The greatest software design blunders of all time
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dojohansen wrote:
In an effort to make our own mistakes look more reasonable, I invite you to post the big and high-profile blunders others have made. The scope is broad; anything from user interface to file formats goes.
Lotus Notes
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dojohansen wrote:
You can't see what you're typing
Well that's the whole point; the password characters are replaced by asterisks so the hacker at the workstation behind you can't read it!
Richard MacCutchan wrote:
Well that's the whole point; the password characters are replaced by asterisks
I don't think masking the input is a bad idea, however, it is especially important to make sure it's possible to change these things when the poor user can't see what he is inputting. I was not clear enough in the original post: You can (sometimes) change the input locale at the logon screen, but the locales offered there don't necessarily include the one you need. And if it doesn't you'll have to go with whatever's available. I've usually managed when EN has been an option, but I've been locked out from the domain and had to go talk to the admins to kindly reset my password for me at times when only French was available. On my current XP system I've defined the password using an FR keyboard and NO input locale. If you don't know French keyboards, let me just say they're called AZERTY for a reason. When I'm prompted for password, I'll have NO input locale (changeable between FR, EN and NO) if I'm unlocking and am already logged on, but only FR after a reboot. Since I reboot seldom I typically push the NO-intended sequence at first login attempt, failing miserably. If it's Monday morning I'll think I mistyped it and use the second attempt to do the same again. Then I'll realize what's going on and have only one chance to get it right... :D It may be some possible way to set up the PC so that NO will be an option also *before* I'm logged on, but even that would not be a good solution. What if I need to log on to a different machine with my domain user? I need NO and I can't have it. That's a stupid design decision (or oversight if we want to be kinder).
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MS Bob.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Are you kidding? MS Bob was a huge success. If I could design a program that would lead to my finding the perfect girl, I'd write it in a heartbeat. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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You'll see the locale, but you cannot add any new locales and may not be able to change it. I'm not sure exactly what determines which locales you get to see, but I do know I've been locked out from the domain a few times because the only locale offered to me under "options" was French, where I needed Norwegian. I think you now have some homework to do.. :laugh:
dojohansen wrote:
you cannot add any new locales
Changing system configuration from log-in screen? Now that would be 'the greates design blunders of all time'
dojohansen wrote:
may not be able to change it
You're doing it wrong :)
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Unix. All of it.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Unix rocks. It's a programmer's operating system and it's nothing but pure, raw horsepower. Unfortunately, it's very much akin to buying a Ferrari and having UPS deliver a large, heavy box to your door stamped with the label, "Some assembly required."
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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dojohansen wrote:
you cannot add any new locales
Changing system configuration from log-in screen? Now that would be 'the greates design blunders of all time'
dojohansen wrote:
may not be able to change it
You're doing it wrong :)
Mladen Jankovic wrote:
Changing system configuration from log-in screen? Now that would be 'the greates design blunders of all time'
Nobody's suggested to change the configuration without being logged on. I am saying it's stupid not to let the user who's attempting to log on to choose the locale he or she wishes to use for the login attempt. And I stand by that. Even if there is some way to set up my machine so it offers NO (which I want, because I have used NO keyboards since I was eight years old and I don't look at the keys, I look at the screen, so the fact that the physical keyboard in front of me was made for FR doesn't mean anything) when I want to log in, that would still not be enough. I have a domain user for a reason, and I should be allowed to log on from any computer on the domain where I have the necessary permissions. I suppose it's too much to ask for Americans to understand the first thing about locale-related problems. Coming from a tiny country where for 30 years every computing task was greatly complicated because the industry didn't bother to consider other cultures when making things standards I suppose I have a slightly different perspective. The numer of man-hours wasted just to get libraries or applications to work properly when text might contain Æ, Ø or Å is quite simply ridiculous! If you would be kind enough to explain to me why choosing ANY locale that the machine is ABLE to support just for login would be a "blunder" I am all ears.
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In an effort to make our own mistakes look more reasonable, I invite you to post the big and high-profile blunders others have made. The scope is broad; anything from user interface to file formats goes. To get us started, I'll suggest this: MS-1: No way to switch input locale when logging on to windows. This is just brilliant. If you've defined a password using a different input locale from the system default (perhaps because your keyboard isn't made for the default locale) you'll find yourself in an ackward situation after a reboot. You can't see what you're typing, it isn't what's printed on the keys you press, and you've got maximum 3 attempts to get it right... Of course, the password is sure to contain special characters, making everything harder yet! Any others?
This actually works, if (and only if) your pc is installed correctly... If you have more than one keyboard definition, you should supply all the keyboard definitions/locales when the system is installed. This gets copied in the default user profile, and the login user profile. If you haven't done that, just add all the keyboards/locales to your own profile, and then copy those settings to the administrative welcome screen and new user accounts (in Weven, it's the little 'Administrative' tab in Region and Language, I forgot how it worked in previous versions). Lo, and behold, a little button allowing you to switch keyboards will then magically appear on your logon screen :-D
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Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
If you want to put up an argument of that sort, do your homework first.
Hold it right there. Are you suggesting that common sense and knowledge should prevail unreasonable ranting? Shocking!
Mladen Jankovic wrote:
Are you suggesting that common sense and knowledge should prevail unreasonable ranting?
That would work better if common sense or knowledge constituted some sort of fundament for deciding the user should not be allowed to log on using whatever locale he wants that the system in fact is able to support. But it does not, and my complaint therefore isn't unreasonable. And calling my rather measured complaining ranting is clearly unreasonable. I guess for some people the thing they are really trying to say with most of their posts is "I'm more clever than you are". That's alright with me, but it ends up looking a tad stupid when it's not the case.
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This actually works, if (and only if) your pc is installed correctly... If you have more than one keyboard definition, you should supply all the keyboard definitions/locales when the system is installed. This gets copied in the default user profile, and the login user profile. If you haven't done that, just add all the keyboards/locales to your own profile, and then copy those settings to the administrative welcome screen and new user accounts (in Weven, it's the little 'Administrative' tab in Region and Language, I forgot how it worked in previous versions). Lo, and behold, a little button allowing you to switch keyboards will then magically appear on your logon screen :-D
And if I want to log in to another machine on the domain?
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Unix rocks. It's a programmer's operating system and it's nothing but pure, raw horsepower. Unfortunately, it's very much akin to buying a Ferrari and having UPS deliver a large, heavy box to your door stamped with the label, "Some assembly required."
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Sorry, but we'll have to agree to disagree. IMHO unix is a poorly designed system from the ground up. Some of these problems can be attributed to limitations on computer systems back in 1969/70 when they were first building it, but in 2009 there's pretty much no excuse to retain so much of the poorly built legacy design. It may be easy for an kernel developer to program for, but from a userland developer's POV it's a piece of crap. Security that's built on 32bit bitmasks? In 2009? C'mon, that was completely lame in the 1980's. Building a system that is almost wholly dependent on text processing for sending data back and forth, file storage, etc, and then creating/depending on a "systems" language that has no concept of a string as a basic data type and instead relies on a null termination character for a string's ending? WTF??
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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And if I want to log in to another machine on the domain?
Persuade your SysAdmin to roll out Norwegian keyboards to all the French. Better yet, install the Norwegian Language pack for everyone. That'll teach the frogs :laugh:
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Mladen Jankovic wrote:
Changing system configuration from log-in screen? Now that would be 'the greates design blunders of all time'
Nobody's suggested to change the configuration without being logged on. I am saying it's stupid not to let the user who's attempting to log on to choose the locale he or she wishes to use for the login attempt. And I stand by that. Even if there is some way to set up my machine so it offers NO (which I want, because I have used NO keyboards since I was eight years old and I don't look at the keys, I look at the screen, so the fact that the physical keyboard in front of me was made for FR doesn't mean anything) when I want to log in, that would still not be enough. I have a domain user for a reason, and I should be allowed to log on from any computer on the domain where I have the necessary permissions. I suppose it's too much to ask for Americans to understand the first thing about locale-related problems. Coming from a tiny country where for 30 years every computing task was greatly complicated because the industry didn't bother to consider other cultures when making things standards I suppose I have a slightly different perspective. The numer of man-hours wasted just to get libraries or applications to work properly when text might contain Æ, Ø or Å is quite simply ridiculous! If you would be kind enough to explain to me why choosing ANY locale that the machine is ABLE to support just for login would be a "blunder" I am all ears.
dojohansen wrote:
I am saying it's stupid not to let the user who's attempting to log on to choose the locale he or she wishes to use for the login attempt
And all I'm saying is that it's stupid to have all locales installed on all PC all over the world just in case somebody didn't configure his PC to support his password preferences.
dojohansen wrote:
I suppose it's too much to ask for Americans to understand the first thing about locale-related problems
Yeah, blame Americans, seems reasonable :) But this should go in Soap Box/Back Room.
dojohansen wrote:
If you would be kind enough to explain to me why choosing ANY locale that the machine is ABLE to support just for login would be a "blunder" I am all ears.
I specifically referred to installing locales using log-in screen, but hey why should you bother to understand what people are saying when can rant.
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Unix. All of it.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Jim Crafton wrote:
Unix. All of it.
Including Mac OS X? ;P Seriously, I like Unix. It is a very geek-friendly system. Of course, the GUI part is horrible (except Mac OS X?), but why would you even want to run a GUI desktop system on Unix?
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Mladen Jankovic wrote:
Are you suggesting that common sense and knowledge should prevail unreasonable ranting?
That would work better if common sense or knowledge constituted some sort of fundament for deciding the user should not be allowed to log on using whatever locale he wants that the system in fact is able to support. But it does not, and my complaint therefore isn't unreasonable. And calling my rather measured complaining ranting is clearly unreasonable. I guess for some people the thing they are really trying to say with most of their posts is "I'm more clever than you are". That's alright with me, but it ends up looking a tad stupid when it's not the case.
dojohansen wrote:
And calling my rather measured complaining ranting is clearly unreasonable
Since when calling minor annoyance 'the greatest software design blunders of all time' is considered measured complaining?
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I know your pain. A few years back, I had to debug a fairly large C program (with fairly large number of bugs) on an AIX machine (VI editor. Yes.) I never EVER want to go back there. OK, Nemanja is not going to agree with us, but what the hell. :)
It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
I had to debug a fairly large C program (with fairly large number of bugs) on an AIX machine (VI editor. Yes.)
You debugged a program with vi?
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
OK, Nemanja is not going to agree with us, but what the hell.
Well, I am not going to argue that you never want to go back there :)
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Sorry, but we'll have to agree to disagree. IMHO unix is a poorly designed system from the ground up. Some of these problems can be attributed to limitations on computer systems back in 1969/70 when they were first building it, but in 2009 there's pretty much no excuse to retain so much of the poorly built legacy design. It may be easy for an kernel developer to program for, but from a userland developer's POV it's a piece of crap. Security that's built on 32bit bitmasks? In 2009? C'mon, that was completely lame in the 1980's. Building a system that is almost wholly dependent on text processing for sending data back and forth, file storage, etc, and then creating/depending on a "systems" language that has no concept of a string as a basic data type and instead relies on a null termination character for a string's ending? WTF??
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
I'm sure you know far better than I. The last time I saw a Unix prompt was 1989. My impressions at the time were in comparison to CP/M and DOS, so it was quite the impressive critter.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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I'm sure you know far better than I. The last time I saw a Unix prompt was 1989. My impressions at the time were in comparison to CP/M and DOS, so it was quite the impressive critter.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
OK, well for that comparison it might be better. But that's a pretty low bar :)
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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Sorry, but we'll have to agree to disagree. IMHO unix is a poorly designed system from the ground up. Some of these problems can be attributed to limitations on computer systems back in 1969/70 when they were first building it, but in 2009 there's pretty much no excuse to retain so much of the poorly built legacy design. It may be easy for an kernel developer to program for, but from a userland developer's POV it's a piece of crap. Security that's built on 32bit bitmasks? In 2009? C'mon, that was completely lame in the 1980's. Building a system that is almost wholly dependent on text processing for sending data back and forth, file storage, etc, and then creating/depending on a "systems" language that has no concept of a string as a basic data type and instead relies on a null termination character for a string's ending? WTF??
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Jim Crafton wrote:
Security that's built on 32bit bitmasks? In 2009?
Unfair. Pretty much all modern Unix variants have some form of ACL.
Jim Crafton wrote:
then creating/depending on a "systems" language that has no concept of a string as a basic data type and instead relies on a null termination character for a string's ending? WTF??
How is Windows (or any other modern OS) different in this regard? Besides, what is an alternative? Do you seriously suggest a GC-dependent string class for kernel development?
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Jim Crafton wrote:
Security that's built on 32bit bitmasks? In 2009?
Unfair. Pretty much all modern Unix variants have some form of ACL.
Jim Crafton wrote:
then creating/depending on a "systems" language that has no concept of a string as a basic data type and instead relies on a null termination character for a string's ending? WTF??
How is Windows (or any other modern OS) different in this regard? Besides, what is an alternative? Do you seriously suggest a GC-dependent string class for kernel development?
Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
Pretty much all modern Unix variants have some form of ACL.
Yeah but that's been a very recent development, something that's only become widespread in the last couple of years. ACLs have been around forever. And *still* dealing with the bitmasks are the primary way of dealing with file permissioning. OpenVMS had them in the early 80's, and NT had them from the outset in early 90's.
Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
How is Windows (or any other modern OS) different in this regard? Besides, what is an alternative? Do you seriously suggest a GC-dependent string class for kernel development?
No, the simple solution is a string class/data type that has it's length encoded with it. Searching for null terms, and dealing with (or failing to deal with) mal-formed strings has been one of the biggest source of errors, buffer overflows, etc for decades! Just about every major language out there has some concept of a string, and a string length in the data type, instead of doing what C does. You certainly don't need a GC for that. Windows is slightly different in that string/text data is not the primary representation for just about everything like it is in unix. Much of the data is in structs and in binary form. In the Windows kernel plain C-style strings are not used (or didn't used to be when I last looked), instead there is a string like struct that contains the string length (the same kind of thing that OpenVMS uses) as well as the string buffer. However, that said, the fact that Windows uses plain C-style strings in it's user land API's *is* stupid.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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Jim Crafton wrote:
Unix. All of it.
Including Mac OS X? ;P Seriously, I like Unix. It is a very geek-friendly system. Of course, the GUI part is horrible (except Mac OS X?), but why would you even want to run a GUI desktop system on Unix?
Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
why would you even want to run a GUI desktop system on Unix?
Or OpenVMS, or DOS...