We, as end users, come across it and download it. We are like lab rats. We get strange and bizare ideas and things tested on us all of the time. Broken code. Shitty interfaces. Really cool stuff that isn't quite useful so it's just a bit disapointing. You know what? It's time to stand up for your rights. Be a lab rat no more.
Complain About Broken Shit Week. July 15-22, 2005.
In the spirit of ThisIsBroken and Signals vs Noise, we're going to complain. About stuff that makes our lives hard. About stuff that makes us just want to murder someone with the business end of a spoon because it almost works like we'd like it to. We aren't going to call it shit, because we love it all. No, this isn't a HAHAHAHA MY DISTRO HUMPS YOUR DISTRO day. We're going to say It makes me really unhappy when Firefox kills my profile, for the umpteenth time. Or Filezilla really annoys me when I try to pause stuff. Or GAIM really needs to stop fucking with my head. Please.
The point? I'll gather all of this up and file the bugs. You just have to tell me what's making you unhappy, and why. Then, I'll go to bat, and heckle developers. Ok, Ok, I lie. I won't call them stupid, lame coders who couldn't design an app to save their life. I'll tell them tales of woe. I'll make them understand what it's like when you've clicked the same useless button for the 10,000th time, and you just can't cope anymore.
How to whinge like a fucking pro:
GAIM [win32] status icons / user avatars.
I can't see if someone is busy AND their picture IF they have a really long name. Sure, I know about setting aliases and whatever, but I'm too lazy. Please fix this, Mr GAIM developers, it's doing my head in - I'm too busy to set it up on every computer I visit with GAIM, and set aliases for everyone. It affects my productivity. Really badly. Upsettingly so.
Having it so I could choose if the avatars were on the left / right, OR so that it automatically hid people's names that were just too long would make my day.
Cheers,
Really Tetchy User Guy
See, it's easy. Complain. Tell me what's wrong, what version, why it's wrong, and how stressful it is.
If you aren't on a windows box, and the software isn't open source, I'm going to have trouble seeing what you see - screenshots, diagrams, statements from therapists, all of these things are going to help a lot.
Remember, this is your moment to complain. Don't let it get away!
[Comment here with your whinging!]
8 comments:
IRC help channels.
I want a bot that records shit that I say in a help channel. `addquote or whatever.
Then I want a search function for it that automatically works out all of this keyword stuff. IE, "Google" is mentioned a lot next to "GET A FUCKING CLUE". `search google also searches for "GET A FUCKING CLUE" in the quote / help snippet database.
Drupal, upgrading. If the cache object screws up for some reason, it all gets upset [4.6.2]
This should fail *gracefully*.
Drupal upgrade:
The documentation says, oi, stupid, you need to disabled stuff before you upgrade.
Why is this not done automatically in the upgrade.php script? It seems less effort on the user.
HTMLarea module for drupal docs:
2. download Xinha from http://xinha.python-hosting.com/wiki/DownloadsPage
and unpack it into your htmlarea module directory.
Uh. Vague.
Followup about Xinha:
It can be any of these paths. So why not give a very specific example or let the user define this in configuration!
function _htmlarea_get_jsdir() {
static $path;
if ($path) {
return $path;
}
elseif (file_exists("misc/htmlarea/htmlarea.js")) {
$path = "misc/htmlarea";
}
elseif (file_exists(drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/xinha/htmlarea.js")) {
$path = drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/xinha";
}
elseif (file_exists(drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/xinha-nightly/htmlarea.js")) {
$path = drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/xinha-nightly";
}
elseif (file_exists(drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/xinha-latest/htmlarea.js")) {
$path = drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/xinha-latest";
}
elseif (file_exists(drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/htmlarea/htmlarea.js")) {
$path = drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/htmlarea";
}
elseif (file_exists(drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/HTMLArea-CVS/htmlarea.js")) {
$path = drupal_get_path("module", "htmlarea") ."/HTMLArea-CVS";
}
else {
$path = false;
}
return $path;
}
Bugzilla / Most bug reporting programs.
WHEN SHIT IS BROKEN YOU COME TO TELL PEOPLE ITS BROKEN. You don't come to get an account, log into an account, choose the product, choose the version, choose if you are infact filing a bug.
Bugzilla should have a "there's a bug in my browser and i'd like to squash it" link.
Capture input. AJAX search results on certain keywords a user puts in about a bug.
Get the problem out of them first, and the rest will sort itself out.
CVSNT. Anything to do with it. Massively broken.
(1) You have to jump through hoops to download it. I don't give a damn about product X support. I just want a Download for windows XP, latest stable version.
I accidentally downloaded the testing release, because the "developer" release sounded less stable.
(2) You find a bug, you can't bugzilla it unless you have paid support. Bullshit. I thought I saw the GPL attached to this thing, which brings with it the idea that I can file bugs about it. Like the control panel applet for CVS server administration breaking on install - not even being copied to the right place. Doesn't seem a hard thing to spot when doing a release and smoketesting.
(3) Restarting when I install. Mmpf.
(4) No warnings in testing releases to mark them as something not to use in production, bar one tiny thing in the wiki.
purehybrid: hey guys, it seems impossible to find any free webhosting where i can pissfart around with php/mysql so i was wondering if its easy to set up a mysql server on my own system
purehybrid: the mysql site seems to have nothing but ads for mysql courses =\
CLoCkWeRX: pretty darned easy
CLoCkWeRX: win32 ?
purehybrid: yeh
purehybrid: xp pro
toggg: atf
CLoCkWeRX: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/getting-mysql.html
toggg: arf
CLoCkWeRX: the mysql site IS broken isn't it
CLoCkWeRX: i can never *see* the download link
CLoCkWeRX: eventually i find it
CLoCkWeRX: but i forget in a few days
CLoCkWeRX: gets me every time
toggg: mysql is broken generally
purehybrid: haha missed the dev center area :(
purehybrid: im so blind :P
purehybrid: thanks CLoCkWeRX :)
CLoCkWeRX: you aren't blind, it's just piss poor usability
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