Stupid Designers

Don Y snipped-for-privacy@foo.invalid wrote: |---------------------------------------------------------------------| |"On 8/5/2026 1:23 PM, Martin Brown wrote: | |> On 05/08/2026 14:19, Don Y wrote: | |>> On 8/5/2026 6:03 AM, Don Y wrote: | |[. . .] | |>> But, a call to "support" comes out of profits -- which is why | |>> these avenues are increasingly automated. | |> | |> Or pass you from pillar to post in the hope that you will give up."| |---------------------------------------------------------------------|

A bad government deliberately malfunctions so.

|--------------------------------------------------------------------| |"But that also works against you (the manufacturer), in the | |long run. Whether it adds a subconscious bias that causes | |you to buy a competitor's product... OR, causes you to actively | |advocate AGAINST the "offending" manufacturer. | |[. . .]" | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|

Bad political parties are in a government for decades as they keep getting elected again. Opposition parties do get votes by disgruntled proles, but not enough to overthrow a prevaricating government. A person remarked (not on the USENET) that elections involve voters strugglings to determine the least evil choices to vote for.

|--------------------------------------------------------------------| |"[. . .] So, if you are interacting with one of these and another | |clamors for attention, everything gets f*cked up -- sort of | |like the W3.1 days where an out-of-paper error on a printer | |was deemed the most important event since the coming of christ! | |(i.e., a modal dialog overlaying and overriding whatever you | |may have been doing at the time). | | | |[. . .] | |Too many products show an absence of domain experts in their design.| |As if someone (likely an engineer tasked with designing the device!)| |just put their own ideas into the design without consulting folks | |who might actually USE it! | | | |[. . .]" | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|

A notable exception is LawTeX - i.e. files to support LaTeX to support an idiotic citations style for lawyers called Bluebook. Few lawyers who write Bluebook documents use LawTeX - instead they waste clients times by manually formattings documents with Microsoft Word. They even employ lawyers to reformat Microsoft-Word documents into the Bluebook standard. They call these wastes of times "Bluebooking". Lawyers like to exploit clients by workings inefficiently while chargings on times bases as opposed to actually beings productive. (S.

The ony stupid thing is that you do not limit line lengh in your babble to about 80 characters.

If properly designed, only a small pilot flame can be ignited. Then when the probe is hot, the big flame is activated.

For instance, on my kitchen, I have to turn the gas knob and keep it pushed so that gas comes out and the igniter works. If I release the knob, both are out. When the flame starts, it heats a passive "sensor" that activates the gas valve and I can release the knob.

Why didn't she smell the gas?

Best I can offer in rebuttle is 50 year old electric ranges that still work, including the squirrel cage clock/timer.

Made locally in a plant that shut down decads ago, during the first 'free trade' fiasco. Profitable, but bought up and shut down by its cross-border competitors.

It's high temperature electrical contacts that wear out in these things, or anything relying on cleaning. The latter is also the bain of gas ranges and the reason most domestic cooks (without cheap help) push for electric, 'self-cleaning' oven ranges.

Modern gas stoves are just as bad, w/r to electronics.

RL

One of the more depressing things about the sense of smell is that it can saturate. When I was synthesising tertiary butyl mercaptan (as an undergraduate) I'd get worried that the synthesis wasn't working until people showed up and complained about the stink that I was creating.

I was actually synthesising the thiouronium salt, which doesn't stink but enough of the mercaptan comes off to let you smell it.

Set your newsreader to word wrap.

Most of the old electric ranges that I've seen have at least one broken heater element. Temperature cycling to read heat is stressful.

I wonder how reliable the induction gadgets are. I sure don't want one.

Our furnace uses a hot plate igniter (previous one used a spark igniter). Temperature sensors then verify the gas is ignited (by sensing the heat) and allow the gas flow to continue.

A flaw in this approach is that it requires a particular minimum fuel (gas) flow to ensure enough "heat" is generated in a short enough time to trip the sensors.

We had a city-wide problem with gas (supply) pressure some years back. The furnace would ignite (flame visible). Run for a few moments and then self-extinguish. Doing so continuously (venting the combustion chamber each time to ensure no buildup of "unburnt" gas).

Ugh! Knobs! Things I don't miss about gas is the lack of precise temperature control and the unevenness of heat across the cooking surface/volume!

Making "red sauce" was always a chore as you couldn't get a gas flame

Likewise, my baking is "set it and forget it" as I know the entire stove will be at the temperature specified as the heating elements distribute the heat over a larger area. No more "checking to see if done"! Friends express frustration that they can't reproduce the items they've sampled while visiting -- despite my precise instructions!

It's also nice NOT to have to vent the kitchen to avoid the byproducts of gas combustion. All that conditioned air being forcefully exhausted...

I *do* miss being able to boil a pot of water for pasta "quickly". Though the 3KW burners invariably have to be "turned down" once the water does reach a boil. (everything else that we make on the stovetop enjoys the advantage of that uniform heat over a larger area as the burners can be controlled to the (three) specific sizes of the pots/pans that are currently present.

Oh, and cleanup is *so* much easier -- no nooks and crannies to worry about!

And, the oven can be quickly "steam cleaned" by pouring a cup of water *in* it that it boils off. That, to avoid the more thorough (high temperature) "self clean" cycle.

Now, if they would bring back the "contact sensors" that used to control the stovetop elements "closed loop" (and heated butter compartments), things would be ideal!

My younger brother has one - actually a double-width induction cook-top on top of a double oven. He was pretty well off even before he got the job of organising the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, and his wife likes entertaining (and they have five kids and thirteen grand-kids to entertain these day)s.

I used it for a couple of weeks when I house sat there while he was away and my wife was running a course at one of the Sydney Universities. It worked fine then - I found it very easy to use - and it was still working fine the last time I had dinner in his house - less than a year ago.

Perhaps a bit out of your reach, but nice if you have that kind of money.

These things have very limited intelligence.

I tried some years ago (10?) to get a gas oven when the old kitchen thing died. I found none. Maybe one.

Change to induction heaters :-)

Interesting.

Expensive to buy, but cheap to run. Very nice to use, instant response.

My previous one died (one ring out of two died) after about 10 years. Not a very reliable brand, they told me. Repair was possible (replace the module) but very expensive.

Not all Usenet readers supoort that And it also means the original poopster eeeh poster is an idiot to use 1024 or more characters per line. Many posters here are obviously AI now and have no clue, or as much as their bosses.

Google / duckduckgo.com search will confirm this: savetz.com

I have an inductive heater plate for cooking. Stopped using it as it gave me a headache every time Maybe I have too much iron in me?

Microwaves are OK, As long as the shielding is OK and you keep some distance. Have a nice detector for leakage.

Old furnace had a PIC to run the logic. Adding a counter to the "loop" wouldn't have been too difficult. "Press to reset..."

Gas was great when I was a kid -- two temperature settings: OFF & HI. Now, I tend to cook more at lower temperatures to give flavors a chance to develop.

E.g., making pan-fried Wahoo, today. The pan has to be hot enough to cook it quickly -- but not so hot that the marinade splatters all over the place (and the meat is toughened). Selecting the heating element that fits the size of the pan ensures the entire pan comes to the same temperature at the same time.

We looked at them when we bought this stove. Some had limitations as to how many heating elements could be active at a given time (I think they multiplex the electronics).

And, requires specific types of cookware.

When I was in school (gas oven/stovetop), my cooking habits relied on the intense heat from the gas. My mother used to exclaim that I used way too much water to make pasta (to be fair, I did! But, it didn't take that much longer to boil it over gas...)

I use far less, now, dictated by the specific pasta being boiled (e.g., fusilli col bucco lunghi takes an inordinate amount while pastina takes nothing!). I'm also smarter about HOW things are prepared so everything is ready at the same instant!

Delightful! It doesn't tie up the oven for more than half an hour and, so, can be done often to *keep* the oven clean. Less need for the "real" self-cleaning cycle and the time it requires.

If I could get "active DE-heating", things would be even more convenient (many Rxs need to be cooled at deliberate rates to avoid falling, etc.)

No idea why that would be.

My previous gas cooker, actually my mother's, had a slider to adjust a thermostat on the oven, going from 1 to 9.

Depends on the brand... some they are configurable, set the maximum electric power of the entire thing, so as not to blow a fuse. Here the companies charge for the maximum power of the house, so except rich people we contract the minimum we can. So 3450 watts for a flat is typical. Next one is 4600.

True, but today probably everything they sell is suitable.

If it word wrapped as he typed it, as many programs do, he wouldn't add hard returns.

I could buy 1000 of them, but I don't want one. It will be dead in 10 years and probably un-repairable.

Don't they need special cookware?

A gas flame is great for cooking.

I was going to suggest that you could cut your wrists, but that would be in bad taste.

I take daily aspirin on my doctor's orders. Envision lots of bleeding.

She calls me John and I call her Sam. She wears miniskirts to work.

I suspect that a bit of leakage is not dangerous. Standing out in sunlight is probably worse.