Conflicting Volumes

Windows often ends up hanging itself because it allows user applications to control things that should be taken care of by the OS alone. Case in point: the volume control on my laptop. IBM includes dedicated keys to adjust the volume. Usually, when you press them, the following icon shows how loud you've got the volume set:I'll take a moment to pause here and abuse the artwork here: notice the lurid programmer green, which looks bad regardless of what the background is, and also notice how low-resolution and aliased the icon is (translation: it's jaggy and looks like a holdover from the 1980s). Why does life need to be ugly?

But it gets worse. Notice in this picture, there are three displays controlling volume. Two of them are superimposed on the screen, and the standard Windows volume control is on the right. You can see that the larger of the two indicators is linked to the Windows volume control, but the smaller one is doing it's own thing. All of the volume bars of the smaller one are empty, meaning that it's completely muted. And guess what - the smaller one is the one which actually matters! I have no idea how to influence the smaller one. Usually, it will stay in sync with the larger one, but now that they are out of sync, I can't figure out how to enable sound on my computer. I guess I'm glad that it decided to be stuck on mute, since otherwise it could be embarrassing at work.

But why do we put up with this kind of chaos and thoughtlessness?