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From: Shawn P. Stanley Date: 16:59 on 04 Oct 2006 Subject: Mail clients that abuse the Sender: line Gmail uses the "Sender:" line to show which Gmail account you're sending from regardless of how you've configured your "From:" or "Reply-To:" lines. Just in case anyone cares about your Gmail account. But why should they, unless you're dealing in kiddie p0rn? So why do Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, etc. think they should take the "Sender:" line and treat it as your "From:" line or your "Reply-To:" line instead? RFC822 doesn't tell them to do that. Hate.
From: Adam Atlas Date: 05:01 on 04 Oct 2006 Subject: Email address validation Dear MSN and other authors of email address validators who don't read the RFC, The ASCII plus sign is a valid character in email addresses. I will kill you. Love, Adam
From: Zach White Date: 02:38 on 04 Oct 2006 Subject: Websites that require a username I had a long rant typed out here about the USPS, and their use of logins to do something as simple as print a label and buy postage for the package at the same time. The rant didn't read very well, and boiled down to this: YOU DON'T NEED ME TO COME UP WITH A UNIQUE LOGIN NAME. For years now I've put up with seemingly every website I attempt to use, buy something from, or in some way have to identify myself to, requiring me to come up with a unique login to use with their site. If the site is at all popular the two logins I use everywhere and can actually remember are probably already taken. We already have something that can uniquely identify someone, and these sites already require users to give it to them. What's that, you ask? Why it's an email address. You know what else is great about email addresses? They're globally unique. You already limit people from signing up with multiple accounts using the same email address, why make them come up with another unique string that they aren't going to remember? I've had it. I will no longer register at a site that doesn't use my email address to identify me, unless there's a good reason for it. I won't be able to remember my login, and likely your system for digging it up will not work. -Zach (Who ended up ranting anyway, but at least this time it's readable.)
From: Struan Donald Date: 21:41 on 03 Oct 2006 Subject: Visual Studio's resource editor Apparently the key to Microsoft's success is their developer tools. People are always praising them. These are people who have never resized a column in Visual Studio's resource editor only for it to be set back to the default width when they used CTRL-S to save the file. Perhaps after long enough this behaviour becomes endearing as opposed to enraging.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 20:38 on 03 Oct 2006 Subject: When I say "install on drive 'D'" I mean "install on drive 'D'"... Dear Microsoft. When I select "install in the unpartitioned space on drive 'D'" I don't think it at all unreasonable for me to expect you to you to do that, and it's something of a shock to discover that you thought I selected "There's a Fat32 partition on drive 'C' so stick some of the boot files there instead, and when drive 'C' is removed the computer will just sit there until I get tired of trying repair options and reinstall" instead. Thanks ever so much, love and kisses, Peter.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 12:54 on 03 Oct 2006 Subject: iTunes on Windows I have no idea whether these are Windows specific iTunes hate or whether they span the platforms but I only have experience with iTunes on Windows so I'll restrict it to that. Feel free to chip in and complain about the Mac version later. I'm not entirely sure why people rave about iTunes - I suspect it'shte iPod and ITMS integration but people raved about it before then. Maybe they were blinded by the shiny metal. Either way, I have no iPod (HERECY!) nor the inclination to by DRM encrusted tat from iTMS so I miss out on those benefits. Ooh - I can organise my podCasts . Which would be great. If I listened to any. Aren't we supposed to call them soundBlogs or something now anyway? However, the single biggest hate I have so far is why the auto complete in the ID3 field editor. Here's how to replicate the hate ... 1) Obtain mp3 from somewhere 2) Realise that ID3 tag, whilst technically correct, is lowercased 3) Try and edit that 4) Have iTunes know better than you do and autocomplete the field back to the lowercase version 5) Try again 6) Have same experience 7) Scream. Curse. Rant. 8) Edit the field to say "Foo" 9) Rename it back to Properly Capsed Version of Name 10) Repeat with other MP3s 11) See 7
From: David Landgren Date: 10:07 on 03 Oct 2006 Subject: Special Tuesday morning IE hate I am hating Internet Explorer this morning. We are rolling out a Hummingbored portal at work, and someone has fucked up some JavaScript somewhere and I am seeing a IE pop-up informing me that "problems with this Web page might prevent it from being displayed properly", and a text-field below that indicates that at line 264, char 9, getAttribute(...) is null or not an object. Fair enough. So I am wanting to wish to cut'n'paste the exact text into a ticket to let one of web monkeys figure it out. But do you think I can do that? no-o-o-o-o. And there is sufficient text in the textarea that it has both horizontal and vertical scroll bars, so I can't even decently take a screen shot, short of stitching bitmaps together. And as far as I can see, there is no other way to recover the message. So now I have to get someone to come over to my monitor and note the message, and then see if they can reproduce it themselves. Hate.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 17:03 on 01 Oct 2006 Subject: applyyourself.com ApplyYourself is a website that a number of American universities use to accept school applications. Most of the universities no longer accept paper applications, so your choices are to use the website or forget about going to school. The second option is looking nicer by the minute. There are many things to hate about ApplyYourself. Here are a few of the basic ones: * it uses pop-ups * Javascript and a plugin PDF reader are required * passwords are alphanumeric * the login name (which you must remember) is a randomly generated alphanumeric string Another interesting feature is that the same login name and password are used to access your applications for all schools which use ApplyYourself. However, you cannot jump between applications--instead, you must logout, then log in to the next school. You're also not allowed to be logged in to more than one school at a time. Oh, and information which is common to all schools isn't automatically copied to each application; instead, you get to do it it multiple times. Naturally each application is similar, but subtly different, so that the information you're entering is the same, but the format is just different enough to discourage scripting. But that's nothing. The single most irritating aspect of the system is the way it handles HTML forms. The forms are long and detailed, but you cannot save them at intermediate stages. Instead you must complete the entire form before you can save/submit. Oh, and there's no indication of which fields are required. Yes, they are using Javascript, but not to tell you if your form data is valid. They'd rather use it to launch pop-ups. So your form is sent to the server. Gods help you if you make a mistake. You will be informed of your transgression, and allowed to alter the form, but while the text fields are sticky, the drop-down fields are not--they are all reset. One time I had to submit the form five times, because I made an error, corrected the error (but forgot to reset one of the drop-down boxes, which was of course a new error, etc). Today I spent about 15 minutes filling in a form about the last four jobs I've held (dates of employment, company information, duties, salary, and so on). Knowing how the forms work, I was very careful to check the form before submitting it. Alas, I failed. One of the companies I worked for has a name which starts with a number, and this does not accord with ApplyYourself's world view. Company names start with letters, and only letters! (Naturally, there is nothing in the instructions about this rule.) Even more disturbing was the fact that the error message implied that company names start with a capital letter, suggesting that they wouldn't even 'correct' it to uppercase on my behalf, had the offending number instead been a lower-case letter. So, instead of working on my essays, it looks like the rest of my evening will be spent filling in web forms (and that's in addition to the more than 10 hours I've already spent doing this). I'm sure my applications will be all the better for it.
From: Chris Devers
Date: 15:17 on 29 Sep 2006
Subject: flogging a dead horse, but masterfully
Andy Ihnatko should be on hates-software. He does it so well. :-)
To rudely over-quote:
But what I've endured over the past few months is the equivalent
of a weeklong road trip with someone whose company you've always
enjoyed, but never really known as a true friend. Windows has
propped its bare smelly feet up on my dashboard and told me the
story about how he was so hung over during his aunt's funeral that
he threw up into the coffin a little. His greasy hair has left
smears on the inside of the window that no solvent can shift. He
just sort of assumed that he could use my iPod, and during the one
time he took a turn at the wheel, the battery was completely flat
and I had to listen the story about the funeral a second time.
So I'm not saying that my fond regards won't return in time. But I'm
going to have to spend a few weeks alone first.
[...]
As Mac users, we haven't had enough exposure to wretched software
design to develop any natural antibodies, and for this, we envy our
brethren in the Windows community. We truly, truly do.
[...]
Thirty days after you unpacked a new PC, it starts. The DVD decoder
starts asking you if you want to now purchase the optional super DVD
decoder. The antivirus app tells you that your subscriptions are out
of date and you need to provide a credit-card number. There was some
kind of branded media player that you never launched even once, and
it continues to throw popups in your face every five minutes despite
your yelling at the screen every time it happens.
Yes, your user experience has now turned into Pledge Week at your
local public television station ... and you did't even get to see a
Monty Python marathon first.
[...]
What shocks me back into reality? A sudden memory from a couple of
weeks ago, when I came across the official personal website of
Justin Guarini.
You know ... the guy who came in second during the first season of
"American Idol." The one who looks like Sideshow Bob from "The
Simpsons," and who sings like a yard-sale painting of a teary-eyed
clown on brown velvet.
Yeah, he built the site in iWeb.
If I'm a member of the same user community as that guy, then
clearly, I shouldn't go throwing stones.
http://www.macuser.com/ihnatko/ihnatko_harsh_words_for_window.php
From: sabrina downard Date: 14:29 on 22 Sep 2006 Subject: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. I've recently changed employers and now I use a Windows workstation at work. Outlook, even. (At least putty's pretty unhateworthy. And it turns out you can configure Outlook to send blissfully ordinary plain text mail, if you try, even if it is a pain in the ass to work around its damn-near enforced top-posting.) It's been tolerable. I mean, I find it irritating and unnecessarily difficult at certain times, but I shut it down at least once a week and run my little software updates and it has been alright enough, I guess, for a kludgey hack of a window manager. Except sometimes you have to work with the kludgey hack of an operating system instead of just the window manager, and that's when the illusion starts to break down. Situation: I have a memory stick. I have some files on my machine at home that I'd like to bring to work. I have used my personal memory stick in the past to transfer files to work this way. This week? No worky. Plug it in to the USB port, nothing. Doesn't mount it. Device Manager insists nothing is wrong. Yet, if I look at my Event Viewer, there it is: "[Removable Storage Manager] could not load media in drive Drive 0 of library Sony Storage Media USB Device." Well, why not? It used to work. It used to work great! Could you at least give me a hint? Okay, well, maybe it's the memory stick. They are awfully small and, although I've never broken one yet, presumably it's possible. I was wearing shoes the other day that apparently really hated our office carpeting so I was shocking everything I touched; maybe I fried it. Good thing I've got another memory stick. (Get home, the memory stick is still perfectly fine as far as Mac OS is concerned. Now that's shocking.) So, take the work memory stick home. Mac OS says "hi! how are you! oh, your name is 'widget,' that's amusing. those are lovely files you've got stored on you. would you like some more?" I blithely copy over most of a gig of files, umount it, and drop it in my bag to take it to work. Work computer: "What is this 'usb memory stick' of which you speak? I know not of these things. Begone with you and your filthy removable media ways." Event viewer: "RSM could not load media in drive Drive 0 of library Sony Storage Media USB Device." Cheers. So, okay. I give up. Device Manager: "This device is working properly." Clearly! "If you are having problems with this device, click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter." Okay. Troubleshooter: "Well, is your hardware supported? Yes? Well, have you changed your driver recently? No? Well, have you reinstalled the driver anyways yet? Okay, have you called the manufacturer of your hardware device? Well then, 'this troubleshooter is unable to solve your problem.' IOW, HTH, HAND, FOAD, $user." Seriously. It's a usb memory stick. It's not rocket science. Not only is it not rocket science, it's barely science at all. It's third grade earth science where you think the hamster cage in the classroom is the coolest thing ever. Turns out, though, I got it figured out. It had decided that the USB memory stick wanted to be drive E:, as I discovered when I went into "My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management." Trouble is, I had a network drive already mapped to E:. Rather than, say, generating a warning saying I had two things wanting to be drive E: and I should probably do something about it, it apparently just happily mounted the USB stick as E: under the network drive E:. As soon as I unmapped the network drive, my E: window refreshed, happy and ready to give me my files. Stupid, steaming pile of shit. If you're going to auto-allocate drive letters to removable storage media, maybe you should consider allocating drive letters that aren't already in use? Just a thought. hatefully re-secured in mac-pwns-windows snobbery which I thought I'd grown out of, --s.
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi