I don’t mind the sensor-operated faucets quite so much, but I’ve also started encountering sensor-operated soap dispensers. One bathroom had them set up so that when I triggered the sensor, my hand was positioned in such a way that the soap shot right past it into the sink. I wonder how much soap they’ve wasted that way?
This’ll be hard to explain adequately without getting really technical, but I’ll give it a shot.
The radio station where I work operates three stations and a reading service for the visually impaired. They had been automated using a program written by a now ex-engineer, in DOS, on computers that were so old that replacement parts could no longer be bought for them. They had no choice but to spend six figures on a state-of-the-art broadcast automation system.
It took a year of preparation and testing, and countless hours on the phone with tech support to get it to do what we needed it to do. They’d never encountered a station that wasn’t rock format with live-assist or total automation, and hadn’t even thought about building some features into it that were essential for us. The software designers had to go in and fix code, replace other code and build new code for it to work. They’d make one modification and screw up something else in the process. Two years later, we are still doing the same dance with them.
Now, they are integrating a traffic system (by another company) with the automation system, so that it will schedule ads and promos without human intervention. Tech support at the traffic systems company is now doing the same dance as the automation people. Fix one thing, break six other ones inadvertently, and fail to understand what the problem is. They advertise that it is totally compatible with the system we use. Sure it is, if they rewrite it so the functions work! So they rewrite code and upload it. It works on one or two stations and hoses the other one(s). We’ve had two years of sounding like crap on the air due to software glitches and auto-generated errors.
More than once, I’ve heard the station engineer and Ops director lament that we should go back to the DOS system. At least we could almost figure out how it worked! As long as you told it the right thing to do, it would do it. The new system does the right thing most of the time, but it also does the wrong thing all by itself at random, and nobody knows why, including the people who designed it!