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[ Page 5 of 76 ]
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 23:29 on 20 Jan 2008 Subject: flexcar.com It's a lazy sunday, let's hate on a web site. Flexcar and Zipcar are great ideas. Cars parked all around the city that= you=20 can reserve and drive away. Pay by the hour, about $7 - $10. They pay f= or=20 the gas and insurance. It's lovely and makes being a carless American so= much=20 easier. Flexcar's web site... well that's another story. First off, your username is a number. !? What? Ok, so it must be this=20 number printed on my member card, right? No. Ok, what about my "Custome= r=20 Number" on my bill? No. The "Account Number" on my bill? No. It's a=20 completely different 5 digit number that's not on anything. So I put a piece of masking tape onto my member card and write down the u= ser=20 number. Now we come to the password. Sorry, PIN! Yes, it's a four digit number.= Boy=20 that's secure guys. To add insult to injury, they don't even let me pick= it.=20 They don't even let me CHANGE it! Of course, I write it down on that l= ittle=20 piece of tape on my member card. I can see the process by which this came about. "Everyone knows how to u= se an=20 ATM machine, right? And passwords are insecure, right? So we'll give=20 everyone a PIN like an ATM machine but we'll generate it randomly for the= m so=20 it's secure. PINs are good enough for banks, they're good enough for us!= =20 What? Of course they'll remember it, it's just four numbers. What? No,= =20 nobody will ever guess it, there's ten thousand of them! That would requ= ire=20 some sort of... inter-networked computing machine!" Except, of course, they'd all be saying "PIN number". Now that we finally log in, half the links are broken. They're all=20 http://http//flexcar.com/... Good job on your URL rewriter, guys! Every= =20 other click dumps me onto http.com which I'm sure they love. We were here to reserve a car, so let's do it. Easy enough. Pick a driv= er,=20 an account, dates for the trip... and now step 4. Which vehicle do I wan= t.=20 Obviously they'll just ask where I am and give me a map with nearby vehic= les=20 marked on it, right? The markers would be clear icons showing the type o= f=20 car. They'd have tooltips showing me type, cost and availability. Maybe= I=20 can then narrow the search by availability and cost? Yeah, that's what i= t=20 will be. No, of course not. First I have to tell them my "region". It's a nation= al=20 company, so that makes sense, but guys... you know where I live TAKE A GU= ESS!=20 There's no default, it's just blank. To add insult to injury there's j= ust=20 ONE option in the list. Ok, now I tell them my cross street, right? No, I have to tell them my=20 "Neighborhood". Ok, so maybe it's like "Downtown", "NE", "SE", "Beaverto= n".=20 Ya know, the major areas of town. Portland isn't a big town and it's rea= lly=20 easy to get around without a car. No, it's things like "Downtown / Centr= al",=20 "Downtown / North", "Downtown / Waterfront". Is the Pearl District "Down= town=20 / North" or is it "Northwest / Pearl" or maybe it's "Northwest / Knobb Hi= ll".=20 When does "Northeast / Lloyd" end and "Northeast / Irvington" begin? I= =20 don't know, it's not like they give me a MAP it's just a big pull down. = What=20 if I'm on the edge of two "neighborhoods"? JUST SHOW ME THE CLOSEST CARS= ! I finally decide, ok, I guess I'm in "Northeast / Irvington". Now I have= to=20 pick a vehicle type of which there are 11. 5 door, convertible, hybrid,=20 mini-van, pickup truck, sedan, sports car, sub-compact, unknown, utility=20 vehicle and wagon. Uhh, what if I want a convertible sports car? A=20 hybrid-SUV? What exactly qualifies as a sedan? What is a 5-door? JUST = SHOW=20 ME THE CLOSEST CARS!! Mercifully, there is an "Any" option so I pick that. Ok, step four ends = and I=20 can finally see some cars. Hopefully on a map, right? Wrong. It's a li= st.=20 Cross-street, cost per hour and per day, and a grid of availability. And= how=20 many cars do they show me? Four. FOUR?! Are there four vehicles in thi= s=20 made-up neighborhood? No, they're only showing me four at a time. I hav= e to=20 click to get another page. How many vehicles are there in this neighborh= ood=20 total? Six. Showing me six would obviously overload my brain. It's not= like=20 each car in the list takes up any space, they're all crammed together wit= h=20 these tiny little icons indicating the type of car that are all black (mu= st be=20 Fords) and look very similar. Now they want to know the times I'd like to reserve the car. Ok, I guess= that=20 will narrow things down. I can see when each car is available, they did = that=20 part quite well. Now once I say I want it they'll narrow down the list t= o=20 what's available in that time slot, right? Wrong. They just highlight m= y=20 time on the one car I have selected. But wait... I never selected a car!= I=20 guess they selected one for me. At this point I'm ready to give up and BUY a car. But wait, there's a bi= g=20 button "Cars & Locations" at the top. Ah ha! Maybe this is the map I've= been=20 looking for! *click* "Welcome to http.com..." Oh god. *URL hack* Ok, = big=20 map of the US. Good. Pick my region and... A MAP! With cars on it! We= ll,=20 flags. But oh god, it's Mapquest. Click zoom, wait for reload. Click, = wait.=20 Click, wait... No I can't put in an intersection but I can put in a zi= p=20 code. No use if I'm wandering around town but it'll work for cars near m= e. Mouse over a car/flag thing. No tooltip. *sigh* Ok then, click on it. = Nope,=20 it's not a link. ?! Scroll down and... oh, there's a big numbered list = below=20 the map of the car types and locations. Of course, there's no numbers on= the=20 flags so I have to pick through to find the one I want. To add insult to= =20 injury I can't pick on the car number or type, just the location, and the= re's=20 no visual queue for this. This takes me to... another map! The car I picked is in the center, a bi= g=20 unhelpful flag. There's some information about the car below the map. I= t's=20 number, addresss, type, directions... stuff I already knew. Oooh, they t= ell=20 me what bus routes are nearby, thanks that's handy. Cost? Availability?= A=20 link to reserve this car? Nope. ARGH! But wait, what are these stars on the map? They're other cars, and I can= =20 click on them and get a tooltip with some details! That's sort of what I= =20 want. Now I'll just scroll around the map to find more... I can't scroll= .=20 I'm locked onto this one car. They took away the scroll links. Why woul= d I=20 want to look around the map, I've found what I'm looking for obviously. USELESS PIECE OF CRAP! JUST SHOW ME CARS NEAR ME! It's a fucking GOOGLE= MAPS=20 MASH-UP! Get a CS student intern to do it. The worst part is someone *designed* this. Someone thought this was a *g= ood=20 idea*. Fortunately Flexcar has been bought out by Zipcar. Zipcar's system still= has=20 the neighborhood / zip code thinking, but at least they use Google Maps s= o I=20 can bypass all that. Hopefully they'll wisely trash the Flexcar site. In the end, I got a ride from a friend. --=20 7. Not allowed to add =E2=80=9CIn accordance with the prophesy=E2=80=9D t= o the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me. -- The 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The U.S. Army http://skippyslist.com/?page_id=3D3
From: Jonathan Katz Date: 22:09 on 20 Jan 2008 Subject: More jobseeker rants... I ranted earlier about hate for job sites that aren't properly configured.... here is some more hate. I know the prose isn't as sexy as other rants here, but I'm more frustrated. 1) dice.com. Thank you for providing captchas to keep out bots. However, once I've authenticated to the site I shouldn't have to answer a captcha for each time I update my resume or my account information. 2) etrade.com. Thank you for allowing me to upload a resume. It makes life easier. Your resume parser sucks, though, confusing what I think is a fairly easy-to-read resume, with different experiences and different companies put into various paragraphs. So even though I uploaded a resume I had to spend 15 minutes cutting and pasting to make my resume fit your forms. Additionally, I shouldn't have to switch browsers to submit a resume. I won't hate on you for not working with Camino, since it is in its own category. However, if you work with Safari I can't understand why you won't work with Camino. 3) disney.com. My hate for your website parallels that with etrade.com. You choose not to parse the resume, just accept the attachment, which is fantastic. Resumes are for people to read. However, after working with Camino and Firefox I finally had to try a third browser, Safari to submit to the job posting.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 07:08 on 20 Jan 2008 Subject: The subversive 'open' on the OLPC I borrowed my mother's OLPC. I thought it would be perfect for all those documents that I have to read but don't want to print out. It's cute and tiny and has a really nice reader mode. I copied the files I needed to read to the laptop using scp. I tried and tried to figure out how to open them using 'Write', which is based on Abiword. I couldn't figure out how to open the documents. I searched for documentation on Write and found out how to save documents, how to share documents, etc, but not how to open documents (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Write). Eventually I saw http://wiki.laptop.org/go/New_Users and learnt that "No activity can open a file. You have to use the Journal activity to open a saved file." The Journal is an application which keeps track of everything you've done before. You may open anything you've already opened. I'm a little confused by this. The hardware is clearly designed to support reading documents you didn't write yourself, as there's not much use in having a reader mode to review your own prose. I also can't imagine that someone would create a word processor and not get around to implementing this functionality. So it must have been done deliberately to 'protect' me. We all know just how dangerous the written word can be. However, there's a simple solution. Use the browser to open the local file, and it will launch Write to view the document. There are a couple of problems with this. First, why introduce such a stupid security measure? Second, why make it so easy to circumvent? I acknowledge that I'm personally in a better position because it is easy to circumvent, but the programmer in me believes that if you're going to prevent something, you should damn well do the job right. Is the goal to teach children how to get around lame security measures? Is it really a project to create the next generation of DRM hackers? I like to believe that there's a reason, but I suspect that it's the usual reason: someone didn't clearly think through an idea before implementing it.
From: Juerd Waalboer Date: 01:57 on 20 Jan 2008 Subject: Software that keeps stealing focus. Ugly Software, If I actively ignored your splash screen by clicking another window, then why the hell must you insist on grabbing the focus when your main application windows is finally there? And then, why is it necessary that you do this for each of the twelve documents that I opened, with a painful two to three seconds interval? I'M TRYING TO TYPE AN EMAIL, DAMNIT. Await your turn, I will attend to you later. I hate you, OpenOffice dot org, I hate you very much. The universe doesn't revolve around you! Stop grabbing focus and stacking your windows on top of others. Oh, and quit that awful resetting to full window maximization that you like to do every other week.
From: David Cantrell Date: 16:40 on 17 Jan 2008 Subject: bzip2. Not very portable. Makefile assumes that CC is gcc. The code assumes that int is 32 bits and short is 16 bits. This is quite hateful.
From: Peter Pentchev
Date: 23:30 on 15 Jan 2008
Subject: Checking for... wha?
--0OAP2g/MAC+5xKAE
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Just something I stumbled upon in an oldish version of an almost
well-known cryptographic hashing library:
[roam@straylight /no/matter]$ ./configure --lots-of-silly-args
{snip messages seen so often they've already turned to white noise}
checking for ... no
checking size of ... 0
{snip more}
Oh. Okay. If you say I ain't got no '' on my system, then it must
be true. I can live with that. I think.
No harm done, actually; it was just a typo that was removed in the next
version.
G'luck,
Peter
--=20
Peter Pentchev roam@xxxxxxx.xxx roam@xxxxx.xx roam@xxxxxxx.xxx
PGP key: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~roam/roam.key.asc
Key fingerprint FDBA FD79 C26F 3C51 C95E DF9E ED18 B68D 1619 4553
Do you think anybody has ever had *precisely this thought* before?
--0OAP2g/MAC+5xKAE
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD)
iD8DBQFHjUIe7Ri2jRYZRVMRAgQ9AKDEL29cPOwTHtXkHAickiPtjwtH2wCgm9sx
pPfA2+99fNmG/IclB5fu6o8=
=8JcQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--0OAP2g/MAC+5xKAE--
From: sabrina downard Date: 18:45 on 14 Jan 2008 Subject: In which we learn that not all characters which look similar are, in fact, the same > Dear Valued Customer;/r/nThank you for your inquiry./r/nYou will receive a response from one of our Customer Service Specialists within 24-48 business hours. Monday through Friday./r/nPlease do not respond to this message./r/nSincerely,/r/nwhoever > > This response powered by Brightware. Dear Brightware: ITYM \. HAND. --Valued Customer, whose newlines are newlinier than yours.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 18:18 on 14 Jan 2008 Subject: Self-certified email An email just came into the bug tracker, which is hateful in and of itself, but it has this tacked onto the end: No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.0/1218 - Release Date: 10/01/2008 13:32 Well gee thanks, totally untrustworthy email! I'm glad you think I should believe you. Sort of the electronic equivalent of "sure, baby, of course I'm clean. We don't need to use condoms..." The worst part is that this is a VIRUS SECURITY COMPANY who thought this up. Not only should they realize it's totally worthless, and a waste of space, but actually counter productive. You're NOT supposed to trust what the incoming email says. The people who should have already seen every dirty trick virus authors pull should know better. How long do you think it'll be until viruses start adding on their own certification? Ooh, and they're advertising what version of the virus database they're using. Hmmm, I wonder what it's vulnerable to...
From: Bob Walker Date: 15:50 on 13 Jan 2008 Subject: Mailman, Korean and Solaris 10 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=100103&aid=1738667&group_id=103 fills me with rage. yes it may be a problem with solaris 10 on x86. the fact that your software doesnt let me not install a language i dont really need makes me angry. bob smash. this may make me use linux for a mailing list. bastards.
From: Phil Pennock
Date: 05:24 on 13 Jan 2008
Subject: Perl version.pm
Step 1: install X500::DN.
Step 2: test it
$ perl
use X500::DN;
Parse::RecDescent version 1.8 required--this is only version 1.95.1 at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/X500/DN.pm line 10.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/X500/DN.pm line 10.
Compilation failed in require at - line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at - line 1.
Step 3: step through the looking-glass into the world of version.pm
Changing X500/DN.pm line 10 from:
use Parse::RecDescent 1.80;
to:
use Parse::RecDescent '1.80';
made this problem go away. Looking at Parse/RecDescent.pm shows:
use version; $VERSION = qv('1.95.1');
"perldoc version" is uninformative and appears to contradict the fix of
quoting the version. So, time to test.
$ perl -Mversion -le \
'print "newer\n" if version->new("1.95.1") > version->new("1.80")'
$
No output? But I quoted both?
$ perl -Mversion -le '$i=version->new(1.95.1);$w=version->new(1.80);
print "okay" if $i >= $w; print "too old" if $i < $w'
too old
$ perl -Mversion -le '$i=version->new("1.95.1");$w=version->new("1.80");
print "okay" if $i >= $w; print "too old" if $i < $w'
too old
$ perl -Mversion -le '$i=version->new("v1.95.1");$w=version->new("1.80");
print "okay" if $i >= $w; print "too old" if $i < $w'
too old
WTF? Quoting _doesn't_ help here?
$ perl -Mversion -le 'print version->new("1.95.1")'
1.95.1
$ perl -Mversion -le 'print version->new(1.95.1)'
v1.95.1
*sobs*
$ perl -Mversion -le 'print qv(1.95.1)'
v1.95.1
$ perl -Mversion -le 'print qv("1.95.1")'
1.95.1
Oh, foolish Parse::RecDescent, how could it have been so silly as to
quote the value passed to the qv() function, since clearly it's designed
to work as a quoting operator, even though it has to use parens since it
really is a function.
$ perl -Mversion -le 'print version->new(1.80)'
1.8
$ perl -Mversion -le 'print version->new("1.80")'
1.80
By this point, clearly I need to look for a "dump this in something
other than default format" operator. Ah, ->normal().
$ perl -Mversion -e '$i=version->new("v1.95.1");$w=version->new(1.80);
print "okay\n" if $i >= $w; print "too old\n" if $i < $w;
print "Installed: ",$i->normal,"\nWant: ",$w->normal,"\n"'
too old
Installed: v1.95.1
Want: v1.800.0
So 1.8, 1.80, '1.80', etc (I tested more than shown here) all actually
reult in v1.800.0 which explains why 1.95.1 doesn't satisfy a minimum of
1.80.
$ perl -Mversion -e '$i=version->new("v1.95.1");$w=version->new("v1.80");
print "okay\n" if $i >= $w; print "too old\n" if $i < $w;
print "Installed: ",$i->normal,"\nWant: ",$w->normal,"\n"'
okay
Installed: v1.95.1
Want: v1.80.0
Aaarggh!!
And yet, for import purposes, it was sufficient to quote the number as
'1.80' instead of needing the v prefix. Look closer, see how the
VERSION method is being overriden in the importing class ... strange,
it's not in @EXPORT and version->import isn't setting it in the calling
namespace... okay, it's XS code to look at, time to unpack the source;
okay, a pure-perl version and an XS version? For speed?? And what's
this ... *GRRAARARAAAGGH* It's overriding UNIVERSAL::VERSION ??
So pulling in version.pm in any module pollutes the version dependency
checking of any other module? Why? What sort of supreme arrogance
leads someone to think that their way of doing this is so much better
than the default that it should be used even by those who haven't
requested it, depending only upon the order in which a program might
have done its imports?
I so wish Larry Wall were still involved in perl5 to reign this crap in.
This is the final straw. I was writing in Perl on my own time, since it
wasn't Python and I found it comfortable. A few niggles here and there
when trying to deal with x509 objects but I mostly worked around them.
But this? No. Perl since 5.8 has been moving away from being the
comfortable environment I like. It was bad enough when the p5p folks
decided that switching to lazy garbage collection was a safe change to
make in a point release and so broke my lock objects, where
object-existence-means-you-hold-the-lock and I had to add a bunch of
eval BLOCK stuff to coerce DESTROY invocations. But Perl really is not
being properly maintained when this festering dung seeps so deeply into
common modules without being reigned in.
I've had enough. This personal project is getting rewritten in Python.
At least Python is honest about which part of its worldview it will
force on you. At least I can use threads in Python without needing to
maintain two parallel interpreter installs, each with all modules
installed, so that I still have a non-threaded version around for all
the software which depends upon that.
I _liked_ Perl's approach of wrapping all the clean theory up with a
gooey context-sensitive DWIM layer to let the human learn it as
something approaching a human language and just write it. I don't like
Python's coercive worldview. But Python has never betrayed me, the way
that Perl is betraying me, more and more, as Larry Wall has less and
less to do with it.
-Phil
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi