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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: Ann Barcomb Date: 09:48 on 24 Apr 2007 Subject: https://dlenote.ed.gov deserves my contempt Following my policy of naming and attempting to shame educational websites which are required yet suck (previously I complained about applyyourself: http://ann.hates-software.com/2006/10/01/e37116e6.html), I would like to express my utter contempt for https://dlenote.ed.gov, a website which allows students to sign a Master Promissory Note which in turn enables you to accept a loan. This is a government website, and as such, I feel that they should be bound to adhere to standards of accessibility instead of targeting their site at specific browsers. I'm used to just ignoring these so-called 'requirements'. In this case, you are entitled to a choice of two operating systems: Windows and Mac. You're allowed two browsers: IE 5.x and Navigator 4.x. You must also have Acrobat Reader 4.0 or 5.0. Well, I'm not going to install Navigator (does anyone use it?), and I'm sure as hell not going to install IE, nor will I install Acrobat Reader. No worries, right? I can view the site, if I disable the popup blocker and enable plugins. Sure I can. But what's this in step 2? To proceed further, I must click on a checkbox which says "I agree to use an electronic MPN and have the required hardware and software. (Your response will be record and made part of your completed MPN.)" The MPN is a legal document. So I can't agree to this condition because it isn't true. Luckily, there's an alternative--it's called the paper form. Welcome to the modern era, where technology is enabling us and stupid management decisions are disabling us.
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: 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.
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: Ann Barcomb Date: 10:41 on 15 Apr 2005 Subject: NTLM authentification over the internet I hate Microsoft's NTLM authentification scheme. I hate Microsoft for their refusal to stick to standards, but that's beyond the scope of this complaint. I hate it because since a recent system upgrade on our Exchange server I can no longer view my work mail from home. Probably we were using another authentification method earlier and now we are using NTLM. Safari and my version of Mozilla refuse to deal with it. I resent that the only way I can fix my problem is by upgrading to a newer Mozilla or installing Firefox. It always annoys me to have to alter my environment to deal with something that doesn't play by the rules. - Ann
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 11:59 on 24 Sep 2004 Subject: Outlook At my previous job I had to use Lotus notes. I hated it. At my new job I have to use Outlook. I hate it too. At this moment I'm hating the fact that the header displayed in the preview pane doesn't show a person's email address, just name. You can't get the name by clicking in the header, either, because it just gives options concerning turning off the preview pane. So what happens if I want to give person A person B's email address? Well, I haven't encountered an option 'always show me the email address' in headers, so this is how I do it now: 1) select the message. This opens the preview pane. 2) double-click on the message. This pops up another window. 3) right-click on the person's name in the header section of the popup. select 'properties'. You must click exactly on the name, or you will get header-related settings. 4) go to the email tab, where I can see the person's email address 5) the keyboard copy shortcut cntrl-c doesn't work on this address, so I then remember a portion of it, switch to the window I'm typing on, switch back, etc. If I'm lucky I can fit both programs on the desktop at the same time and keep my focus. Usually this doesn't work. I'm starting to wonder if this protection of actual email addresses is a foretaste of what Microsoft has in mind for DRM: so boring and annoying to circumvent that you'd rather not. I also don't like the fact that it has grouped my folders in to shortcuts. There's 'Outlook Shortcuts' and 'My Shortcuts'. All my mail folders are in 'My Shortcuts'. My Inbox and Sent mail are in 'Outlook Shortcuts'. Both Outlook and My Shortcuts cannot be expanded at the same time. Starting from my inbox, if I want to look at a saved mail, my steps are: 1) expand 'My Shortcuts' 2) Click on the mail folder I want, find the message and view it 3) expand 'Outlook Shortcuts' 4) Click on the inbox to get back to where I was Steps 1 and 3 seem quite unneccessary to me. Maybe there are ways around these problems...I wouldn't know, because I have no desire to learn about Outlook. Given that the product is supposed to be designed for easy use, I think if it is possible to do what I want, I should be able to figure it out from looking at half a dozen menus. - A
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 11:45 on 31 Aug 2004 Subject: CVS hatred There are so many things to hate about CVS. I listed many of them in a previous complaint roughly a year ago. I'm still hating it. When I commit a file, permissions are changed in accordance with my default umask. Why? It isn't as if the file even needs to be modified locally. Even if it was, it would make more sense to retain the permissions I have set. I could understand an update modifying permissions, perhaps. But a commit? That means "I'm happy with this exactly the way it is, and I want to save it." While it is true that I generally want my default umask or it wouldn't be my default, I often modify this, for example by giving access to lib files to other. It is not infrequent that a program doesn't work, and when I backtrack to figure out why it turns out that the library permissions are incorrect. Isn't version control supposed to make my life easier?
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 11:52 on 10 Jun 2004 Subject: Auto-reply software I hate auto-reply software with senseless defaults which is then used by people without a clue. Today I'm getting mails from the vacation program of someone I don't know. People who are sending something to a mailinglist generally don't care if someone else on the list whom they they have never spoken to is on vacation. Vacation programs should not reply to mailinglist traffic. Vacation programs should also keep some kind of log of people who have been notified about this vacation. A reply once every 24-hours or so per person is quite enough; I don't need a reply for every single email. I also got mail from a spam-blocking program that expects me to verify the letter before the address can be approved. Do your own whitelist work--the letter was sent by an automated script in response to the user making a request in a webform. Let's see...how difficult would it be for the spamer to parse this message and automate the correct response? I think I could do it in 15 minutes. On the other hand, why am I going to bother to do this so that someone can receive information he or she request? I guess it's a spam filter in the sense that it collects the spam for you, and gives it to you without the distractions of real mail. Then there was one of those mails informing me that I have sent a virus. This is some of the worst spam, because the anti-virus companies are just trying to tell you how great their software is. They know as well as I do that the email address is spoofed. Horrible applications, horrible default configurations, horrible people using them.
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