From: Timothy Knox Date: 19:34 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox Dear firefox, Thanks so very much for blocking popups (mostly). And thank you so very much for adding a little message stripe at the top of the screen letting me know that you did. Good to know you are on the job. I'll even say thanks for offering to let me change options for handling popups from a given website. But, you hateful little pile of &$#^@&, why in the name of all that is wonderful won't you give me the option to say, "No! I never *ever* under any circumstances wish to allow <this particular website> to open a popup." You don't need to warn me about it, just fscking *ignore* the popup. Silently. It's okay. You won't hurt my feelings. Really! JUST DO IT! Yours in hateful annoyance, and annoyed hatefulness,
From: Dan Noe Date: 19:41 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox On Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 11:34:32AM -0700, Timothy Knox wrote: > But, you hateful little pile of &$#^@&, why in the name of all that is > wonderful won't you give me the option to say, "No! I never *ever* under > any circumstances wish to allow <this particular website> to open a > popup." You don't need to warn me about it, just fscking *ignore* the > popup. Silently. It's okay. You won't hurt my feelings. Really! JUST DO IT! It is sometimes nice to know that the website would have opened a popup and have the immediate option to show that popup. I find the yellow bar quite useful for this purpose. If you don't like the yellow bar, you can disable it easily from the "Options" button. If you disable the yellow bar, it will show a small unobtrusive icon in the lower right hand corner when a popup is blocked. This allows the same options when clicked, but is not as "in your face" as the yellow bar. -D
From: Timothy Knox Date: 19:47 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox Somewhere on Shadow Earth, at Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 02:41:04PM -0400, Dan Noe wrote: > On Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 11:34:32AM -0700, Timothy Knox wrote: > > But, you hateful little pile of &$#^@&, why in the name of all that is > > wonderful won't you give me the option to say, "No! I never *ever* under > > any circumstances wish to allow <this particular website> to open a > > popup." You don't need to warn me about it, just fscking *ignore* the > > popup. Silently. It's okay. You won't hurt my feelings. Really! JUST DO IT! > > It is sometimes nice to know that the website would have opened a popup > and have the immediate option to show that popup. I find the yellow bar > quite useful for this purpose. If you don't like the yellow bar, you > can disable it easily from the "Options" button. > > If you disable the yellow bar, it will show a small unobtrusive icon in > the lower right hand corner when a popup is blocked. This allows the > same options when clicked, but is not as "in your face" as the yellow > bar. I know, and that is one possibility. But my real bitch is that while there is an option to "Always allow" a website to open a popup, there is NOT one to "Always deny." Some websites I don't ever wish to permit to open popups, because they are only advertisements. All I want is an ability to tell a given website to take its popups and pop them up where the sun doesn't shine. ;-)
From: Martin Ebourne Date: 21:05 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 11:47 -0700, Timothy Knox wrote: > I know, and that is one possibility. But my real bitch is that while there is > an option to "Always allow" a website to open a popup, there is NOT one to > "Always deny." Some websites I don't ever wish to permit to open popups, because > they are only advertisements. All I want is an ability to tell a given website > to take its popups and pop them up where the sun doesn't shine. ;-) Of course, that would require it to maintain a list of always blocked addresses in addition to the list of always allowed, quite a bit of extra code complexity. Or bugs. And then there's all the extra UI complexity of letting people edit this list. Or complaints from people who can't work it. You have to wonder if that really is worth it just to hide an optional yellow box? Or maybe it would just make the software even more hateful in the end. And certainly we don't want that now, do we? Cheers, Martin
From: Martin Ebourne Date: 21:44 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 13:38 -0700, Michael G Schwern wrote: > Martin Ebourne wrote: > > On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 11:47 -0700, Timothy Knox wrote: > >> I know, and that is one possibility. But my real bitch is that while there is > >> an option to "Always allow" a website to open a popup, there is NOT one to > >> "Always deny." Some websites I don't ever wish to permit to open popups, because > >> they are only advertisements. All I want is an ability to tell a given website > >> to take its popups and pop them up where the sun doesn't shine. ;-) > > > > Of course, that would require it to maintain a list of always blocked > > addresses in addition to the list of always allowed, quite a bit of > > extra code complexity. Or bugs. > > > > And then there's all the extra UI complexity of letting people edit this > > list. Or complaints from people who can't work it. > > The day one extra list is quite a bit of extra code complexity is the day I become a fucking farmer. std::list<std::string> m_alwaysBlockSites; [or pick your favourite language] Damn it, you're right. Hold on, how's the user going to maintain that list? Ah yes. Cheers, Martin. PS. Agricultural, dairy, cattle? ;-)
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 22:22 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox * Martin Ebourne <lists@xxxxxxx.xx.xx> [2006-10-19 22:10]: > Of course, that would require it to maintain a list of always > blocked addresses in addition to the list of always allowed, > quite a bit of extra code complexity. Or bugs. > > And then there's all the extra UI complexity of letting people > edit this list. Or complaints from people who can't work it. > > You have to wonder if that really is worth it just to hide an > optional yellow box? What are you on about? Firefox already has UI and code for all of that and more to manage cookie permissions. I'm no fan of bloat, but neither one of blather. Regards,
From: jrodman Date: 21:13 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox On Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 11:47:53AM -0700, Timothy Knox wrote: > Somewhere on Shadow Earth, at Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 02:41:04PM -0400, Dan Noe wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 11:34:32AM -0700, Timothy Knox wrote: > > > But, you hateful little pile of &$#^@&, why in the name of all > > > that is wonderful won't you give me the option to say, "No! I > > > never *ever* under any circumstances wish to allow <this > > > particular website> to open a popup." You don't need to warn me > > > about it, just fscking *ignore* the popup. Silently. It's okay. > > > You won't hurt my feelings. Really! JUST DO IT! > > > > It is sometimes nice to know that the website would have opened a > > popup and have the immediate option to show that popup. I find the > > yellow bar quite useful for this purpose. If you don't like the > > yellow bar, you can disable it easily from the "Options" button. > > > > If you disable the yellow bar, it will show a small unobtrusive icon in > > the lower right hand corner when a popup is blocked. This allows the > > same options when clicked, but is not as "in your face" as the yellow > > bar. > > I know, and that is one possibility. But my real bitch is that while > there is an option to "Always allow" a website to open a popup, there > is NOT one to "Always deny." Some websites I don't ever wish to permit > to open popups, because they are only advertisements. All I want is an > ability to tell a given website to take its popups and pop them up > where the sun doesn't shine. ;-) Not that this excuses firefox in the least, but I've been using privoxy with firefox successfully for a few years essentially 0 unwanted popups (and zero unwanted "did you want this popup?" gui things). On the downside, this setup leads to some retarded websites that don't work to a lack of popups. Not any websites that open new windows, most of them work fine. Just the dumbest ones who mimic advertising techniques to get them open without your consent. Another approach is to just install Adblock Plus, since those advertising popups are probably being pulled into from some offsite iframe or javascript url which you can wipe out. Blacklists are kind of a bother to deal with, it's true. I blame the whole idea of putting an arbitrary programming language in place that is sent by a possibly hostile party and gets to control the user interface of your software. Create new window. Stupid, but I can see the rationale. Create new window without the normal url bar? Whaat? Without _Menus_? Without *scrollbars*, regardless of whether the content _fits_!? What kind of drug induces these kinds of thought patterns. Scotch guard? -josh
From: Martin Ebourne Date: 21:49 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 13:13 -0700, jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx wrote: > Not that this excuses firefox in the least, but I've been using privoxy > with firefox successfully for a few years essentially 0 unwanted popups > (and zero unwanted "did you want this popup?" gui things). I've been using it for years, and I have to agree privoxy is a much better solution than all of the firefox plugins put together. It annoys me on less than 1% of website visits, which is pretty good given the tough job it's got. > Create new window. Stupid, but I can see the rationale. Create new > window without the normal url bar? Whaat? Without _Menus_? Without > *scrollbars*, regardless of whether the content _fits_!? What kind of > drug induces these kinds of thought patterns. Scotch guard? You're right, for sure. Cheers, Martin.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 22:31 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Chromeless popups (was: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox) * jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx <jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> [2006-10-19 22:15]: > Create new window. Stupid, but I can see the rationale. Create > new window without the normal url bar? Whaat? Without _Menus_? > Without *scrollbars*, regardless of whether the content > _fits_!? What kind of drug induces these kinds of thought > patterns. Scotch guard? I think a generic "open chromeless window" that would remove anything but scrollbars is fine -- there are use cases where such a thing is nice to have. What's hateful is that there's no easy way to override this from the UI -- sometimes, whatever the script writer's opinion, *I* want the UI elements, and I want a button somewhere obvious on such windows that gives me back all of the browser chrome, no questions asked. Regards,
From: jrodman Date: 23:34 on 19 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups (was: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox) On Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 11:31:30PM +0200, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > * jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx <jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> [2006-10-19 22:15]: > > Create new window. Stupid, but I can see the rationale. Create > > new window without the normal url bar? Whaat? Without _Menus_? > > Without *scrollbars*, regardless of whether the content > > _fits_!? What kind of drug induces these kinds of thought > > patterns. Scotch guard? > > I think a generic "open chromeless window" that would remove > anything but scrollbars is fine -- there are use cases where such > a thing is nice to have. > > What's hateful is that there's no easy way to override this from > the UI -- sometimes, whatever the script writer's opinion, *I* > want the UI elements, and I want a button somewhere obvious on > such windows that gives me back all of the browser chrome, no > questions asked. So you want the ability open up a new window without the familiar interface, that has an intuitive element to return the interface. I think our ideas of intuitve and obvious diverged somewhere in the woods. (Although any sort of bone would be better than the current situation). -josh
From: David King Date: 00:49 on 20 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups (was: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox) >> What's hateful is that there's no easy way to override this from >> the UI -- sometimes, whatever the script writer's opinion, *I* >> want the UI elements, and I want a button somewhere obvious on >> such windows that gives me back all of the browser chrome, no >> questions asked. > So you want the ability open up a new window without the familiar > interface, that has an intuitive element to return the interface. > I think our ideas of intuitve and obvious diverged somewhere in the > woods. (Although any sort of bone would be better than the current > situation). The Mac title-bar lozenge actually does this, it allows you to open a window without a toolbar or other application controls, and to get them back. Maybe browsers and popups could use something like it? Not that there aren't reasons to hate it, but it does do what you're asking for
From: Stephen Deken Date: 03:31 on 20 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups (was: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox) > The Mac title-bar lozenge actually does this, it allows you to open > a window without a toolbar or other application controls, and to > get them back. Maybe browsers and popups could use something like it? Chromeless popups under Firefox on the Mac have the lozenge, and it performs as expected. Stephen Deken stephen.deken@xxxxx.xxx
From: A. Pagaltzis
Date: 03:05 on 20 Oct 2006
Subject: Re: Chromeless popups
* jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx <jrodman@xxxx.xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> [2006-10-20 00:35]:
> So you want the ability open up a new window without the
> familiar interface, that has an intuitive element to return the
> interface.
Precisely.
> I think our ideas of intuitve and obvious diverged somewhere in
> the woods. (Although any sort of bone would be better than the
> current situation).
The browser chrome takes a lot of space. For some transient web
app UI aspects, it's nice to be able to pop them up in a small
window. Popups of the
<a onclick="return popup(this.href,350,150)" ...
variety are certainly more accessible than any DOM trickery and
AJAX dreck, and effortlessly compatible across browsers. Used
with restraint, they are a very useful tool.
Since there is an evident lack of such restraint, I also want it
to be dead easy to overrule the script author.
Regards,
From: peter f miller Date: 18:50 on 20 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups (was: Reason 3.14159x10^8 to hate firefox) On 10/19/06, A. Pagaltzis <pagaltzis@xxx.xx> wrote: > What's hateful is that there's no easy way to override this from > the UI -- sometimes, whatever the script writer's opinion, *I* > want the UI elements, and I want a button somewhere obvious on > such windows that gives me back all of the browser chrome, no > questions asked. Just yesterday I spent awhile searching for a Firefox extension that would allow some control over those windows from hell. No luck. The hateful aspect of them that got me started on the search is the inability to resize the windows. Ugh! I can see a perverse rational for not wanting other UI elements to appear since they may interfere with the layout of your impossible to navigate site, but the ability to resize the windows is invisible. The only time it makes any difference to your user's experience is when they *want* to resize a window and find out that you won't let them. Thank you kind webmaster. For a second there I thought I actually wanted to see the whole contents of your page. Now I know better. I think I'll go outside instead.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 00:09 on 21 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups * peter f miller <pfmiller@xxxxx.xxx> [2006-10-20 19:55]: > The hateful aspect of them that got me started on the search is > the inability to resize the windows. Ugh! Yeah, that is stupid. Chromeless windows can be useful, but selectively disabling UI capabilities is pointless. There should be a way to request a certain size and whether or not the window should have chrome, but no specifics past that -- no screwing with scrollbars or resizability or any of that nonsense. Regards,
From: Timothy Knox Date: 01:09 on 21 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups Somewhere on Shadow Earth, at Sat, Oct 21, 2006 at 01:09:29AM +0200, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > * peter f miller <pfmiller@xxxxx.xxx> [2006-10-20 19:55]: > > The hateful aspect of them that got me started on the search is > > the inability to resize the windows. Ugh! > > Yeah, that is stupid. Chromeless windows can be useful, but > selectively disabling UI capabilities is pointless. There should > be a way to request a certain size and whether or not the window > should have chrome, but no specifics past that -- no screwing > with scrollbars or resizability or any of that nonsense. Well, it all stems back to folks who want to force the web to behave like a word processor, where you have total control of page layout, font size, et al. To all of them I would say, "Get over it!" Some of us don't like your choice of fonts, don't agree with your decision to artificially limit the size of our pages based on actual inches/centimeters rather than as a percentage of window size or in proportion to font size, so when those of us with bad eyes or super hi-res monitors turn the point size of the fonts up, we get to read Text that looks like this. Fsckers!
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 01:15 on 21 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups * Timothy Knox <tdk@xxxxxxxx.xxx> [2006-10-21 02:10]: > To all of them I would say, "Get over it!" Some of us don't > like your choice of fonts, don't agree with your decision to > artificially limit the size of our pages based on actual > inches/centimeters rather than as a percentage of window size > or in proportion to font size, so when those of us with bad > eyes or super hi-res monitors turn the point size of the fonts > up, we get to read > > Text > that > looks > like > this. > > Fsckers! Yeah. Most of the cases of forbidden resizing I've seen are due to webdesigners (used in the pejorative sense) making layouts "optimised" for 1024x768 (or whatever). If I wanted to read a PDF I'd do that, you idiots. Get off the web. (But we're only tangentially talking about software hate now.) Regards,
From: Chris Devers Date: 01:39 on 21 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, Timothy Knox wrote: > Text > that > looks > like > this. It could be worse -- the ones that drive me batty are the sites that combine this impulse with the impulse to split a 500 word article -- which would ordinarly be something like two pages of 8"x11" paper -- across 10 or more pages in an attempt to boost ad impressions. And of course most of the ads are animated, triggering the irrepressible caveman MUST PAY ATTENTION TO FLASHING OBJECT reflex & making it nearly impossible to get through the article without losing your delicate train of thought. Under OSX 10.4.7, you could pull a trick where a right-click would lock up the browser (Safari or Firefox) in such a way that all the Flash animations would JUST. STOP. FLASHING. for a long enough for you to read the page and scroll down past the ad. Which was nice. If clumsy. However, now that I try it again, it appears that 10.4.8 has cheerfully corrected this "bug", and the animations soldier on undaunted by clicks. And so site policy hate spirals back, as it ever does, to software hate.
From: Matt McLeod Date: 01:59 on 21 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups On 10/21/06, Timothy Knox <tdk@xxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > so when those of us with bad eyes or super hi-res > monitors turn the point size of the fonts up, we get to read > > Text > that > looks > like > this. Or, my personal favourite, they've laid the page out to the pixel so all the text gets clipped. Yes, Remedy, I'm looking at you! (Oh, and similar fun seems to apply to Gmail with IE7. Back to Firefox I go.) Matt
From: Patrick Carr Date: 20:08 on 21 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Chromeless popups On Fri, October 20, 2006 8:09 pm, Timothy Knox wrote: > Well, it all stems back to folks who want to force the web to behave like > a word > processor, where you have total control of page layout, font size, et al. You mean like Word? Pat aha ahahaha
From: John Sinteur Date: 06:55 on 23 Oct 2006 Subject: mail servers There's a worm out there, a new one in the Win32/Stration family. You can read about it here: http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/virus.aspx?ID=58375 There's no new hate in yet another windows worm, of course. This one mass-mails itself to e-mail addresses harvested from the affected machine. It fakes the "from" address from a handful of domains. One of these domains is mine. Still no new hate, because this domain is a spam magnet. It is "niet.com", and "niet" is the dutch equivalent of "not", sort of. It is often used by the dutch when filling out web forms that require an e-mail address, and you end up with addresses like "liever@xxxx.xxx" which means something like "rather@xxx.xxx". There are plenty of far more creative, in a not- safe-for-work kinda way, expressions used in these made-up e-mail addresses. There are two kinds of email coming in to the niet.com mailserver: a small handful of confirmation messages ("click here to confirm that this is indeed a valid email address so we can activate your account") or far, far, far, far more frequently, email newsletters by companies that don't believe in double-opt-in. So now this mail server is swamped with non-delivery reports. As we all know there is anti-virus out there that knows that this virus fakes the from line, and still insists in sending a non-delivery to the from address. Some of them helpfully include the full virus. This, too, is an old, well-known hate. What really gets my goat this time around is that some of these mail servers attempting to deliver these non-delivery reports are so mind- boggingly stupid that: 1) they use the A record for "niet.com" from DNS to figure out where to connect to, instead of the MX record. 2) they think the "513 relaying denied" they receive from the machine pointed to by the A record is a temporary error, and will try again and again and again. As in, giving me a six digit line count when I grep for this error in my daily log files. As to the idiots who wrote these mail servers, I'd like to get their attention to the relevant RFC's, preferably by wrapping them around a steel bar and applying it rectally. I removed the A record for now, and the delivery attempts have died down. I'll have to check the logs on the machine that is the MX to see if these brain-dead mail servers use the MX record as a fall-back attempt to deliver mail, but it would not surprise me. In the mean time, the MX machine for the domain is so busy it gives "4xx too busy" errors every now and then. Luckily it is serving only this domain, and just accepts and stores everything. I'd hate to think what it would go through if it also had to ran spamassassin or a virus check on each incoming message. -John
From: Nicholas Clark Date: 11:22 on 23 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: mail servers On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 07:55:47AM +0200, John Sinteur wrote: > What really gets my goat this time around is that some of these mail > servers attempting to deliver these non-delivery reports are so mind- > boggingly stupid that: > > 1) they use the A record for "niet.com" from DNS to figure out where > to connect to, instead of the MX record. > 2) they think the "513 relaying denied" they receive from the machine > pointed to by the A record is a temporary error, and will try again > and again and again. As in, giving me a six digit line count when I > grep for this error in my daily log files. When it dies down a bit, are you able to log the HELO strings from this hateware, such that it can be made public and shamed by name? Nicholas Clark
From: John Sinteur Date: 12:01 on 23 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: mail servers On Oct 23, 2006, at 12:22 PM, Nicholas Clark wrote: > > When it dies down a bit, are you able to log the HELO strings from > this > hateware, such that it can be made public and shamed by name? I did a quick count of connections per IP address, and after a telnet to port 25 on the top 10 or so, there's three that stand out: 1. mail servers that identify themselves with "220 WebShield SMTP MR2" 2. mail servers that identify themselves with "220 mail.example.com WebShield SMTP V4.5 MR1a Network Associates, Inc. Ready at Mon Oct 23 19:48:19 2006" (with appropiate values for "mail.example.com" of course) and less useful, but least often of the three: 3, mail servers that identify themselves with "220 SMTP service ready" I even got a few that identified themselves as a Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 5.0.2195.6713, but I've long given up being amazed by the amount of misconfiguration you can do with microsoft products. So if you're evaluating mail server software, I'd advice dropping Network Associates from your considerations. I'm considering adding a new A record for "niet.com", pointing to "127.0.0.1". Let them choke in their own garbage... -John
From: Jarkko Hietaniemi Date: 14:40 on 23 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: mail servers > > So if you're evaluating mail server software, I'd advice dropping > Network Associates from your considerations. McAfee. (Corporate gobble, gobble, burp.) > I'm considering adding a new A record for "niet.com", pointing to > "127.0.0.1". Let them choke in their own garbage... How about McAfee mail server? > -John >
From: Earle Martin Date: 15:05 on 23 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: mail servers On 23/10/06, John Sinteur <john@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > I'm considering adding a new A record for "niet.com", pointing to > "127.0.0.1". Let them choke in their own garbage... Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!
From: Phil Pennock Date: 15:29 on 23 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: mail servers On 2006-10-23 at 13:01 +0200, John Sinteur wrote: > I'm considering adding a new A record for "niet.com", pointing to > "127.0.0.1". Let them choke in their own garbage... Some authors know just enough to consider 127.0.0.1. You find the ones who haven't thought things through so well by trying addresses such as 0.0.0.0. -Phil
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