Trying NOT to Think of Firefox as Crap

I am desperately trying to continue lovin' Firefox, to not think of it as crappy software, but lately it just keeps a-crashin' and a-crashin' -- like, about once a day on both Mac OS X and Windows 7. Plus, it keeps lagging and having trouble displaying pages quickly. Slashdot is particularly bad, but Gmail ain't good either. On Mac, that freakin' annoyin' spinning beach ball has become the norm. I hate that damn thing.

And yesterday, something crappy and new happened: Tried to access Gmail through Firefox. It would not connect. Gave me the error msg: "The page isn't redirecting properly." Tried Gmail with Internet Explorer and got right through. Since I use Google for all manner of things -- from email to Picasa's online Web albums -- not being able to connect to it is a major issue.

I'm a longtime supporter of Firefox, dating from its very first release. And I've recommended it to numerous friends over the years. But this recent crappiness is driving me back to OS-native browsers -- Safari for Mac and Internet Explorer for Windows.

For the record, I'm using Firefox 3.5.3 on Mac 10.5.8 and Windows 7 release candidate. And I've tried disabling all extensions/add-ons/etc and clearing cookies and the cache. I've also Googled around a bit to see if I'm alone in my suffering. Not hardly. In fact, I found blog posts quite similar to my own!

"I Want To Love Firefox 3.5, But It Keeps Crashing On Me"

And this one, from David Rothman, sounds like it should have been written for the Crappy Software blog:

"Is Firefox 3.5 crap?"

Oh, how I hate it when good software goes bad!

The Comic Crappiness of Microsoft Word

I was merrily typing along in WordPerfect this afternoon when I began to question my oft-repeated oath that you'd have to pry this fine word processor from my cold dead hands. I'd recently run into some formatting issues when I converted WordPerfect files to Word in order to submit a manuscript and when working with grad students I often need to be able to read their material in Word and use its track changes to make comments.

So, I've felt the pressure to switch for some time. I just got a new computer this summer and put Windows 7 (a release candidate) on it and, since I have no major deadlines (at least, not this week) just now, I thought it might be fitting to try a new word processor.

I fired up Word 2007 and began taking notes on C. S. Tashiro's Pretty Pictures, an interesting book on the history film that may provide some insights into Mad Men, on which I'm currently working. Almost immediately, almost comically, Word's crappiness became apparent.

First, it crashed when I tried to make a simple configuration change (so that it'd use curly quotation marks). Did that twice.

I figured Word was getting pretty confused by then so I closed it and rebooted the machine. It still wouldn't do curly quotations marks, but I gave up trying to configure it. Then I attempted to open the file that I'd been working on. It refused! "Word experienced an error trying to open the file..."


I tried, as suggested, to use the Text Recovery converter. No dice. My notes were inaccessible.

WordPerfect to the rescue! I asked WP to open this Word 2007 document and bada bing! Success!

How beautiful is that? WordPerfect is so generous that it even opened a competitor's file. Can software be equanimous? If so, then I think WordPerfect qualifies.

What did my experience with the comic crappiness of Microsoft Word teach me? It taught me that my oath was not in vain! Just try to dislodge WordPerfect from my hard drive now!

Windows 7 Crappy Weirdness

I've installed Windows 7 on a new Vista computer I bought last month -- taking advantage of the free upgrade when it's officially released this fall.

And I'm mostly enjoyed it, but today it started some crappy weirdness that I can't figure out and for which Google supplies no answers. Here's what happens.

1. I start the copying of a folder from the C: root drive to an external hard drive -- a USB drive assigned letter K. Bother drives are formatted in NTFS.

2. The transfer stalls and the CPU usage spikes really high.

3. I get the error message:

"Item not found. Could not find this item. This is no longer located in K:Audio archive. Verify the item's location and try again."

The drive and location it's referring to are the DESTINATION drive. It's like the system has suddenly lost track of the destination drive/folder.

The only way to get the CPU to calm down after this happens is to reboot.

University of Alabama: Parking-Permit Crap

Every year, the University of Alabama tries to force its faculty to buy a parking permit. Ignoring the fact that some might bike, take one of the new buses, or walk onto campus, its parking registration software defaults to charging you for a permit. That is, if you do not explicitly opt out of a permit, you are automatically charged for it.

I objected to this crappy extortion system when it was first implemented a few years ago, but to no avail. So now, every year, I take time out of my day to tell them no, I do not want a stinking parking permit.

This year as I was doing this I noticed a new (I think) paragraph in the form that states:

I certify that I have declined to register for a parking permit from the University of Alabama for the 2009-2010 academic school year. If I do not purchase a permit and drive a vehicle on campus, I will be responsible for any citations received on that vehicle. If the vehicle is wheel locked or impounded, I will be responsible for all fees and citations associated with the wheel lock or impoundment of my vehicle.

One is required to "agree" with this statement before the form may be processed. The grammar of one sentence caught my eye:

If I do not purchase a permit and drive a vehicle on campus, I will be responsible for any citations received on that vehicle.

Now, since the "do not" in this sentence applies to both "purchase" and "drive" the sentence can be broken down to mean:

1. If I do not purchase a permit and
2. If I do not drive a vehicle on campus,
3. Then I will be responsible for any citations received on that vehicle.

How paradoxical! I went ahead and clicked the "agree" box, but how will I resolve of this paradox? How can I be responsible for citations if the vehicle has not been driven on campus?

It Isn't Quite IOSYBWGFYO, But Netflix Is Doing Some Irritating Crap

I enjoy Netflix, really I do, but they're pulling some irritating crap with their Blu-ray Disc policy.

First, they tacked a $1 fee onto their regular monthly account for the privilege of renting BDs. Okay, irritating, but not a deal breaker. Today, however, I received a notice from them than they are quadrupling that fee to $4, for people, like me, who are on their three-rentals-a-month deal.

Add $4 to the regular fee of $16.99 a month and you get a monthly bill of $20.99. But another way to look at it is that they are charging 24% more (!) for Blu-ray.

I just have to ask: Are the wholesale prices of BDs truly 24% higher than DVDs, Mr. Netflix? Are they rilly "substantially more expensive," as you put it?

Somehow I seriously doubt it.

Ah well, at least they don't use the phrase "in order to serve you better" in their demand for more money. But they come close. Here's what they said:

-- Netflix's mildly IOSYBWGFYO notice --

You are receiving this email because you added unlimited Blu-ray access to your account for $1 a month. The number of Blu-ray titles has increased significantly and will continue to do so. As we buy more, you are able to choose from a rapidly expanding selection of Blu-ray titles. And as you've probably heard, Blu-ray discs are substantially more expensive than standard definition DVDs.

As a result, the monthly charge for Blu-ray access is increasing for most plans and will now vary by plan. The charge for monthly Blu-ray access on your 3 DVDs at-a-time (Unlimited) plan will increase from $1 a month to $4 a month. The price of your 3 DVDs at-a-time (Unlimited) plan is not changing and remains at $16.99 a month.

The new charge for Blu-ray access will be automatically added to your next billing statement on or after April 27, 2009 and will be referenced in your Membership Terms and Details.

If you wish to continue unlimited Blu-ray access for $4 a month, you don't need to do anything. If not, you can remove Blu-ray access anytime by visiting Your Account.

If you have questions about this change or need any assistance, please call us anytime at 1-888-923-0898.

New Crap from the IOSYBWGFYO File

The IOSYBWGFYO ("In Order to Serve You Better, We're Going to Fuck You Over") File provides what appears to be an unending supply of crap. The latest IOSYBWGFYO offender to arrive in my email inbox is Kodak Gallery, which sent me this little note today:

So that you are aware, we have modified our Terms of Service*: To more effectively serve our Gallery members, we have adjusted our photo-storage policy to align with storage usage.

To store photos at the Gallery, members with photo storage of 2 gigabytes (GB) or less must make annual minimum purchases totaling at least $4.99.** Failure to meet this requirement may result in your photos being deleted from the Gallery.

** If your storage exceeds 2GB, our new Storage Policy requires that you spend $19.99 annually to continue storage of your photos.

Any further comment is superfluous, I reckon. Its craposity is self-evident. But I will note that what I most hate about such notices is that they claim that the reason for this crap is to serve you better. Why can't they be honest about the reason behind the change, which, in this case, is obviously to make more money?

Perhaps it's time to start the IOSYBWGFYO Blog to track this crap.

Classic Crappy Marketing Ploy

XM satellite radio is the latest company to offer to "serve me better" by dicking me around.

Yesterday, I received a letter from Joe Zarella, Chief Service Officer, Sirius XM Radio. It begins positively enough: "Because you are a valued customer and you enjoy listening to XM Radio online, we are offering you a special opportunity to continue to listen online at no cost..."

Oh great! A special opportunity! Listening online! Nice! "At no cost"! Great!

"...if you renew your radio subscription now with one of our longer-term plans."

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Then the serious dicking around begins:

On March 11,2009, the XM Radio Online listening platform will be upgraded to a higher quality digital audio and no longer included as a part of a base subscription at no charge. If you renew now, you can continue to listen online, at your home or office, FREE for the length of term you choose-but only if you act quickly.

Zarella lures me in with "upgraded to a higher quality digital audio" and then drops the hammer: online listening, which had been free, will now cost me.

And, gee, I can avoid this new fee for something I was getting for free if I just agree to a longer commitment to XM than I had before!

So, let me sum up: I get degraded service and I lock myself into that service for an extended period of time.

What crap.

Instead of inspiring me to lock into XM's service contract, I think I'll just lock myself out entirely and move on to other less crappy options.

You can read the whole crappy pitch in this PDF file.

SplashID Used To Be Great, But Now It's Crap

I hate it when an application I've relied on heavily and recommended to friends disappoints me with a new version that lacks key functionality found in older versions.

SplashID used to be a great password manager, until its iPhone version came along. In the good old days (back when I used it on a Palm PDA), it effectively stored passwords and synchronized them across numerous computers and the handheld PDA. All my passwords were always up-to-date on all the machines I used. And synchronization was a simple part of the Palm's own sync routine. So, essentially, you didn't have to do anything for this magic to happen.

Plus, SplashID would suggest new passwords to you and had other useful features.

I liked the app so much that I actually bought a low-end Palm PDA solely to run SplashID, even after I bought an iPhone last year. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that I was joyous when I heard that SplashID was being ported to the iPhone.

I installed it immediately and was initially disappointed in the sync routine. Because of how Apple restricts applications on the iPhone, SplashID cannot simply sync through iTunes the way Apple's apps do. Oh no, you've got to separately sync SplashID over a wifi network. That's just as hinky as you might imagine. And if you're in a work situation where your computer is on a wired, not wifi, network then you have to go through additional shenanigans to get it to work.

Okay, okay... I thought to myself, this is a downgrade from the Palm's system, but I love SplashID so much that I'll make do with it, clumsy as it was.

But then I noticed that changes to the passwords were not synchronizing across two computers. Each computer would overwrite the handheld with its version of the data. That can't be right, I thought. So, I posted a note to SplashID's support forum. They've always been very responsive in the past and I assumed that I was just not configuring things correctly.

But then I got an official reply from Justin of SplashData:

Synchronization with 2 computers is not supported in the iPhone version. This is a completely different sync mechanism from the Palm sync.

Oh, fuck me! Now I will have to stop using the iPhone version of SplashID and either revert to the Palm version or move to another password manager altogether. I have been a loyal user of SplashID for years and have frequently recommended it to friends, but I won't be able to do that anymore.

In sum: I am very irritated at this crappy "upgrade" of SplashID. And I think it's misleading of SplashData to advertise this feature thus:

Synchronize data between your handheld and Mac or PC using the desktop software

It should be corrected to read "between your handheld and a single desktop computer."

Google Toolbar: Small, Irritaing Crap

Recently the following message appeared in Firefox:

What's new in your [Google] Toolbar

Search smarter with instant suggestions as you type
Bookmark frequently visited pages and access them from anywhere
Add buttons to the Toolbar to search your favorite sites — view available buttons
Share web pages via blog, email, or SMS

Actually, the latter was not so "new." In fact, the main reason I installed Google Toolbar was for the ease with which one may email snippets of Webpages. Highlight text/images on a Webpage, click a button in the Toolbar and bada bing email is created with that text/images.

But not any more.

For the past two weeks, when I attempt the above, I'm given an error message:

Temporary Error (502)

We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won’t be able to use your account while these errors last, but don’t worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

Please try accessing your account again in a few minutes.

The galling thing is, this is no "temporary error" (#502 or not) resolved in a "few minutes", it's a semi-permanent error that has been going on for at least two weeks. And there is little information on this on Gmail's help system. All I found was this inconclusive posting.

Since there's not much else in the Google Toolbar that I find useful, I'm on the verge of uninstalling it.

Update 8/24/08:

Possible solution: Turn off the option to "Always use https", under "Browser connection." I just turned that off and the first time I tried the "send to" function, it worked.

Not a perfect workaround (as it means less secure browsing), but still a workaround.

Be wary of file integrity checkers

So, the other day, we were having some network trouble and our servers were unreachable off-site for about 5 or 6 hours, so I decided this might be a good opportunity to run a file integrity check on the hard disk drives in one of the linux servers that had a lot of data on it.

In windows systems, you can run "scan disk" and it will defragment your hard drive and there are also built in tools that will help repair file systems so that damaged files can be pieced back together and hopefully be usable. The experience that I've had with windows disk management/integrity assurance has been non-eventful...they just have done their job and if they couldn't make things better, they would just give up and not do anything.
However, that is not the experience that I had when I ran ICE ECC a few days back on the linux server. I'll talk about three areas of critique: speed, functionality, and end results.

O.k., first speed. The check only took around 2 hours to cull through about 40 GB of data, which seemed really fast to me. In windows, I can remember it taking 10 hours or more to go through much less data and hard disk space. So, in the speed category, I'm impressed.

However, the next two categories: functionality and end result, I'm not very pleased with. With functionality, the first thing that it did was it made a backup copy of all of the data on the disk by creating a small partition and calling it: /old-root, then, it went through and ran the file integrity check on the hard disk drive and files it considered were o.k., it copied to the main partition for future use. After all this was said and done, the files got renamed this wierd user...USERID 499, which had a common name of "pulse" and group name "pulse-rt". When I rebooted, everything came up fine, except there were some odd things that I'm still trying to fix...such as since the file permissions got changed to this new user, some services didn't start right or if they did, certain pieces didn't work. Also, it just makes me paranoid about what else might have been messed up, because...there were certain files that didn't make it over during the integrity check. A colleague found some important ones that didn't get copied over, but how many more could there be? So, for the end result category, we do have a faster system (disk I/O before and and now shows a 3% increase in speed), but this came at the expense of not everything running right after the check.

ICE is open source freeware, and maybe it did exactly what it is supposed to do, but at least some kind of warning about what it did would have been nice in this instance. Am I going to run file integrity checks in the future? Yeah, but I'm going to stick with the the tried and true e2fsck instead of any fancy-smanshy tools that claim they are better and more advanced. Sometimes, simple is better!

my two cents