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From: Gerry Lawrence Date: 00:02 on 19 Apr 2007 Subject: Verizon Cellphone Software ------=_Part_17725_6397283.1176937372631 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline They may have the best network but their software sucks ass. Verizon puts its software on all models of phone, so it doesn't matter which phone you get, they all suck. All cell phone software sucks ass. Verizon takes the suckage to a new level. Stupid modal dialog boxes are the norm but Verizon one-ups this with the auto *disappearing* stupid modal dialog box. You can hit OK, OR wait until it does it all by itself. Sound good? It isn't. You'll have just a second to hit "OK", but if you don't it will "OK" for you anyway. Now this is insane. I can't press anything ELSE than OK, so why make me wait and decide to hit OK or not? Now, if you get it just a little to late the "OK" button NOW does something else, like drag you into another menu you didn't want to be in. What a bunch of Fucktards. Speaking of menus, it has the worst combination of navigation and keys that are "contextual" so you have to constantly look at the screen to figure out which key is going to do what you need it to do. And there's no consistency. Sub menus don't have a "go back" or "cancel" button -- if you've changed something you'll have to remember what you changed and change it back to cancel a change operation. The go back button USUALLY is the "clr" button. Only 4 of the buttons are programmable and the options for are limited to "buy more stuff" options from their fucking marketing department. God forbid that I hot-key something useful. To send a text message to someone in your address book take key after key after menu -- you'll give up before you get it. Most of the config menus take you to a simple "on off" sub menu. A whole sub-menu just for on damn option? There's hours of my life I'll never get back. Oh, you can change the front screen to have a background that you like but NOT WHEN YOU'RE MAKING A CALL. THEN you HAVE to have the verizon logo on it -- no way to change it. ------=_Part_17725_6397283.1176937372631 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline <br>They may have the best network but their software sucks ass. Verizon puts its software<br>on all models of phone, so it doesn't matter which phone you get, they all suck.<br><br>All cell phone software sucks ass. Verizon takes the suckage to a new level. <br><br>Stupid modal dialog boxes are the norm but Verizon one-ups this with the auto *disappearing* stupid modal dialog box. <br>You can hit OK, OR wait until it does it all by itself. Sound good? It isn't.<br><br> You'll have just a second to hit "OK", but if you don't it will "OK" for you anyway. Now this is insane. I can't press anything ELSE than<br>OK, so why make me wait and decide to hit OK or not? Now, if you get it just a little to late the "OK" button NOW does <br>something else, like drag you into another menu you didn't want to be in. What a bunch of Fucktards.<br><br>Speaking of menus, it has the worst combination of navigation and keys that are "contextual" so you have <br>to constantly look at the screen to figure out which key is going to do what you need it to do. And there's no<br>consistency.<br><br>Sub menus don't have a "go back" or "cancel" button -- if you've changed something you'll have to remember what you changed <br>and change it back to cancel a change operation. The go back button USUALLY is the "clr" button.<br><br><br>Only 4 of the buttons are programmable and the options for are limited to "buy more stuff" options from <br>their fucking marketing department. God forbid that I hot-key something useful. <br><br>To send a text message to someone in your address book take key after key after menu -- you'll give up<br>before you get it. <br><br>Most of the config menus take you to a simple "on off" sub menu. A whole sub-menu just for on damn option?<br>There's hours of my life I'll never get back.<br><br>Oh, you can change the front screen to have a background that you like but NOT WHEN YOU'RE MAKING A CALL. <br>THEN you HAVE to have the verizon logo on it -- no way to change it. <br><br><br><br><br><br> ------=_Part_17725_6397283.1176937372631--
From: Yossi Kreinin Date: 16:53 on 15 Apr 2007 Subject: The Second Life of Firefox I have the newest Firefox. At least I think I do, because each time it crashes and I restart it, there's a page telling me that Firefox was updated. When does it crash? For example, when I've just entered the URL secondlife.com. Well, the life of Firefox sure came to an end, and I had to start a new life - except it wasn't second, it was tenth or something. At least it restores the session correctly. Of course it's not necessarily the fault of some code in Firefox itself; it can be one of the million things it could depend on in the ancient Linux distribution crippling my desktop.
From: Earle Martin Date: 16:48 on 14 Apr 2007 Subject: Motorola RAZR v3 buttons and menus I have one of these popular although now slightly dated phones. Overall it behaves itself, but there are several points about its user interface that make my blood boil. The OS designers don't seem to have understood that some actions need confirmation. Hit the "cancel" button while typing a text message - easily done as it's right next to the 3 button, which happily enough produces the letter "E", the most common in the English language - boom, your message is gone. That's great fun if, like me, you're not exactly an SMS-typing speed demon. Close the flipscreen? That cancels it out too. There *is* a drafts folder for saving messages in, but... you can't do that when editing. You have to choose "send", then select a recipient, then bring up the menu. Oh, and once you've got to the screen where you select a recipient, you can't go back to editing the message. You have to save it to the drafts, then choose "drafts" and select the message again. When looking at text messages in your inbox, if you bring up the menu, the top item is "delete". Since I use this item all the time, my hand has developed a bit of muscle memory for deleting messages. However, if you look at messages in the outbox, the top menu item is "resend". Guess what happens every now and then when I'm clearing messages out of my outbox? Even if I didn't have any muscle memory, to get away from the option I have to use the down arrow button - which is right next to the redundant button in the middle of the arrow buttons that acts as "OK" or "confirm". Redundant because this option is always assigned to one of the two control buttons next to the screen anyway; it's totally unneeded and I only ever use it when hitting it by mistake. It's awkward to press on purpose, anyway. And of course, in the mind of whatever idiot designed this software, resending a text is a non-confirmed action. Once you've chosen "resend" by mistake, that's it: the message is sent. No way to cancel How often do people need to send the same message a second time? That option should be way down the menu, with a big "are you sure?" confirmation dialog. Better be careful when taking photos, too. After you take a picture, one of the buttons is "store". It brings up a menu... of which the top item is "send in message". If you accidentally choose that when you meant to save the photo, you're fucked. There's no way to cancel out and save the photo instead. Hate, hate, hate.
From: David Cantrell Date: 18:00 on 13 Apr 2007 Subject: Firefox popup blocker This is not your usual Firefox popup blocker hate. Oh no, it is MORE HATEFUL. Firefox just did it's usual trick of letting a fucking popup annoy me, but this time it also took the time to tell me that it had blocked a popup. Grrrr.
From: Chris Devers Date: 03:38 on 05 Apr 2007 Subject: shrunken Vista So this is probably too easy a target, but what the hell. Someone came to me today asking for help getting something to work on her 4 day old Vista laptop. One of those fun situations where the Damned Thing doesn't work, and it's tricky to pin down whether it's one vendor's hardware or software, or the other vendor's hardware or software, but all you can do is make sure everything is up to date & hope for the best. A tragic hope, to be sure. Providing a fun distraction from all of this, the system spontaneously went black, then came back up with the display resolution dropped from something like 1280x800 to 800x600. "Why did everything get so big?", she asked. Good question. We have half a dozen windows open, so too tedious to right-click on the desktop, better to just bring up the Control Panel. But wait, where is it? Ah, I see, it's one of about a dozen items on the second row of the Start menu, with the translucent background that makes it disappear against the window behind it. Tricky. Bring up Control Panel. We're looking at the new, streamlined, Vista iteration of this interface, apparently. It would seem that in this version they've done away with all the icons entirely, as we're staring at a blank window, with some useless text on the sidebar & some menu options up top. One of the menu options offers "Classic view", which seems promising. Click it. Icons appear! Start scanning the list, none of them look promising. No "display", no "monitor", no "resolution", etc. Hm. One of them mentions NVidia, which is exactly where one would expect a computer-industry-naive person like this to go looking for ideas. Click it. A window comes up. It offers a way to change 3D settings. And that's about it. Hm. Start debating whether we can just reboot to make the problem go away, or try the Gateway equivalent of zapping PRAM (hey why not). Back to the Start menu, nothing labelled "shutdown", "reboot", etc. Ah, but there on the bottom row, one of the buttons has the universally used (but universally un-recognized) "power" logo -- the one like a pointing-updards "C" with a line pointing up. Click it. The screen immediately goes black and the fans fall silent. Press the power button. The system immediately comes up to a login screen. "Does it really boot this fast?" "No, you just logged me out. Should I reboot?" "Please." She then takes an elaborate series of steps that I'm too annoyed to pay much attention to. A couple of minutes later, we've rebooted and the display problem remains unresolved. (We haven't even had time to deal with the original question that brought her over asking for help...). Right- click on the desktop, the context menu again offers nothing for "display" or "monitor" or anything obvious like that, but "NVidia" shows up again. Click it. A different window comes up, looking much more like the traditional Windows display settings dialog. Fix the resolution. Sheep shaved, problem solved. We never did get around to figuring out the original problem though. Now, to be fair, I am admittedly rusty and getting rustier with my Windows skills, but come on, can it really be that hard to just label things usefully? Why should someone have to know the manufacturer of the video hardware in order to make changes to the display? Why does every damned laptop have a completely different mechanism -- all with entirely too many useless knobs & switches -- for attaching to an open wireless network? What, in short, would be so bad about just offering one, simple, consistent way to do common tasks like this, rather than these further down the rabbit hole journeys into madness? It's enough to make a grown man cry, I tells ya.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 17:04 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: SpamAssassin's Bayesian filtering sucks. First I was using 'sa-learn' to mark everything in the suspected-spam folder as spam. Then I deleted the spam, and ran 'sa-learn' again with --ham to reset the values for the good messages. According to the manual pages, the most recent setting assigned to a message is the one which is used. I set my configuration to give Bayesian reports a lot of weight. I was still getting about 10 false positives a day and about 10 false negatives. A friend told me that he'd been using it in a similar way, and that when he threw away his database, and started over, and stopped even temporarily marking letters incorrectly, his results improved. So I tried that. I threw away the database, and for the last two months, I've told it nothing but the truth. It still refuses to accept that mail from one mailing list (not this one) isn't spam, despite the fact that it has a very distinctive subject line (the from header changes, so I cannot whitelist it). So distinctive, in fact, that I finally wrote a procmail rule to move it away before SpamAssassin could touch it. Of course, what I really hate are the people who buy products from spammers and make the whole cycle of spamming continue. Someone [*] should sell them cyalis arsenic. People. But that's another list, which is a shame, because I could spend quite a while bitching about my bank's internet banking. - A [*] Not me.
From: Michael Leuchtenburg Date: 16:40 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Ubuntu's update-grub So, here I am, trying out Ubuntu since I've heard it's all "easy to administer". I love the control Gentoo gives me, but I don't need it everywhere, right? More work for not much benefit, I think. After a few days of wrestling with Ubuntu's installer (which is so simple that if even the slightest thing goes wrong, it chokes and doesn't bother to inform the user of this, even in "expert" mode), I'm able to get it installed and booting. "Now comes the easy administration!", I think. Then I meet Ubuntu's update-grub. update-grub is a handy-dandy script which edits your grub/menu.lst when you, say, install a new kernel. Useful, huh? Except it seems to be putting in some options I don't like: quiet and splash. So I edit it out. Huh, it's put them back? Okay, let's check the manpage. Okay, it mentions a bunch of weird commented out options which it's then going to parse. It doesn't mention the one I need to change, but there's defoptions in the file, and it's all changed and happylike. Except that it's back when I run it again. Not only is it back, but it has handily edited defoptions for me to have splash and quiet in them. YOU WILL HAVE THESE OPTIONS. COMPLY. COMPLY. The script is a hackish shell monstrosity which repeatedly parses the doubly-commented options, adds their values to some defaults which you can't configure, and then resets every option back to whatever idiotic defaults someone out there thinks that everyone who runs Ubuntu should use, whether they want to or not. Who writes this shit? Whatever happened to the idea of configuration files being things that users edited, and programs followed?
From: Jonathan Katz Date: 16:39 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: I hate Siebel... ------=_Part_54598_7402457.1175701198832 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I forgot this mailing list existed until I received the recent messages. It's good timing too, because I feel a need to rant. I hate Siebel. Plain and simple. For those who forget, Siebel is an application development framework used in creating CRM applications. In other words the software that large call centers and client-facing businesses use. McAfee uses it for their support website, etc. Siebel is an octopus of sorts; it has hooks at the Web layer, the application layer and the database layer. It's designed around a true 3-tier architecture. I work for a government contractor and we recently endeavored a major release and some OS upgrades, including some patches to iPlanet, etc. With increased load after the upgrades we ran into limitations of the Siebel software. Siebel never told us that their internal load balancing between the web servers and application servers cannot scale beyond 10 different application servers. They left us thinking that it could scale to 36 application servers and the software and default configuration files are designed around this 36 server limit. After opening a severity one support ticket and waiting FOUR WEEKS we finally received a response that our architecture was invalid; an architecture that they validated two years prior. Meanwhile, during this four week period we rolled back OS patches, changed configurations, and yelled and debated. As a larger IT shop we have procedures for vetting patches and system changes and frankly, if any of those changes caused this error all of our processes and procedures would be for nil. Extraordinarily frustrating. ------=_Part_54598_7402457.1175701198832 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I forgot this mailing list existed until I received the recent messages. It's good timing too, because I feel a need to rant.<br><br>I hate Siebel. Plain and simple.<br><br>For those who forget, Siebel is an application development framework used in creating CRM applications. In other words the software that large call centers and client-facing businesses use. McAfee uses it for their support website, etc. <br><br>Siebel is an octopus of sorts; it has hooks at the Web layer, the application layer and the database layer. It's designed around a true 3-tier architecture. <br><br>I work for a government contractor and we recently endeavored a major release and some OS upgrades, including some patches to iPlanet, etc. <br><br>With increased load after the upgrades we ran into limitations of the Siebel software. Siebel never told us that their internal load balancing between the web servers and application servers cannot scale beyond 10 different application servers. They left us thinking that it could scale to 36 application servers and the software and default configuration files are designed around this 36 server limit. After opening a severity one support ticket and waiting FOUR WEEKS we finally received a response that our architecture was invalid; an architecture that they validated two years prior. Meanwhile, during this four week period we rolled back OS patches, changed configurations, and yelled and debated. As a larger IT shop we have procedures for vetting patches and system changes and frankly, if any of those changes caused this error all of our processes and procedures would be for nil. <br><br><br>Extraordinarily frustrating. ------=_Part_54598_7402457.1175701198832--
From: Ann Barcomb
Date: 16:12 on 04 Apr 2007
Subject: Things I hate about iTunes
I hate the way iTunes refuses to distinguish between what I'm doing with it
actively, and what I'm doing with it passively. For instance:
1. It grabs focus from whatever I'm doing (be it something else with iTunes,
or a different application such as an xterm) when I insert a CD. It
should just rip it; I have it set to automatically rip when I insert a
CD. Don't bother me about it. This is especially annoying when I'm
trying to rerip my entire collection and do some work at the same time.
2. If I am listening to song A and fixing bad metadata for song Z, why
does iTunes think that when song A finishes and song B starts, I'd
like to lose edit mode and focus for song Z and gain focus on song B?
3. In a similar vein, if I was listening to song A and need to fix some
metadata on album M, and type something in the search to limit the
display to songs in album M, why won't iTunes move on to song B when
song A finishes? Oh, it must be because song B isn't visible in my
search results...but then, shouldn't it move on to the first song in
album M (still a bad choice, but at least understandable)? Instead
it just stops playing. Interestingly enough, if you are looking at
the CD it is ripping, instead of looking at a subsection of the
Library (and it is playing from the Library), it will manage to move
on to song B.
I hate the way it creates a directory 'Music/' in my home directory, when
I've already told it to store all the music elsewhere. The directory
contains your settings. Settings belong in a dot directory, not in
a directory with a capital letter.
I hate the way that it deals with albums without metadata. If you start
adding the metadata after you've already started ripping the album, the
result will be that the CD is nicely labeled, but the ripped tracks aren't.
I hate the way the interface allows you to edit some metadata by clicking
on it twice with a pause between (but make sure you include that pause,
or you'll start playing the song you're trying to edit), but won't let you
edit other metadata without 'File/Get Info' (a rather poorly named menu
item). 'Name' and 'Artist' and 'Album' are examples of the metadata you
can just edit, and 'Track #' is an example of one which requires you to
open this special dialog.
I hate the fact that some settings are in 'iTunes/Preferences'...and
some are in 'View/View Options'.
I hate the way it lets you set which fields you want to see with
'View/View Options', but some fields don't have the same support as
the default fields. For example:
1. You cannot sort by all fields ('Sort Composer' is an interesting example
of a field you can't sort by, although the subject would lead one to
think it is, in fact, a sorting field).
2. Some fields can be edited by clicking twice with a pause between clicks
(examples are 'Name', 'Artist' and 'Album'). Others can't be edited
unless you open a dialog with 'File/Get Info' (which is also a bad
name). 'Track #' is an example of this.
I hate the way it fools you by having a 'Radio' listing, but this only
includes radio stations Apple likes. If you want to listen to a different
radio station, you need to go to 'Advanced/Open Stream' and add the URL
manually.
I hate the options it has for copying to my iPod: either copy the
entire library, or manually select the playlists to copy. My library
is too large to fit on the iPod, but I constantly make new playlists
and delete old ones. Why isn't there a 'copy all playlists' option?
I could think of more, but then I'd be listing my dislikes as well
as my hates.
- Ann
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 15:38 on 04 Apr 2007 Subject: Reasons why I hate ScanGear CS ScanGear CS is Canon's scanning software for the CanoScan LiDE 25, for MacOSX. It might be available for other operating systems, and it might apply to other scanners. It's a cheap scanner, I'll admit that. But I assumed that would just mean that it was slooowww (it is), and that it would break quickly (it has: it scans upside down, and about one month after I got it it stopped scanning all the way to the edge of the page). But that doesn't excuse these problems: * It is impossible to save the images it has scanned until you exit the program. You scan several pages, quit the program, and then you get an opportunity to save. * Like many OSX applications, this piece of software wants to put a ucfirst directory in my home directory, namely 'Pictures' with a subdirectory 'My Pictures'. It does this even when I've set a different default directory for saving files. If I remove the directory and start the scanning software, it recreates the directory, thereby cluttering up my home directory. Taken individually, both of these features are annoying. Together, however, you get the fun I experienced today when I scanned 20 pages. Scanning is a slow, boring task, so I cleaned up my home directory while I was doing it. MacOSX puts a lot of stupid directories (starting with uppercase letters--if they were dot directories I wouldn't care) in your home directory, and most of them can be deleted. Those that it requires will be recreated. Anyhow, I finished scanning, hit quit, and...the application quit, without giving me a chance to save the images. I hate this scanner. - Ann Two other minor bits of suck about this software: * You can't resize the window when it is scanning. * It launches finder after I save the files. I know where I saved them; if I want finder launched, I'll launch it myself.
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi