The only thing more annoying than a phrase that’s overused to the point of cliché is when that overused phrase isn’t even remotely accurate — and in fact, borders on completely nonsensical. The one I’ve heard far too many times in the past year is the all-purpose favorite of Red Pillers, MRAs, GamerGaters, and other defenders […]
Tag Archives: hall of shame
What to Do When the Tech Failboat Sails
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 – 7:51 pm
The tech world is no stranger to occasional outbreaks of Sexism!Fail, but the past two weeks have seen a rare double instance of it. Naturally, I’ve got to speak up. By the way, for anyone who missed the events, here are a pair of quick recaps: Boston API Jam’s Marketing Problem Oh Hai Sexism And now, […]
A Cute Motto Can’t Make Up For Evil Actions
Sunday, February 19th, 2012 – 2:53 pm
I recognize that Google’s motto is not (the oft-misquoted) “Do no evil”. It’s the much easier-to-achieve mandate of “Don’t be evil”. But even that very low bar is one Google doesn’t seem to be hitting any more, and they don’t seem interested in trying to. The latest “Google being evil” story, where it turns out they’ve […]
Are We Always New At Everything?
Saturday, December 17th, 2011 – 4:20 pm
The trend in Microsoft’s products for the past 15 years or more has been toward making things easy for the people who have never used the software before. Of course, as time goes on, there are fewer and fewer of those people. The Ribbon is introduced in the Help file thus: And if you’ve used previous versions […]
Google+ Doesn’t Want “Real” Names. They Want WASPonyms.
Friday, August 19th, 2011 – 7:52 pm
Three pieces of news lately about Google+ make it clear that when Google claims they want you to use your “real” name, it’s a load of hooey. First off, a legally mononymous Australian journalist named Stilgherrian was told he couldn’t use that name — his actual, legal name — on Google+. He was not at all pleased, […]
Some Helpful Tips for Recruiters
Sunday, June 26th, 2011 – 1:39 pm
I received a phone call at work this past week, while I was in the middle of debugging some complicated JavaScript. Usually, my desk phone shows the internal extension that’s calling me; this time, it showed a series of asterisks. Intrigued and confused, I picked it up… and discovered it was a recruiter calling me. […]
Motion Distraction — Worse Than the <Blink> Tag
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 – 8:46 pm
Once upon a time, Netscape invented the <blink> tag. And people saw the <blink> tag, and put it on their web pages, and thought it was good. And the rest of us saw the <blink> tags on those pages, and screamed, “No, you morons, it is bad! It distracteth the user mightily, for lo, our […]
Blame the Men Who Are Behaving Badly
Thursday, September 9th, 2010 – 6:40 pm
Let’s organize a 10K footrace. At the end of the footrace — for, say, the last kilometer — we’re going to do whatever we can to encourage the people who are wearing blue jerseys and t-shirts and athletic clothing. There will be people standing by the sidelines to hand out bottles of refreshing sports drinks, and others […]
Common Flash UI Mistakes
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 – 8:42 am
One of the biggest problems with Flash isn’t Flash itself. It’s Flash designers. More particularly, it’s Flash designers’ basic failure to understand why certain UI elements are the way they are. This leads to one of the most common Flash designer diseases: The drive to reinvent basic UI elements. Poorly. Page Transitions When a user […]
How Failtastic Can One Phone Be? Just Ask Palm About the Prē!
Sunday, March 28th, 2010 – 5:23 pm
Here are a few things that I consider to be basic requirements for functionality in a smartphone, along with notes on how my Palm Prē fails to deliver: When I press the power switch, the phone should turn on. (Assuming the battery is charged, of course. And I’m willing to accept that a modern smartphone […]