[spoiler]Not exactly. Sometimes things just take longer than they normally do. 
[/spoiler]
Mindless automatons. 
That’s just the unstable wormhole forming. Technology that’s more advanced than the gates — [spoiler]for instance, the kind that’s been updated in the last several thousand years by people who didn’t abandon the physical plane[/spoiler] — could conceivably create the wormhole without instability.
I suppose I always thought it was more of a hardware issue than a software one.
Wetware maybe?
Plus, there have been times when it’s come in handy. Cloverdale comes to mind as the most recent example.