The Room 101 thread - for things you hate or just having a bloody good moan

[arqueturus]

Microsoft Teams.

It's unstable and it has some bewildering design features, e.g. when you're in a call and someone posts something in the chat sidebar, if you've got the window maximised then you can't reply because the notification appears right over the textbox.

But worst of all, setting your status to do not disturb (vital when I need to concentrate on something and every man and his dog is after me) still allows messages to come through. I seem to remember Skype actively blocks people or tells them you're busy. Teams does nothing at all to help you. Horrible piece of software.

It's beyond shit. Literally does nothing well at all. Video Quality is shit. Messenging is shit. Integration is shit. It's just shit.

[Rusty]

It kills my development macbook. I now tend to run Teams meetings on my gaming PC so I can at least operate my mac at the same time.

That notification thing annoys me too. Had it the other day. We were voting on a work card and everyone was typing in numbers so I couldn't even get a look in. Ended up that I had to minimize then reply.

When you share your screen I can't see who's online. I was trying to arrange a monthly team quiz as we had some new starters but once I was in and presenting I couldn't see who was online or not (we have several big teams)

I tend to leave my camera off as much as possible but whilst other people are talking I can set up my blurred background or such but I can't just accept the change and get back to monitoring people online or viewing the chat as the only option is to 'accept and turn on the camera'. I just want to accept so that it's ready for when I do turn on my camera!

[Wrathbone]

I tend to leave my camera off as much as possible but whilst other people are talking I can set up my blurred background or such but I can't just accept the change and get back to monitoring people online or viewing the chat as the only option is to 'accept and turn on the camera'. I just want to accept so that it's ready for when I do turn on my camera!

After almost a year of having daily team meetings using audio only on Teams, some arse suggested this week that we all try video instead. My response was a barely politer version of "fuck that". Nobody's questioned my refusal. Teams has booted several people out of meetings due to the extra strain, though.

[Drarok]

Les Mis.

Now, I'm no big fan of musicals anyway, but I just hate this one for basically no real reason. The "cor bloimey guvnah" accents in 19th-century France are stupid. The DRAMATIC. TALKING. IN ONE NOTE. totally rubs me the wrong way, they're not fucking singing!

My wife loves it and wants to go see it with me.

[Animalmother]

Peel & Reseal packaging that fucking tears the first time you "peel" it. Fucking bullshit

[Wrathbone]

Modern business processes, specifically in the software industry though I suspect it's far from limited to that.

With a traditional business for a chocolate bar, for example, the manufacturer would produce chocolate bars, they would be distributed to shops via a warehouse, a customer would walk in the shop, buy the chocolate bar and eat it.

Using the same analogy for modern software development and sales:

- The customer walks in the shop and is told they should buy a chocolate bar.

- The customer pays for the chocolate bar, but there aren't any to give to them.

- The shopkeeper asks the warehouse where the chocolate bars are.

- The warehouse demands to know why the manufacturer hasn't produced any chocolate bars for them.

- The manufacturer responds that they haven't been asked to produce chocolate bars for several years and now and produce biscuits instead, and the factory would have to be heavily reconfigured to produce chocolate bars.

- The warehouse tells the shopkeeper to liaise directly with the manufacturer.

- The shopkeeper insists to the manufacturer that they need to produce chocolate bars ASAP because they've already sold a tonne of them.

- The manufacturer retrofits all their factory machines to produce chocolate bars and goes about mass producing them.

- The customer by this point has asked for a refund for their chocolate bar.

- The shopkeeper doesn't want to give a refund, so they exchange the chocolate bar for a biscuit.

- The shopkeeper asks the warehouse where all the biscuits are.


We're living in a ready, fire, aim world.

[Drarok]

Are you buying, or making software? Either way, it sounds like you're in some insane corporate hell. I don't make anything like that.

[Wrathbone]

Software development. Not retail software, though, it’s contract software where (as previously mentioned) sales tend to sell things that haven’t yet been developed.

I have friends in other software businesses in the same sector (education management) who have similar experiences.

[Drarok]

Ah, education ruins everything.

I've only worked at one place where sales sold things that didn't exist and then told us we had six weeks to make the missing features, and that was the very first "proper" techie job I had. Since then it's been a lot more civilised.

[Raid]

No comment necessary.

[Animalmother]

What's the frog mouthed Edwin up to now?

[Raid]

I didn't click the link, but apparently it's a paid newsletter.

'How to take back control of your finances in 4 simple steps’

Presumably step one is charging people £199 for a newsletter.

[Raid]

Crap categorising and search abilities on paid-for streaming services. Say for example I want to look for a film to watch on Amazon Prime. There is no way to restrict the search criteria to films included with Prime. "Free to me", ie: the stuff that you can watch at no additional cost, is a category and not an option. So clicking "Free to me" means you have to wade through all of the TV shows. If you go to the Films category, it lumps in all of the stuff you'd need to pay for. Why is there not a "Free to me" toggle that you can enable under any category? Same reason supermarkets put the milk and bread at opposite ends I suppose.

And then there's lack of consistency in categories. Sometimes Netflix will show My List at the top of the page, sometimes it won't. Sometimes the "Continue Watching" category appears, sometimes it doesn't. This isn't really an issue on a PC, but on a smart TV or streaming dongle with more limited control options, it's a pain if say you want to continue watching the show that you're currently binging and it hasn't appeared.

I think when I've moved into my new place I'll buy myself a wireless keyboard for the TV so I can just use the search function, but even if I do that, I'll somehow need to work out a way to connect it to both the TV and the XBox (which I only use for Disney Plus, as that service isn't available on Philips TVs).

tl;dr - too much choice is difficult, the ultimate first world problem.

[Tommy]

Microsoft Teams.

It's unstable and it has some bewildering design features, e.g. when you're in a call and someone posts something in the chat sidebar, if you've got the window maximised then you can't reply because the notification appears right over the textbox.

But worst of all, setting your status to do not disturb (vital when I need to concentrate on something and every man and his dog is after me) still allows messages to come through. I seem to remember Skype actively blocks people or tells them you're busy. Teams does nothing at all to help you. Horrible piece of software.

There's definitely shortfalls but for the most part I actually quite like Teams. But it's obviouslyt user-specific - I'd never use do-not-disturb for example.

[Wrathbone]

The other day I was having a text chat with someone in Teams and we realised that some messages weren't coming through, which really confused the conversation. We each took screenshots and discovered there were missing comments from either side at random points. Shambles.