[geeks] Writing software [was Re: Can't decide on an OS]

[Mouse]

>> The biggest damage is the erosion of caring.  There was a time when
>> it was reasonable to expect the admins of some random other site to
>> (a) make a point of being reachable and (b) to actually care about
>> things like protocol nonconformance.
> That sounds like factually-incorrect nostalgia.

Nolo contendere (I don't think it is, but I don't care enough to bother
arguing the point).

>> "Just" that?!  That's quite enough to be problematic.  I don't quite
>> understand how people can think "here, execute this code some random
>> server you don't know from Adam just handed you" can _not_ be a
>> security issue.
> It's mostly not-an-issue because of sandboxing.

Your view of 'security issue" must be far more restricted than mine.
Mine includes things like personal tracking by advertisers - Phil
Stracchino put it better than I'm likely to in his followup to my mail.

>> I once was able to get part datasheets out of Digikey's webpages,
>> but last time I tried to do that - and every time I've tried to use
>> Mouser for anything - I've failed completely.
> Looking at the results from some random search, this looks like the
> sort of thing[1] that Perl and LWP could do without too much trouble,

Maybe it is.  It certainly was not easy to figure out when I looked at
it.

> So, get from /product-search/en/?k=thing-you-want,

...and get back a redirect to a very confused thing that looked as
though it were trying to be an error page and failing dismally.  At
least, that's what I kept getting last time I tried to get anything out
of Digikey's search engine.  I tried to contact them and was unable to
reach anyone who, as far as I could tell, even understood the problem,
much less cared about fixing it.

>> They've improved their world-facing interfaces to the point where
>> they are completely useless to me.
> It's useless to you because you will not use the tool it is designed
> to interoperate with.

Sure.  So?

>> I can't.  At least not yet.  Possibly never.  See, again, the post
>> of 2012-10-31 and the various other posts on the same general topic.
> That post describes a phobic response that I truly hope you can work
> past.  That level of frustration at something isn't healthy, and it's
> hurting you a lot more than it's hurting any equipment manufacturer.

I'm not sure what the part after the comma is doing there.  Are you
under the impression I am in this emotional space as some kind of
attempt to strike back?!  I have trouble seeing where you could get
that idea, but I'm also having trouble putting any other construction
on that comparison.

>> Or you can push up the liability to them of doing so.
> This is America.  Liability is in the eye of the company with the
> better-paid representation.

Sucks to be stuck there, then.

> YMMV up north.

It's at least a little better here.  For example, our legislation is
actually readable by moderately intelligent non-lawyers (well, much of
it is, certainly; I've read substantial fractions of a few bills and
relevant-at-the-time fragments of a few laws, and it's uniformly been
readable and clear, in notable contrast to what I've heard, though
admittedly not checked, about USA law).

>> That option is not available to them and will not be.  Yet they
>> insist on annoying me EVERY SINGLE CALL with those ads
> I'm really trying to identify with this, and the closest I can come
> to is my reaction to hearing an advertisement for USAA.

I would guess that this is because you are far more tolerant of ads
than I am.  Hell, if you're willing to use the Web with javascript on,
you must be.

> Is something like this, perhaps, close to what prompts your response?

I don't think so.  I think it's mostly an anti-ad reaction that
irritates me mostly because they are exploiting the known-to-be-captive
attribute of their audience to force the ad on me (and, not as
importantly but not entirely irrelevantly, increase the dead time on
the phone, the time when I am neither providing them with nor receiving
from them anything that will get me closer to what I called for).  What
the ad is advertising borders on irrelevant.

> Right now, being web-hostile is not a way to win customers.

> [...] increased monitoring and control over presentation is the
> entire reason those things exist.

And there, in a nutshell, is why I find this stuff depressing: that
it's being done, and that everybody but me - seriously, I don't even
know of, much less know, even _one_ other person who comes anywhere
close to my stance on this stuff - is letting them get away with it.

I watched over a friend's shoulder a week or so ago while he dug
something out of Facebook.  I cannot understand how anyone can tolerate
those ads.  Yet, obviously, most people can.

Back to not belonging.  If anything, what you've written just increases
my sense of fitting catastrophically badly into the society around me.

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