by Dave Moore, 7-21-19
I have learned over the years that the only thing you can count on with computers, the Internet, and technology in general, is that things will always change. They will never stay the same.
This infuriates people to no end. As soon as you finally figure something out, get used to the way it works, and get good at making it work, it changes into something completely different. You spend weeks, months, maybe years configuring your computer to work just the way you like it, and suddenly it all changes.
It’s like going to Walmart and they have once again rearranged the store, forcing you to re-learn where everything is. “Why?” you protest, “why can’t they just leave things alone? Why can’t things just stay the same?”
That’s a very good question. Why, indeed, can’t “they” just leave things alone? Many of the unexpected changes to our computer systems, be they PCs, Macs, phones or tablets, are due to the dreaded “updates” syndrome, from manufacturers like Apple, Microsoft or Google, as well as AT&T, Samsung, LG, and a host of other device producers.
The fuel that powers our devices is software, and updates fix problems that are discovered in software. As devices and features become more capable and complex, so does the software. For example, programs like Microsoft Word can contain over 45 million programming sentences called “lines of code.” Facebook runs on over 62 million lines of code. The average modern car uses 100 million lines of code.
But there are problems; lots and lots of problems.
Operating systems, programs, and apps are just some of the software our systems depend on, and they are so full of bugs and mistakes that most folks can’t believe it. The dirtiest secret in the tech industries is that the millions and billions of lines of complex computer programming code we depend on every day are horribly flawed, coming from a programming industry that knowingly churns out flawed software on a daily basis.
To quote Marc Goodman, author of the must-read blockbuster “Future Crimes,” “The growing complexity of computer software has direct implications for our global safety and security, particularly as the physical objects upon which we depend – things like cars, airplanes, bridges, tunnels, implantable medical devices – transform themselves into computer code. Physical things are increasingly becoming information technologies.”
“Cars are computers we ride in,” Goodman continues, “and airplanes are nothing more than flying (computer) boxes attached to bucketfuls of industrial control systems. As all this (programming) code grows in size and complexity, so too do the number of errors and software bugs. According to a study by Carnegie Mellon University, commercial software typically has twenty to thirty bugs for every thousand lines of code – fifty million lines of code means 1 million to 1.5 million potential errors to be exploited.”
“This is the basis for all malware attacks that take advantage of these computer bugs to get the code to do something it was not originally intended to do. As computer code grows more elaborate, software bugs flourish and security suffers, with increasing consequences for society at large.”
Clearly, many software updates have a legitimate purpose, that being to fix the programming errors that are found on a daily basis. These updates are good, and we need them. It’s the other type of updates that tend to drive people crazy, that change things in unwanted ways, and that make us cry out in frustration: “feature” updates.
I wonder sometimes if programmers decide to change things, not because there is some great need that they be changed, but that they are simply bored. The drive to compete results in misguided efforts to “freshen up” a program when the folks out in the field who actually use the program have no desire that it be “freshened up;” they just want it to work.
“Feature” updates. Apple, Microsoft and Google are all guilty of the incessant push to constantly be adding more “features” to their products, not because the public demands more features, but because rapidly developing technology allows them. Programmers feel compelled to add them because the technology almost demands them, and they want to be perceived by their bosses as producing “fresh” and exciting work.
That’s why you’ll turn on your computer, and things you were used to are gone. Trusted icons and menu items have been relocated. The task bar looks more like a carnival parade than the time-proven, dependable lineup of resources you need. Some of your most beloved features have disappeared altogether, or, in the evasive double-speak that seems to dominate the tech world, have been “deprecated.”
So, we roll with it. We can’t change it, so we deal with it as best we can and move on down the road. Still, we ask: why can’t things just stay the same? That’s a very good question.
Dave Moore has been fixing computers in Oklahoma since 1984. Founder of the non-profit Internet Safety Group Ltd, he also teaches Internet safety community training workshops. He can be reached at 405-919-9901 or www.internetsafetygroup.com