they stole from Sybase in 1993, carry on – NA), Visual Studio and Microsoft Office. We all know how they rarely, if ever, listen to public feedback in order to “make Windows better”.
Instead they just do their own thing, determined to make life difficult for their punters by tinkering with existing applications and over-engineering them to the point whereby cunts like me and many others have to relearn how a perfectly good app in the past is now something totally different and actually achieves far less!
Installing Windows 11, for example, was not only a big bloody effort, but also a PITA because the Redmond cunts have given the front end GUI a complete makeover, as well as fucking about with some tried and trusted settings such as Task Manager (moved from the Task Bar), the Task Bar clock (which won’t display seconds anymore) and Task Bar itself (difficult to customise and group apps).
Not only that but they’ve fucked about with pre-installed apps such as Photos with more over-engineered bollocks, some of which are admittedly welcome additions. But by the same token they decide to get rid of certain functionalities within an app for no apparent reason, leaving you, the mug punter, in limbo as you look for alternatives.
For example, their Photos app had a very good tool called “Spot Fix” and “Red Eye” ,which removed dust and blemishes and corrected a person’s eye glare in a photo. This was hugely useful and simple to learn. But that was in a previous release of Photos.
Now, Microsoft have released a new version of Photos and got rid of “Spot Fix” / “Red Eye” with no direct replacement. So that means if you’re trying to clean a shedload of photos you’re now fucked because Spot Fix has gone, and you’re gonna have to relearn with a 3rd party app bolted on, which may or may not be free..
But its not just Microsoft that can’t resist breaking things, Apple. Android, Linux – they’re all at it. Developing improvements to an app but getting rid of perfectly good functionality, and then expecting us to be eternally grateful for their hard work.
And it’s not just IT products where this kind of over-engineering goes on – tablets, cameras, phones, televisions, car dashboards, washing machines ..and on and on… Product designers bring out extra features that serve little purpose other than to confuse as you read through the 90 page user manual. They get rid of things, rename things, move things, make things look really modern with lots of lights and buttons. But don’t really achieve anything.
Yes, I understand products have to evolve and become better over time, but to reduce its functionality and/or over-engineer something just for the sake of it is not the way to treat their customer base. Especially if time is a factor and you really don’t want to spend even more time having to relearn all over again.
If it ain’t broke, leave the fuck alone. Please!
Nominated by: Technocunt
I think they call it built-in obsolescence. Microsoft, Apple, cars, domestic appliances, etc. You name it, they’ll fucking tinker with it and make it more difficult to operate.
Having said all that, I have just installed four Ring cameras/floodlights on my property after several unwanted ‘guests’ were caught straying onto my land, one cunt trying to pinch my wife’s Honda S2000.
I am pleased to say the Ring system is clever but a piece of piss to set up and operate. I just hope Ring don’t go the same way as Microcunt.
12
“if it aint broke…break it”.
17
Subsequent “updates” will ensure it is unusable in a few years, and you will have to “upgrade”.
10
Paul@
“The Ring® system is a piece of piss to install”…
I found it a fuckin nightmare.
Doorbell &camera front,
Cameras &floodlight at the back.
Just got a new battery,
Has to be scanned .
Also got a new wifi box thingie
Wheres the code you scan?
Back of the doorbell!
Had to unscrew it to scan it.😡
Technology is the enemy.👎
10
My ones are not battery powered – wired into the loft lighting circuit.
Just paired the mobile to the router. Put mobile in discovery mode and found each camera in turn. Once found, I connected each one in turn. I can now see activity from my office desk.
If your wireless signal is weak, you may need some signal extenders; Sky sent one out to me. That was the only slight hiccup.
5
Mis: Antique man traps are more effective than “ring” doorbells, at dissuading local gipsies, thieves and BBC licensing goons.
I hear that they catch the morning light and are most attractive, when given several costs of “Cuntry-cream” paint👍
13
Thats the reason I got Ring®
My country cream gates.
People touching them.
Leaving smears from their filthy hands.
Now I can issue a warning through the speaker
“No touching!
Thats made by a artisan woodcarver!”
😀
7
More likely that they see the “Country cream,artisan-made” gate and think that they’re liable to get bummed by the owner.
10
And theyd be right .
Punishment bumming.
Some people were never told by their mummys & daddys
‘look but dont touch’
Everyones a budding Prince Andrew.
10
The punishment bumming must be dry. Aided with some 60 grit wet and dry – a sheet rolled around your todger.
6
Planned obsolescence – keeps the capitalist world ticking. I’m going to fuck off and live in a croft with one electric light bulb.
10
Are you going to power it with a, rarely spinning, 400ft high wind turbine?
7
I’m going to power it from a sewage digester, which will produce methane to power a genset. If there’s no power, I will only have myself to blame for not shitting enough.
9
Living in a croft I daresay you’ll be eating local grass, shitting won’t be a problem. The quality of the shit maybe.
0
World’s oldest light-bulb, been glowing for 120 years…
(3 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4DDZVs73RU
In the early days of the light-bulb business, the goal was to make a light-bulb that outlasts your competitors, but at some point the companies all realised that making one that last a short time would mean more sales. Now we have shitty-as-fuck “energy-saving light-bulbs” that sometimes only last 6 months and some make a bang when they run out.
There’s a law coming in soon in Scotland where household appliances MUST be guaranteed to last at least seven years. Some fridges break after two years, it’s comical. The fridges of the 1950s when people started being able to afford them, lasted 30+ years. There was a woman in the news last year whose mother’s 1957 fridge is still working.
We used to make things to last and made them with style, now everything is cheap and nasty, falls apart, gets grungy because dirt can’t wash off the material easily by rain. Urban decay is all over Britain now, it’s shocking. So many shitholes in our glorious sacred island now.
14
” we all know how they fuck about with their headline applications……”…..you vastly over-estimate my knowledge of all thing technological.
9
I know how to turn the thing on and browse in German Dutch and Thai !!! Whoops did I just say that out aloud ?
4
Microshaft should have stopped at XP.
Gates should have sold up to start his new world order in a hollowed out volcano.
I enjoy technology but I do get somewhat cross when it tries to boss me about.
The cheeky Metal Mickey cunts.
14
Microsoft – as pestentential as Blair and Starmer put together. I am seriously thinking of going over to a Mac – Windows 10 is hideus, unreliable, buggy and bloated and 11 is bound to be worse. Fuck modern life.
13
Microsoft are money grabbing cunts.
You used to be able to buy Office on a disk for about £70 and it lasted you years. Now you pay £79 year for the downloadable version which is now running as slow as my old XP version two years ago.
Boil the cunts in piss.
11
Last year I switched from Office 2003, which cost me a fiver a few years ago, to Office 2016 which cost me a tenner, I believe. Even there they’ve pissed me off by removing the ability to scan something into Word directly. Now I have to scan a document then cut and paste into a new Word document. How the fuck is this supposed to be an improvement? I’ve been trying to digitise all my wife’s recipes, cut from magazines and stuff, and each one is now taking 3x as long as before. And I resent being forced from Win7 last year to Win8.1. My desktop is 8 years old and doesn’t really want to run Win10, which is just as well because I fucking don’t either.
7
LLF@ – If you need Office just buy a product key online – about a fiver and it lets you download the Office suite (they take the software off scrap computers so are legally allowed to sell it).
2
Use OpenOffice or it’s fork Libre office.
I’ve used them for years on Linux and windows.
I used to use Skype before MS bought it. It was great. MS totally wrecked it by trying to turn it into a shit version of WhatsApp (which was also good before that weird cunt at FB bought it).
MS fuck up everything they touch.
5
I think technology peaked with the invention of the V8 engine😀👍
It’s been mostly detrimental to humankind, since.
🧐
11
I’ve recently bought a 1994 Honda NTV 650 which in addition to having shaft drive (I hate chain drive), has carburettors rather than fuel injection. I had forgotten just how good the ‘old fashioned ‘ carb is. Fuel injection may have some advantages but I can understand carburettors,set them up and bump start the bike should the battery be flat. A knackered FI system can cost a fortune to repair.
Long live the carburettor!
10
My next and probably last car is going to be powered by a big noisy uneconomical V8 fuck all the green shite
2
Wood cabin,log burner,veggie patch,self composter (or sling it over Fiddlers hedge),dog,shotgun and a water source.
Fuck that speccy,meddlesome nerd with Ringos doorbell.
Thanks.
10
I once had someone dump a load of old tyres over one of my many vast lengths of hedge….I was actually quite pleased…good for lighting bonfires near to the newly-built executive-style housing estate plus it would have fucked Greta Thundercunt off when I sent her the photos
11
That must have hurt the old chocolate starfish.
3
A cheaper way of safguarding your house, provided you have a tree in the drive, would be to get Lord Adonis or Lord Heseltine (or ideally both), to hang themselves from it. After a couple of weeks the cadaver(s) would go black, but that is all in the name of diversity – they would stink, but probably no more than they do now, of shit and piss, but the staring eyes, the frothing at the mouth and the protruding tongues would put off all but the most determined housebreaker, and he would get a faceful of maggots as the putrid corpses became food for the worms. No wires, no batteries to wear out and considerably cheaper.
10
Good idea!
You could hang fatballs from their ankles for the birds and maybe some pleasant windchimes?*
*No such thing eh?
Windchimes are annoying as fuck.
Missus Miserables got one made of shards of crystal in the back garden.
Slight breeze?
Like someone falling down a fire escape with a drum kit.
9
Mnc@ – Agreed – I fkin hate wind chimes!
The only sound heard in the garden should be birdsong and the wailing of intruders being stripped of flesh by dogs!
If Microsoft (named after Bill Gates wedding night) made wind chimes they would hang inside the chimney..
7
Some cunt purporting to be from Microsoft phoned me and said he wanted to access my Windows 10 Colonel D. Bugger whatever that is.
4
Don’t tell me – he spoke in a thick accent like Peter Sellers playing the Indian Doctor and said his name was Dave. I had a “Steve” once!
6
I’ve had a Peter and, one bizarre day, some cunt who said his name was Sue! Clearly didn’t understand the Johnny Cash song.
7
Its short for Sewer.
A common name in the subcontinent.
6
Birdy num num.
4
I had one bud-bud ding ding call just this morning to say there was a purchase of £700 on my Amazon account. He introduced himself as Jeremy Smith!
Had to ask me my name, mind. I told him in a camp lisping voice, my name was Juan Kmiov. Spelled it out to him too, phonetically. He said, there was an Ipad purchase, and I told him that was correct – but for my hot boyfriend, who is just taking a hot shower. The cunt hung up!
9
Superb😂👍
2
Never had an Amazon one but I do recall some wanker, a couple of years or 3 back, asking about an accident I had. I told him that yes, I had smashed my head on a plate glass window. He got all excited and asked me how I’d done it. I told him that, as I was getting out of bed, I’d tripped over my cock.
Click…brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
9
Microsoft and Apple have a huge roster of employees whose existence has to be justified. so these deadbeats are engaged endlessly tinkering the software to make it ‘better” and ruining it for everyone else in the process.
I have this problem every time Apple release an “update”. As soon as this update is installed it fucks everything up on your computer and renders many third party apps useless. I’m not going to be a mug this time and I’m not updating to Monterey until all the inevitable fuck-ups in it are eliminated.
Over-engineered cunts.
6
My nomination ire is also aimed at dashboard in modern cars, especially hybrids and electric – not that I own either.
Back in the old days the dash consisted of your odometer, fuel and temp gauges, tachometer, lights and that was about it.
These days a dash looks like the inside of the bleedin command pod of the Space Shuttle – so many dials, gauges, flashing lights, pings, bongs, warnings, red lights, yellow lights, green lights, :LED meters and a shitload more, it looks like a bloody an acid house gig with strobing and lasers flashing in your face. And all you want is the ignition and the button to activate the wipers!
9
That’s why I have a Morgan. Old fashioned, completely mechanical and analogue. Not a computer in sight. A real car not a computer on wheels.
9
Techno@ – Yep – I had the brake/traction control system warning light suddenly appearing on the dash of the Panzer yesterday – after looking on the various forums and seeing horror stories involving diagnostics, sensors and hundreds of quid I popped the bonnet and pushed the loose connection back on to the brake boost reservoir..
Sorted – but my MK2 Escort had no electronic nonsense on the dash and never, ever went wrong.
Microsoft deliberately make junk and then use the negative feedback from the customers to improve a few bad areas – problem being they call this remedial action an “update” and charge you money for the privilege of fixing their shit software.
But I can’t complain at “built in obsolescence” – I make money repairing stuff which is too good to chuck away – but people just do.
4
My computing needs are few, which is great because my skills are, also.
After years of being pissed off with my laptop insisting on installing updates every other day, and taking ages to do it, I finally had to replace it. ( My elderly senile cat mistook it for the litter tray). I bought a Chrome book, and haven’t looked back since.
5
Many years ago when I was a freelance, I did a job at Microsoft campus (pretensious? Moi?) in Reading. In 20 years it remains the only contract I ever walked away from. They were fucking useless.
In the developers office was a bloody great banner which read “Remember the future of the world is in your hands today!”
One night someone wrote across the bottom on red felt tip “We’re fucked then!” Watching the witch hunt for the perpetrator was fucking hilarious.
And before you ask it wasn’t me. I know who it was though and he was a freelancer too…
9
You have described perfectly why I use Apple not Microsloth.
My music is all put together on GarageBand. I use v6. Apple are not immune to the fix it for your benefit bollocks either. They bought LogicPro. Good software but bloody complicated to use. To improve GarageBand they cut out a shed load of features and relabelled it GarageBand 10. Needless to say it’s shit.
Microsoft cunts bought Fox Software so they could take FixPro – a decent database – off the market and push their piece of shit called Access.
All my software is old. I refuse to upgrade something that works to replace it with a bunch of flaky crap. Unfortunately I’m still lumbered with MS Office even on the Mac so you can’t fucking win. Mind you, I’m still on Office 2000 so fuck ’em
6
I’ve used a number of Access databases and not found them too bad. But even after having had it at home for at least 15 years I’ve yet to figure out how to set one up.
1
FoxBASE, FoxBASE+ and then FoxPRO were really very, very good. They never got the name recognition they deserved compared to Ashton Tate’s dBASE product line, but in many ways were superior. I also remember a separate product called Clipper which could compile dBASE compatible code into an executable, rather than you having to run an interpreted application. All great stuff back in the day.
Then Microsoft bought Fox Software and fucked it and the customer base. Before long we had Visual FoxPRO (which I never used) and it was effectively game over.
And let us not forget Microsoft’s joint venture (ahem) with Sybase back in the 90s. Here’s how that went:
Microsoft: We need a relational database system which can grab some of the market share of mid range to desktop platforms. We can’t let Oracle have the market practically to themselves. Want to join forces and benefit from our desktop and brand new server tech, marketing and spin?
Sybase: Erm….well….OK that might work, but we’re really proud of our SQL Server and would like to sell more of it.
Microsoft & Sybase exchange technologies. Which basically meant Microsoft got the source code for SQL Server and Sybase got a cup of coffee and a danish. Then a little while later…
Microsoft: Yeah, we don’t want to be friends anymore. You can fuck off but thanks for the source code.
Sybase: You cunts!
6
If MS made cars each new model would have the steering wheel hidden in a different place – in the trunk, under the rear fender, underneath the floor…
Oh shit – I hope Grant Shapps isn’t reading this 😬
6
Mikdys@ – If Microsoft made cars they would stop and need an update at every set of traffic lights.
Create a virus then charge a fortune for a solution that doesn’t work – now where the fk have I heard that before?
5
You’d also have to sign in to your account before you could open the boot or fuel cap.
4
Sorry to go off topic, but I didn’t see this on BBC:
https://www.rt.com/sport/547313-marcus-rashford-jesse-lingard-wiley-photo/
3
It`s a disgrace.
They also rename things for no good reason.
Nigroids®, for example, now Vigroids™. Why ?!
http://www.unapologeticallymundane.com/images/2008-08/Nigroids.jpg
… good, clean, unambiguously-named concentrated liquorice pellets.
7
Phooof! Sheeyaa, hmmmm, mmmaha. Won’t be too long before AI just closes the door on the human meddling aspect of technological advancement. It’ll develop its own code which will be that of continuous improvement … a permanent state of flux that forever evolves in order not to become extinct … unlike humongs. I think one of my banking apps is already at that level … every time I access it I have to undergo some kinda Mensa test and each time it’s seemingly completely fuckin different … a system set up to prevent me from accessing my own stuff. ➡️➡️🔀➡️⬆️⬇️🔁🔄🔃💥💥💥💥🔥🔥😡
🤷🏼♂️🍺
4
Being something of a Luddite, I have very little idea what is actually being discussed here.
Which of itself is a somewhat depressing state of affairs.
Oh dear.
Morning all.
7
I think we were a lot happier when we had the Amstrad PcW 8256. My biggest upgrade was to the 9512+ with a free printer AND a trade-in on the old 8256. Happy days.
2
I bought my first PC back in 1995, a Pentium 75 with a massive 512MB hard drive. My tablet now has 256x that storage on a micro SD card.
2
I recently sorted out some forgotten storage crates, in my office.
I found:
ZX80
ZX81
Spectrum
Commodore64
Amiga(s)
Intellivision
Atari 2600
Atari 8000
Mega drive
All with boxed of games, peripherals galore.
Someone told me they were valuable?
I gave them all to a computer geek-friend of an associate. He was literally drooling over them, the lucky cunt.
Any counters who wish to repay my kindness, with a spare V8 muscle car or classic trials bike-feel free to donate👍
2
I have a Sega Mega drive and MegaCD which needs a bit of soldering internally but, even now, I reckon I could get around £400 for them, knackered box ‘n all. They work, but some connections are dodgy.
1
Good cunting. Spot on, they are always fucking up any useful features and utilities in their drive to dumb down everything in the HCI, whilst actually making some of their programs more difficult to use!
And you should see their responses to user groups who call for new features or the return of deleted ones – talk about not listening! Classic behaviour from a company that’s too big for it’s own boots.
Now they’ve gone super PC ( pardon the pun) with the Giphys in Teams : it’s all woke crap and you can’t find anything to the right of Lenin.
4
XP and Office 97 work fine for me, as long as I carefully separate XP from any network connection (and especially wifi). I have some old software which Microcock no longer supports, and which is no longer updated. For the real world, Linux and Libre Office – but Excel 97 has some functions the open versions don’t. And an Android tablet for drone FPV and telemetry. And one of those old Acer mini notebooks running a trimmed down Linux off an SSD, ca 2008. And….
Must have a clearout.
1
Why the fuck don’t old programmes run in capability mode on newer machines?
3
The US government had a long standing policy of “If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is.”
Also, designers seem to think that it is anathema to not change things constantly. They call it “innovation”. Whatis so wrong with keeping something that works the way it is?
Designers give us shit that is east for them to understand but not the general public.
Good cunting.
4
I have another 2x 500GB drives available for my older computer (salvaged from my Sky HD boxes). I have the space, power and connections to install in my tower and I’m looking to put a Linux OS on one and a VM on another to run Win XP, but sandboxes. It’ll be fun setting up.
4
I’m about to have a new laptop and printer installed. I know the square root of fuck-all about computors and this one’s going to have Windows 11. Not looking forward to it at all. Just when you get used to something they fucking change it.
2
I bought a Windows 10 laptop a year ago and it works ok, but I get frequently get a big blue square appearing, telling me essentially that I’ll be in PC paradise if I upgrade to Windows 11.
Well they can fuck off. I upgraded a perfectly good, albeit old, laptop from 7 to 10 a while ago because a message said that I needed to, and I stupidly did it. It took all night to do the update and the result was a totally fucked up laptop that then took about 5x as long as before, to do anything (if it actually managed to do anything at all).
Also a bit pissed off that my current laptop is Windows 10s which seems to prevent me downloading certain programmes that I might need, unless I switch out of 10s. I don’t know if that would make much difference, as I’m a bit of a technophobe. But why do they have to make things so fucking awkward?
3
Why so awkward? , that’s just to let you know your not as smart as they are.
Call Greta about the energy bill they are costing everyone with the shit they carry on with
I think though she’s busy updating
1
As I don’t have an XP disc for my current installation, and a new clean one costs 1 arm + 1 leg, I was looking at 7, which is apparently cheaper, until I came across the upgrade issue.
I discovered that you can turn off the reminders to upgrade from 7 or 8 to 10,* not sure if 10 to 11 works the same way. It’s a bit of a faff but give it a Google.
It is cheaper still to buy an old desktop with XP or 7 already on it. Madness.
* You can lose all the other automated bloatware downloads as well.
1
You can have my copy of XP if you want it.
0
Have two laptops. One is new the other one about 8 years old, used just as back up laptop and used for downloading/playing media through TV to save new laptop from potential viruses etc.
It works perfectly fine…but since Windows 10 it’s been a cunt. For the second time in a year I had to completely reinstall windows and delete everything. If I just tried to reinstall, it froze on 83% I think it was and didn’t move (left it overnight and it was still frozen).
I had to do the reinstall because an update made my sound disappear and my internet keep cutting out. Laptop kept freezing too.. Advice was to reinstall according to Microsoft. I couldn’t do the install from a previous date either for some reason.
There was fuck all wrong before, but it’s as if the cunts are trying to make people buy new laptops and software when there is fuck all wrong with what they bought.
If they did make laws making it illegal for them to force updates on you (eventually Windows 10 will update even if you keep ignoring it and putting it off) the cunts would just stop supporting the program and probably put some shitty virus in your system to kill your PC.
The fucking shithouses.
They break what doesn’t need fixing because they make money. It’s like some cunt coming around to your house and turning your DVD collection into a 4k flash drive database. Without you asking them. Or even trying to ignore them, but the cunts break in and do it anyway.6 me
Ok, changing the DVDs to 4k flash drives may be more modern. More convenient even.
But if you’re telly isn’t 4k (and if you lose the drive or it gets damaged…as they eventually do)…you’ve lost your collection of ‘ladies art videos’.
Wankers.
3
About sums it up cuntybollocks and they get away with it .
So another car crashed computer for recycling 🥳
Oh and the greens have their priorities spot on don’t they
I love the greens alongside with my steak (knife)
2