Comments on: Dear Internet Don't Do This

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:41:06 +0000

I hate that. Since Scienceblogs management started to ignore my emails about page layout and blog design issues, I installed ad blog and no longer report problems. But you could always send an email via a link at the bottom of the page.

Oh, look they took away the link. Oh well. I would just go with the ad block.

By: Mike from Shreveport

Mike from Shreveport — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:31:45 +0000

Ads with blaring sound!

How about a little warning, you S.O.B.s?!

I’m at work, you S.O.B.s!

My wife/kids are sleeping, you S.O.B.s!

I was having a little peaceful time, and you jarred/startled me into a frantic grab for the volume slider, you S.O.B.s!

I didn’t give you any @#$@%$^ permission to blare your audio on my computer, you S.O.B.s!

/rant end

By: John Sandlin

John Sandlin — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:59:26 +0000

Another not so nice web site practice are the ads that come on with audio at full volume and have no volume control. I have some audio sources that are quiet, so I have system volumes relatively high and then turn down the ones that are louder. But some of these ads come in very loudly and when I’m wearing headphones it can make my ears hurt.

By: travc

travc — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 07:32:29 +0000

1-3 are all side-effects of the fact that modern interactive websites are built on hacking functionality into HTML+browser that wasn’t part of the initial design. HTML wasn’t designed to do anything beyond a simple form with a “Submit” button, and that was pretty much an afterthought in the first place. Basically, we would be best served by a new framework designed from scratch IMO.

The file manager issue is also a legacy thing. Most filesystems weren’t designed with that sort of access in mind, much less searching. BeOS’s filesystem was actually built around a relational database keeping all the file properties, and actually had that sort of near instant access. Not a bad approach.

By: Michael Haubrich

Michael Haubrich — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:24:26 +0000

I remember the days when Mozilla didn’t allow any cutting any pasting of text into comment forms. I thought it was a bug, turned it to be a “feature” to prevent malware getting onto servers. Not specific to this topic, and they have since come to their senses so the problem is no longer a problem. I just thought I would share an old gripe that is not relevant.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:07:44 +0000

Greg, You forgot,

5. Get off my lawn!

By: Richard Chapman

Richard Chapman — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:40:16 +0000

I will almost always highlight and copy my text to my clipboard (I have it set to hold 200 entries) several times while I write a comment. If something goes wrong, which it often does, I can simply paste it back in. If the comment starts to get a little on the long side I will copy it to a text editor and continue writing it there. I find that seeing the text in a different font and configuration helps me spot errors.

As for hard drive lag, I use Linux and format the drive in Ext4. It’s very fast and recovers from surface failures quite well. My computer has failed (locked up solid) on several occasions due to hard drive failure. I simply ran the fsck utility (gParted LiveCD) and was up and running 15 minutes later (Try that with Windows.). So far I have not lost any data that I could discover. It appears the bad sectors were on the root partition of the hard drive.

For some reason Firefox’s spell checker doesn’t work in this site’s comment block. I’m using my text editor now and it does have a spell checker.

As for sites that reload pages after a set period of time, I do like a previous poster does, I avoid those sites. I find it rude in the extreme. And yes, they do it to boost their hit count.

By: Daniel J. Andrews

Daniel J. Andrews — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:19:35 +0000

Jumping pages. I’m reading a document (Word, web pages) and suddenly it’ll jump up by a paragraph or two. I thought it was just a glitchy computer, but it has happened on 3 of my laptops as well as on university desktops.

By: Tamara

Tamara — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:20:29 +0000

Pornographic or nearly pornographic popups or rollovers on otherwise innocuous websites. And if you put parental controls on high enough to avoid them, you can’t get to the content you actually want or need.

Tired of having my twelve year old pass his laptop to dad: “There’s something gross on my computer, can you make it go away please so I can play Meeblings in peace?”

Semi-related, but funny…same twelve year old complaining that Diablo 3’s rating should be “M for math” because of several puzzles he had to solve requiring mathematical reasoning. Ha ha I win.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 10:26:45 +0000

My big gripe is when you open a web page, and click on the text box to begin your typing, thinking everything is hunky dory. However, whilst you were moving the mouse, the various adverts, banners and sidebars were still loading, causing the screen content to suddenly lurch downwards just as you click, bringing your mouse cursor perfectly in line with a link to the help section or a discount shop.

Maybe I just need a faster connection.