The Gnome file manager, nautilus, has a view called 'Compact' which makes an interesting use of available space. Or wait, no, actually it doesn't:
I won't waste any more words on this.
Synergy
Delete Temporarily
Why is it that it is no longer possible to delete e-mail messages in a regular way? "Sure, it is!" you say. "Look, here is my right-click menu from Thunderbird:"
"Ooh," I say, "let's click it." The message disappears. On further investigation, however, it turns out that this message is still there, still taking up space and cluttering up your mailbox:
Why, if the message is still there, is this called Delete?! If you're moving something to the trash, instead of deleting it call it Move to Trash!
Thunderbird is not the only application with this problem. Here's my Google Mail:
On clicking Delete, our friend Google Mail will helpfully move the selected message(s) to the Bin where you have the option to Delete forever… which is apparently different from regular deletions which are temporary.
Why, Google and almost every other software builder, why?! If you are deleting stuff, label the button Delete. If you are moving stuff label it Move. It's not that hard, really.
Posted in Software Bashing.
– March 16, 2010
Free Money!
A penny saved is ten pounds earned. According to Amazon's patented digital online Internet e-commerce cloud-software anyway.
Posted in Software Bashing.
– March 16, 2010
Thank you for screwing package management, Belastingdienst!
Every year, as spring draws near, the chore of having to file my income tax announces itself with the arrival of a blue envelope from the 'Belastingdienst' (equivalent of the IRS in the USA). I always need to work myself up to actually doing it, but the promise of tax returns eventually brings me to gather the paperwork, and start up the computer.
Since years uncounted (at least before I had an income) the Belastingdienst has offered software to make the process as smooth and painless as possible. I always get sweaty palms over the legal jargon they expose me to, but I've learned over the years that most things don't apply.
Of course, being a Linux geek since 1.2.13 I've tried to file taxes under Linux. The first years I had to come by with running Wine, which worked almost perfectly. But since a couple of years the Belastingdienst has recognised the existence of other operating systems and offered Mac OS X and Linux versions of their tax software.
This year, I even had two choices: tarball installation or Linux-autopackage. A mysterious choice, but the download seemed to be significantly smaller. Could it be that this would cooperate with my installation in a meaningful way? I hoped for the best and chose autopackage.
I fired up the installer and before long a pop-up asked me to type the administrator password. Then, to my horror, the autopackage system started to write files all over my /usr file system. The only one I normally let touch this part of the system is the package management software that comes with my Linux distribution.
For a conscious system administrator this is like inviting a friend into your house, and he brings a couple of big hairy dogs that dig up your carefully trimmed garden, knock over the bird feeder, poop in the petunias and leave hair and muddy paws all over the house. You'd think twice about inviting that friend again.
Posted in Software Bashing.
– March 14, 2010
VirtualBox networking
Every time I reboot my laptop, and start a guest operating system (Debian 5.0 guest on a Ubuntu 9.04 host), I have to reboot the guest at least once after it has booted because otherwise the network doesn't work in my guest. That's all I have to do; reboot the guest. After that it works. No configuration changes, nothing, just a reboot. Bullshit.
Posted in Software Bashing.
– October 15, 2009
Wait, what?
I don't think this needs any more explanation. Apparently my window is in some sort of quantum-state when I don't look at it. 
Posted in Software Bashing.
– September 30, 2009
Calling all engineers: Computers are stupid!
This is a call to all software engineers. The lesson for today is:
Computers are stupid.
So if you're thinking about implementing some auto-correcting functionality in your new shiny feature-packed word processor… don't. Computers are stupid. I am smart. Compared to a computer, I am infinitely smart. That means computers can't automatically correct me. At least, not properly. Automatic corrections will be wrong in 90% of the cases.What you can do though, is hint at me that I've made a booboo, which I can then correct myself! Or I can tell the computer: "Right, I keep making that mistake! You can correct it for me from now on without asking me"
WordPress: Don't automatically change single or double ASCII quotes to Unicode characters unless I ask for it. Especially don't do it when I'm applying the 'literal' style to a piece of text. "Literal" literally means literal. Chances are that I want things I type to appear, well, literally. Programming code might make a good example. I don't think many languages yet understand unicode quotes yet.
Word/Open Office: Don't automatically convert everything I type into something else. If I type "1.", don't assume I want to make a list. I'm not a fucking retard. If I want a list, I'll select my text and bash the 'List' button in the toolbar. Don't automatically upper-case the letter of a new sentence for me. It's a computer, and computers are notoriously bad at lexical analysis or human languages. You see, in Dutch it is required to end an abbreviation with a period. So "i.e." is not the end of a sentence. Don't automatically convert anything for me, please. Please!
Software engineers, at the very least make sure that when I undo one of your automatic conversions, and start typing again not to apply the same automatic correction again! Some simple user-experience testing should have picked up on that.
Honestly, I think mankind was more productive when it was still carving shit on rock faces in caves then it is today with computers. Cavemen inventing fire and wheels and whatnot. People with computers, what do they invent? Shit to solve problems that wouldn't have existed without computers in the first place, that's what. But hey, at least we're leveraging business synergy, right?
Posted in Software Bashing.
– September 29, 2009
Undefined variables == Undefined behaviour.
Here's a nice one for a PHP exam. Given this complete code example, will it print 'aa' or 'bb'?
<?php
if ($variable != 0) {
print('aa');
} else {
print('bb');
}
?>
Let's apply the rules of logic here. $variable is unset, so it is not '0'. Therefor it should print 'aa'.
Wrong.
Let's apply the rules of PHP here. PHP will BLACK BOX MAGIC VOODOO and from that it naturally follows that PHP will print 'bb':
[todsah@host]~$ php ./magic_voodoo.php Notice: Undefined variable: variable in /home/todsah/magic_voodoo.php on line 3 bb
And that, dear PHP developers, is why warnings and notices in PHP should be removed in favour of errors. At. All. Times. I hate PHP.
AFMELDING
Posted in Software Bashing.
– September 16, 2009
X11 woes
I saw a post on problems with xrandr and that reminded me that I still had some ranting to do on X11 under Ubuntu. For some reason, I have no idea why, my system keeps insisting on resetting my Virtual Desktop size to 2432 by 1024 pixels. My external monitor is 1680×1050, so that won't fit. Consequently, I've had to change the Virtual Desktop size manually in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and had to chattr +i it so it couldn't be modified by god himself. I shouldn't have to do that, as I've got more than enough video memory for a way larger Virtual Desktop size, and I don't like it when my custom settings get overridden.
Also, I can't use my external monitor without running this script:
xrandr --newmode "1680x1050_60.00" 147.14 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087 -HSync +Vsync xrandr --addmode VGA 1680x1050_60.00 xrandr --output VGA --mode 1680x1050_60.00
Pretty annoying. The Display configuration in Ubuntu (System -> Preferences -> Display) also doesn't list my external monitor's native resolution, even when I boot up my laptop with the external screen attached and set as the main display (by pressing the 'Switch to external monitor' button-thingamajiggy on my laptop). Probably a BIOS issue, but it would be nice if it would simply let me add a new mode by entering a resolution.
Hopefully 2010 will be the year of Linux on the desktop. 2009 sure ain't.
Posted in Software Bashing.
– September 16, 2009