Saturday, June 02, 2001

Netscape Navigator is a fine browser. Its only drawback is that it does not work well with HTML.

Thursday, April 26, 2001

Center lanes allow one to make a turn without waiting for a gap in traffic in both directions. It's a simple rule.

Tuesday, April 10, 2001

Microwave ovens are simply experiments in user interface complexity and unintuitiveness. The cooking feature is just a diversion to drive sales.
Traffic Lights Now it gets serious. Traffic signals are some of the most screwed up systems in existance.
  • I'll begin with the left-turn red arrow (for countries that drive on the right side of the road, and vice-versa). This is the most retarded invention ever. The left turn yield is automatic, making the red arrow nothing but a complete waste of time.
  • Next: Sensor timings. Most people probably haven't noticed, but if your phase is next in the queue, you have to trip the sensor before the previous phase switches from green to yellow. This is pathetic. You should be able to trip the sensor at any point up until the following phase turns green and still make your place in the queue.
  • Intersections that do not use sensors just plain suck.
  • Intersections that remain in a long-phase heavy-traffic mode during times of light traffic also suck quite effectively.
Some web sites are hosted at for example http://www.theirdomain.com, but if you send your request to http://theirdomain.com you get nada. That's just another way to make life easier and increase traffic that seems to be lost on some companies.

Monday, April 09, 2001

I just found the biggest rip-off I've seen in quite a while. I was looking for a vendor of a software product that usually sells for $80 and has an MSRP of $109. Yahoo shopping listed only one retailer, and the price was a staggering $714.74! Here's the kicker though: The name of the web site: priceshock.com.
I wish some web sites had an I'm not a retard link. Often you have to sort through so much self-gratifying marketing trash before you find any real information. I don't hear too many people saying "I must go back to that web site to see if they've updated their fascinating discussion on how wonderful they are." The most obvious example of this is the splash page used by some web sites. As if it isn't enough trouble typing in their URL, you now have to wait for some lame graphics to load and then either click or wait for it to automatically update. What a waste of time! I will give a concession to sites that are genuinely a piece of art, but when I'm looking for information, it's just annoying.