Category Archives: Idiots

Pet Peeve: Version Transparency

I have a possibly odd habit: I like to keep an up-to-date archive of the software I normally install on my Windows boxen. I maintain an SMB volume on my file server, exported to my home network via Samba, into which I file various installers and updaters. This makes bringing up a new machine — which I’ve been known to do from time to time — a minor rather than a major annoyance. Almost everything I want has already been fetched, and is available for retrieval at gigabit speeds.

This brings us to the second-most-retarded thing on the internet: software downloads without versions in the filename. (What’s the first-most-retarded thing on the internet, you ask? Why, e-commerce forms that require you to enter credit-card numbers “without dashes or spaces”, but Steve Friedl‘s got that one covered.)

When I’m looking at your web site, contemplating a set of download links, I should be able to tell at a glance whether or not the software bundle you’re offering me is newer than the one I’ve got. If you had the foresight to embed the bundle’s version number into its filename, this is a trivial determination for me to make. If you haven’t, then I may wind up downloading another copy only to determine that it’s no different from the one I have. This is waste of time for me, a waste of bandwidth for you, and a pointless annoyance to us both.

Names like “iTunesInstaller.exe”, “stable.tar.gz”, and “autoruns.zip” tell me nothing about the vintage of the software whose acquisition I’m contemplating. I am baffled that outfits which are by any other measure under the operation of the extremely smartApple, the folks behind perl.com, and Sysinternals, to name but three — haven’t figured this out yet. It makes me wonder whether I’m not in truth the one who’s missing something. But until someone offers me definitive proof that this the case, though, I’m going to continue waving my fist at the sky and acting cranky over this one.

Evening the Odds

My friend Greg is in the process of being shafted by Verizon, who have at this point basically admitted to bald-facedly lying to him when they quoted him his original DSL installation dates, as well as conceding that they may lying now when they quote him new ones. This, therefore, seems like a good time time to mention two key resources that can help level the playing field when dealing with a faceless corporation’s customer-“service” system: Rob Levandowski’s excellent guide to The Art of Turboing, and Paul English’s Interactive Voice Response (IVR) cheat sheet.

(As an aside, Greg’s experience seems sadly typical of DSL-provider stories I’ve heard lately. This contrasts poorly with cable-broadband companies, who make it much easier and quicker to get on-line with them. I’m a DSL user myself, and like the service, but I don’t see how the telcos are going to keep the cable companies from eating their lunch if they don’t get their act together fast.)

Update 2006-03-08: Apparently Paul English’s IVR Cheat Sheet has sparked enough of a response to instigate what  could wind up being a full-blown movement. If this turns out to be an actual consumer rebellion, historians may wind up saying that HQ was located at gethuman.com.

The Preznit on Global Warming

For some reason, I was never a huge fan of Will Ferrell. His turn in MTV’s parody of “The Matrix Reloaded”, however, first made me think that I should consider changing my mind. His dead-on characterization of George W. Bush seals the deal.

Apropos the Commander-in-Chimp, last night I was stopped at a light behind a bumper sticker which read:

My child is an Honor Student
My President is a moron

Alas.

Sony: Pigfuckers

Mark Russinovich, one of the more badass ninjas of low-level Windows programming and the co-maintainer of the excellent Sysinternals website, recently discovered, while testing his rootkit detector, that Something Unwholesome had made its way onto a system that should by rights have been clean.

Upon investigation, he discovered that he’d inadertently installed it himself when listening to a DRM-encumbered CD, the ironically-titled Get Right With The Man.

This discovery has led to a media furor and very visible tug-of-war, chronicled on Russinovich’s blog, with Sony and Sony’s purveyor of DRM technology, First 4 Internet. First 4 Internet’s programmers clearly don’t understand the nuts and bolts of deep-down Windows programming nearly so well as Russinovich, leading to their advancement of some blatantly false assertions which Russinovich has proceeded to casually blow out of the water. It’d be amusing if the stakes — to wit, users’ right to use media they own on computers they own without worrying that one is going to try subverting the other — weren’t so high.

Russinovich is one of my heroes; his autoruns is on my very short list of absolutely essential Windows utilities. And yet there’s a certain irony lurking just under the surface here. Free-software advocates have argued, sometimes stridently, that proprietary systems are to be avoided because they tilt the balance of power away from ordinary users and towards the Powers That Be. This episode would seem to offer evidence that even extraordinary users like Russinovich are at risk of being bent over the barrel for as long as they choose to be serfs in someone else’s kingdom. Live by the sword, die by the sword, I guess. I suspect it’s too much to hope that the experience will lead him to focus his considerable skills upon free software, but it sure would be nice.

Tim suggested that I make T-shirts declaring “SONY ARE PIGFUCKERS” as an alternative to having the phrase tattoed across my chest. I replied that I could probably cover my costs by selling a few. I’m not sure about an exact design, though.

iTunes Gift Certificates

There are two ways to purchase an electronic iTunes Music Store gift certificate: through the Apple Store, and through the iTunes application itself. Never, ever, do it through the Apple Store.

If an e-mailed gift certificate you purchased through iTunes is accidentally deleted, inadvertently tagged as spam, or otherwise lost, voiding and re-issuing it through the iTunes application is trivial. If the same thing happens to a gift certificate you purchased through the Apple Store you are, not to put too fine a point on it, shit out of luck. You will have to contact Customer Service by e-mail and detail your woes, after which they will credit your account with the amount spent and you can try again.

I have to admit that I expected better — much, much better — from a company which has made usability a cornerstone of its brand.

Whew

I was beginning to worry that my ability to feel outrage had simply been burned out by five long, soul-deadening years of the Bush administration. But then I learn that even those parts of Michael Brown’s resume that weren’t relevant to the business of disaster response are essentially a well-padded lie, and I find that this little breath of fact is all it takes to stir the coal of my anger to new life beneath its dusting of ashes.

To quote distinguished psychopath Klaus, from the film Die Hard, “I… WANT… BLOOD!