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From: Earle Martin Date: 12:01 on 03 May 2004 Subject: Cash register software ...To be specific, cash register software that prints my complete debit card details, including my name, card number, expiry date etc. on the receipt, thus forcing me to keep it so I can securely destroy it later. And no, I'm not paranoid. Within the last couple of months I've had someone clone my card and steal almost a thousand pounds from my bank account, and some (else?) try to register a credit card in my name, so I don't consider this paranoid at all.
From: Juerd
Date: 15:05 on 02 May 2004
Subject: Useless error messages
Geeks want to know what went wrong, even when they're not in a position
to fix the problem.
DHL tracking site says:
Error Number: -2147221501 0x80040003
Error Description: <system>\-2147221501\4\ [TRK_Track:CTrackProxy.TrackShipmentASP]\|
File: /i_TrackRslts_Func.asp
Line Number: 213
Column Number: -1
And don't tell me they left out the real error message because that
would frighten newbies :) There is also no point in trying to convince me that
they do know what the real problem is.
Juerd
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 22:34 on 29 Apr 2004 Subject: mariaaaaaaachi http://tom+hate.hates-software.com/2004/04/21/1bc70490.html ^--- since when has this been a legal character in a domain name? Hey, mariaaaaaaaaachi! If you're going to grab the local part from email addresses and shove them willy-nilly into URLs, clean them up first! You can put a lot more stuff on the left hand of an @ sign than you're allowed to stick on the right side, or in the hostname part of an URL.
From: Abigail Date: 22:10 on 28 Apr 2004 Subject: Registration webforms I really hate webforms with 'required' fields, typically used for registration of some kind. They insist on getting all kinds of information from you - that they don't really need to know - and they just can't cope with the fact that sometimes, there just isn't a good value to put in. Take for instance the registration form for YAPC::NA. It assumes everyone has a first and a last name, and just can't deal with the fact not everyone has one. It's the "whole world is a VAX" all over again. Abigail
From: Simon Wistow
Date: 10:49 on 26 Apr 2004
Subject: mel
Mel is the Maye Embedded Language. It's generally quite sane with a few
quirks that come out of it being pseudo shell-like.
Howveer it does have one fairly batshit convention, at least in my
opinion anyway, and lets face it, in a rant such as this that's the only
opinion that matters.
So, anyway, the following program
proc go() {
global int $depth = 3;
print ("\n" + $depth);
$depth = 1;
print (" " + $depth);
}
go();
go();
prints out
3 1
1 1
Why? Because
global int $depth = 3;
is only evaluated once. At compile time.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 10:44 on 26 Apr 2004 Subject: web sites that open new windows To not be doing this plz. I'm perfectly capable of deciding whether or not I want to stay on your site myself. kthx.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 13:19 on 23 Apr 2004 Subject: Most stupid GUI design ever (On a Mac...what else) Since no-one else has posted it, here's one that bit us the other day. Find someone who's not used a Mac before. Give them Apple Mail, let them open preferences and then get them to accidentially click on the lozenge as it's where the close button would be on a Windows laptop (and it, like other mac window controls are, are not labeled.) This will close the toolbar. However in preferences dialogs the toolbar isn't extra helpful buttons - it's the *only* way to access the other preference panes. And the dialogs are stateful. Meaning if you quit Mail and re-open it again then you'll get the same dialog back without the toolbar. Unless the user was paying a lot of attention they'll probably never be able to get at the other preferences. You'll be lucky if the user even *knows* there's other panes there - you've certainly lost any visual indication that they even exist from the screen. It took me a good number of months to work out that the lozenge opens and closes toolbars or that opening and closing toolbars was even possible (essentially that's a notion that doesn't translate from X11 window managers at all.) Having the *only* way to access controls to be able to be optionally disabled and hidden is truely insane. And it's not just that preferences pane - it's all of them all over the whole OS. That's just nuts! Mark.
From: Phil!Gregory Date: 03:21 on 22 Apr 2004 Subject: Final Fantasy XI Yes, Final Fantasy XI is a game. But it's software, too. And right now I hates it. Sony did a system upgrade today, which means that all the client programs have to download updated data files. (In my case, they're downloaded to a hard drive on a PS2.) Not surprisingly, the servers are a little busy serving out the updates. But let's look at how the system fails. The first indication of a problem is an error message that says roughly, "There was a problem connecting. Perhaps the server is busy or the network isn't working. Make sure the Ethernet cable is connected properly." I know from tcpdump that the PS2 is communicating quite well with the server--the local network is *not* a problem. Don't give me a message implying that it is when you know better than that. Then, the upgrade. After hitting retry a few times, I get a slot and it grabs the checksums for the current files. It then takes about seven minutes to check that all the local files are okay. Once that's done, it tries to connect to the server again. If it fails at this point (very likely), it starts again from the beginning--file verification and all. *Very* annoying. The software should be smart enough to pick up where it left off. About the only argument I can think of for this problem is that it enforces a delay in retries and probably lightens the server load a bit. But that could have been done more effectively via any number of processes--look at the verious solutions used by P@P software. A download queue or torrent would have been a lot nicer to deal with.
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi