What Doesn't Work

Things that don't work. Things that end up costing me days, weeks, months, even years of work. Things that could easily be fixed but that no one seems to care about, either out of neglect or because they are ignorant of the fact such problems exist.

No. 1. Autosave. Autosave doesn't work half the time. You know saving sucks. Saving to disk sucks, saving to the cloud sucks. You would rather you never had to save anything. This goes for users and programmers/developers. I/O sucks, is costly. So you invented Autosave. Awesome. Amazing, when can I start using it? Autosave fails because it's never quick enough. Since computer screens are filled up most of the time with a bunch of useless buttons, you KNOW that you WILL absolutely have a finger spasm or whatnot and DELETE your own work. It's going to happen, and sorry but no Autosave function in the world is going to save you, since it needed to be able to predict your random finger spasm, which I can confirm to you with utmost certainty, It did not predict your random spasm that deleted your day's work. And the last time it saved, It never saved enough basically.

No. 2, or maybe No. 0. Why all the buttons so close together? This is true of computers like desktops and laptops, computers with large monitors, small monitors. This is true of tablets, of smart phones, or eReaders. Too many buttons, at least too many buttons too close together. Hello, Mr. Designer, why do you put the SAVE EVERYTHING button next to the DELETE EVERYTHING button? You never heard of random finger spasms? Those buttons need to be AT OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SCREEN. One can never "accidentally" delete something on purpose. One can never "accidentally" do ANYTHING. It means you either never tested your software properly, WITH REAL PEOPLE, or else you just didn't care. Either way, neglect AND/OR ignorance is key here.

No. 3. I don't buy that crap people say about the way Keyboards are layed out. They don't have the same keyboard layout in other parts of the world, so you can't use the excuse or justification that "That's just the way things settled." No, cause it settled DIFFERENTLY in different parts of the world.. I want a keyboard that has the keys I need, AND, get this... I want a keyboard where the DELETE and ENTER keys and F12 or whatnot, I want a keyboard where HOTKEYS or key-presses linked to serious functions, to NOT be side-by-side on the keyboard. Keyboards are not all the same dimensions, so when you're used to a standard keyboard and you get a different one with lighter keys or whatnot, if you're a speed-typer like me, you accidentally delete everything half the time because you hit the wrong key. You hit one of the F1-F12 keys and it deleted everything. Then when you tried to save it, you clicked DELETE EVERYTHING, or FORMAT DRIVE by accident cause you had a random finger spasm.

Anyway, my name is Alex Gagnon and I'm going to fix these serious problems one after the other over the course of the next 40-50 years. I won't retire or stop until every last one of those problems is fixed. It has to work for people with disabilities too. Imagine this, I am having constant problems of this nature over the course of say 20 years, and I have pretty good or at least "okay" fine motor control.

What if I didn't have perfect fine motor control? What would happen then? Could I even use a computer properly, to my liking? Ah, you never thought of that. Well, sir, you shouldn't be building things, cause you're building things for people like you, people who are super PRIVILEGED. Get with the program, man. There are billions of people not so privileged as we are. Get with the F$%& program.

So like I said, I will take the time necessary to solve every last one of these problems, one by one. Right now I'm working on an operating system as well as a new integrated circuit topography that should solve at least half of the problems I encounter and have encountered daily for the last 20 years.

So see you on the other side of PURE GENIUS, folks. Let me know when you get there, I already have a plaque with your name on it, waiting for you to arrive. Oh, and did I say, Get with the Fing program already? Thought so. Sorry but it's like pissing on Steve Jobs' grave and every other engineer, designer, building, maker that ever lived that tried to make the world a better place. Yes, it starts with your damn keyboard, with your damn integrated circuit topographies and with your damn operating systems. And no, Chromebook and Android etc. is NOT the solution. That's the solution for rich kids without disabilities. That doesn't work for people who have no potable water. Hey, if the drought is bad enough, you won't be able to use your iPhone and iPad and iPod anyway. Everything shuts down when that sort of thing goes on for long enough. Nobody told you that because few people truly care to study 100-Year-Flood type events that make the most pessimistic black swan events look like Christmas morning. Few of us, though, do think about the real worst-case scenarios, and prepare for them.

And my thesis is that if people had actually solved problems they tried to solve and even had the gall to say they solved, but didn't actual solve, then the world would be a much better place. So I am holding the entire computing community, the technology community, the telecommunications, networking, and other related communities from the invention of the very first Technical Media to the present, I am holding everyone responsible for me constantly losing my work no matter what I do. Apparently, I work faster than your super-speed computers are able to function at. Funny thing is, I have younger relatives that work even faster than I do, make me look like a really slow snail amongst the slowest of the snails. Moore's law didn't predict that humans would be faster generation after generation. So if in 20 years, computing technology did NOT catch up, then sorry but Houston we have a problem.

You pretty much built it all just plain WRONG. In any case, I will try to fix as many of those problems as I can in my lifetime. It will take a good 40-50 years, but that's okay. I'm healthy and able-bodied, and I happen to care a great deal about getting things right. But your chips are all wrong, your OSes are all wrong, the whole damn Shithouse is all wrong. You know, if the Shithouse is all wrong, you don't have to wait for it to crumble. Tear it down and build something better.

Perfect example of the kind of sentiment I am trying to convey here. Prof. Stephen Hawking just won a bet with a colleague on gravitational waves. He worked on something roughly 30 years ago and basically he was just proved right by the precision cosmology community. That's the simple way to put it. At any rate, Stephen Hawking is interviewed about the gravitational wave thing, and guess what? As always, he is using the same speech-generating device (SGD) that he's always used. I am led to believe that there haven't been any real improvements made, or real innovations, in electronic augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems in what, the last 40 years?

Get with the program. That's just not acceptable. The technology exists to make Prof. Stephen Hawking communicate with his thoughts. Apparently, though, nobody cares. They are too busy living privileged lives. So be it. I'll fix it all myself. Given enough time and health providing, I will fix things. Alex has entered the building. Watch out.
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