Hello People,
I came across this when I was reading about squeezebox touch and NAS. This particular post was an interesting read for me. I am sure a lot of us can relate to this. I am only pasting it here directly for the ease of the reader.
It would be nice to hear your take on this from an audiophile perspective.
The original link: NAS Squeezebox server & iTunes Playlists
I came across this when I was reading about squeezebox touch and NAS. This particular post was an interesting read for me. I am sure a lot of us can relate to this. I am only pasting it here directly for the ease of the reader.
Justme:
It certainly does help, thanks very much for your assistance and information. It is something that I dreaded a bit, i.e. having to do some sort of manual work-around, but at least it isn't terribly complicated. Or at least from your description it doesn't seem to bad.
There just seems to be so many things to do these days, I feel I seem to end up working for my technology rather than it working for me
mark-in-seattle:
As the person commented above, I too am saddened by the level of user support our technology demands of us these days. We spend so many hours fixing the very tools that are supposed to work FOR us, but which often steal the very time we expect the tools to add value to.
I worked many years for a defense contractor designing computer systems for the army. My boss, a very perceptive and talented engineer, told me the real competition for our expensive computer solutions weren't other companies in our niche market, but experienced staff sergeants with secure radios barking out just-in-time vital information to their counterparts. They could beat the pants off our overly complex computer field networks. The sergeants knew what information was critical and precisely who needed it most. Our division and battalion level computers poured data out in a torrent, ... and that was precisely the problem.
HP, back when that name was synonymous with, reliable, high quality, well engineered tech gear (therefore ...many years ago), did a study in the mid-1980's regarding a drop in office productivity just as the company was spending enormous sums putting computers on the desks of their workers. The study found as computing tools became available to more workers there was a horrible tendency to spend more labor hours obsessively on format and form at the expense of useful analysis.
As Mary and John, coworkers in an HP department, competed for company visibility and the next promotion, they used the wonderful new computing tools to add visual sizzle to the reports they generated for upper management and not unfortunately to improve the analytical quality of the information contained in the reports. So in the main they spent much more time using Pagemaker and early versions of Powerpoint to impress superiors than was healthy for the company, hence productivity dropped measurably even as technology capital expenses allegedly targeting productivity improvements rose. Now a variant of that cycle seems to have descended on consumers. We spend an increasing amount of time nursing the technology we just want to use for more productive purposes. We spend more but for diminishing satisfaction.
It was so exciting to be peripherally involved in the small computer revolution circa 1976, soldering together my non-S100 bus Digital Group computer with 8K of RAM from (64) 2102 chips. Had to build a linear powersupply and the case myself. We really thought the small computer revolution and email Internet accounts (on green or amber character screens) were going to usher in a wonderful new world. My friend from college worked at Tektronics in Oregon. We had very early Internet accounts because Tek was one of the first 50 nodes in the ARPAnet.
My wife MSFT employee #89 ? (1981 - just after they moved from small offices in downtown Bellevue, but years before Redmond) had a wonderful time with some amazingly crazy young co-workers, but left years later as the driven, teamwork focused core was replaced by a paranoid middle management morass.
In my opinion we are suffering continuous change for it's own sake (short term profit) out of balance with end user value and reliability. There seems to be a built-in advantage to manufacturers for early obsolescence and short MTBF. "Oh, your router, cheap laptop, digital camera, printer has quit working a short while after the warrantee expired, well the technology eco-system isn't configured to care very much or offer us any other option but to fork over yet another chunk of our paycheck. We think we are buying technology, but it seems we are really just leasing access to it for a time interval determined by manufacturers, investors and gatekeepers to maximize their profit and keep us on a very short leash.
end-of-stifled-rant.
Plod quietly on....
It would be nice to hear your take on this from an audiophile perspective.
The original link: NAS Squeezebox server & iTunes Playlists
