• Anonyposter (unregistered) in reply to bstorer
    bstorer:
    Further, although NTFS is technically case-insensitive, you'd be hard-pressed to find a situation in which you can use it as such.

    It's case-sensitive. It's one of the few file systems that are.

    The windows API, however, is case-insensitive for backward-compatibility reasons. You can use the file system as if it were case sensitive, though, if you don't go through the windows API to do it.

    Check out this wikipedia article and see just how well other file systems stack up (or, in this case, don't) against NTFS.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

    I'm surprised the Linux people haven't gotten with the program and adopted NTFS. It's such a superior file system and could benefit even more from all that OSS development effort, rather than spreading effort around all the various other file systems that basically replicate each other's functionality.

    ReiserFS is nice, but it still doesn't quite compare with NTFS and it's still not part of the linux kernel (why?).

  • (cs) in reply to Gedoon
    Gedoon:
    I discovered yet another example of Apple being the only answer. I tried to watch the ads like the article suggests, then tried to download QuickTime like the adpage suggests and then finally tried to figure which OS version to choose from Win and OS X when my computer is running Linux. It's nice to know they're supporting all the OS's, BOTH of them, in fact. Good Job, Steve!

    Disgraceful! You'd better install Windows Media Player for Linux instead.

  • (cs) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:
    bstorer:
    EvanED:
    I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this I know, but the Real WTF is that most filesystems support case-sensitive file names.
    There's a difference between preserving case and case-insensitivity.

    I know. Case-preserving is good. Case-preserving makes sense. Not case-preserving would be really obnoxious.

    Case-sensitivity, to me, seems like a dumb idea. (This applies to programming languages as much as filesystems.)

    I see what you're saying, and I can see the convenience/annoyances of both ways.

    However, when I look at it from the computer's standpoint, why should "FILE" and "file" be the same? They're composed of completely different ASCII characters. When you get into case-insensitivity, you have to define what ASCII values are equivalent to one another. What happens when you get into UTF encoding, and different languages or dialects that may or may not have upper-/lower-case equivalents to certain letters? Purely hypothetical, as I'm not aware of any language that behaves this way, but it seems that case-sensitivity leaves less room for error.

  • IQgryn (unregistered) in reply to Phat Wednesday

    I'd have to say that allowing the user to choose a case-sensitive filesystem isn't making the OS harder to use. Neither is setting a case-insensitive filesystem by default; most people expect that.

  • (cs) in reply to anne
    anne:
    those ads always make me want to buy a PC becuase John Hodgman is so awesome and the Mac guy is so irritatingly smug.

    John Hodgman is actually a mac user. He's awesome too.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonyposter
    Anonyposter:
    I'm surprised the Linux people haven't gotten with the program and adopted NTFS. It's such a superior file system and could benefit even more from all that OSS development effort, rather than spreading effort around all the various other file systems that basically replicate each other's functionality.

    NTFS is not an open standard; it's only very recently that there has been a driver for NTFS on Linux with non-experimental write support.

    Agreed that NTFS is a pretty spiffy FS, but it's a pity that MS hasn't opened up the format. (It's also perhaps overly complex.)

    ReiserFS is nice, but it still doesn't quite compare with NTFS and it's still not part of the linux kernel (why?).

    ReiserFS 3 is in the kernel. v4 isn't, mostly because of political reasons but partly because it needs non-trivial changes to the vfs layer.

  • (cs) in reply to boolean
    boolean:
    However, when I look at it from the computer's standpoint...

    Stop right there. Why should I look at it from the computer's standpoint? Shouldn't you look at it from the user's standpoint?

  • (cs) in reply to Gedoon
    Gedoon:
    I discovered yet another example of Apple being the only answer. I tried to watch the ads like the article suggests, then tried to download QuickTime like the adpage suggests and then finally tried to figure which OS version to choose from Win and OS X when my computer is running Linux. It's nice to know they're supporting all the OS's, BOTH of them, in fact. Good Job, Steve!

    Odd, I was able to watch the Apple ads on my Linux box.

    Well, not so odd, since I have the mplayer plugin installed. Why don't you try that? You'll be able to watch WMV video as well.

  • Yazeran (unregistered) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:
    rsynnott:
    (How does Windows handle this, actually? I know none of the default filing systems are case-sensitive, but it's possible to add support for UFS and ext3 at least, IIRC; isn't there also a case-sensitive version of NTFS?)

    No idea what happens if it hits this problem, but NTFS is technically always case-sensitive. However, the Windows API provides a case-insensitive view of it. If you access it through the Unix subsystem for instance, it's case-sensitive.

    Again no clue as to the mechanics of how the two views interact...

    Well speaking of MS fubar file system, just tried this with cygwin under WinXP:

    $ touch test.txt $ ls

    test.txt

    $ touch TEST.txt $ ls

    test.txt

    $ rm test.txt

    $ touch TEST.txt $ ls

    TEST.txt

    $ touch test.txt $ ls

    TEST.txt

    In result the file system recognises case, but ignores it with commands WTF???!!????

    Yours Yazeran

    Plan: To go to Mars one dya with a hammer.

  • (cs) in reply to Shinobu
    Shinobu:
    Even if it were a yes-no-question, it would still be wrong. Look at the word "continue". File managers should warn you about potential problems before any action has taken place, not halfway the procedure.

    No, you're wrong there. This is a very old GUI design principle: any action consists of at least two pieces, the user's initiation and the computer's response. Since the user has started the file copying process, this action has already begun, even though no files have yet been copied.

  • (cs) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:
    boolean:
    However, when I look at it from the computer's standpoint...

    Stop right there. Why should I look at it from the computer's standpoint? Shouldn't you look at it from the user's standpoint?

    Depends. A lot of software, and some operating systems, are not really FOR users.

  • (cs) in reply to jaserlet
    jaserlet:
    Odd. When I try to reproduce that error message on MacOS 10.4.5, I get a totally different dialog box: "An item named "foo" already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the one you are moving?" Options are: "Don't Replace", "Stop", and "Replace". There is also a check box labeled "Apply to all".
    It's funny that everyone is making fun of OSX for this dialog WTF when Windows (up to XP; I think Vista improved some of these, but I still use XP) has long annoyed me with its file dialogs.

    When copying files and there are existing files with the same name, you choose between Yes | Yes to All | No | Cancel. Where is the "No to All" button? Why isn't there a check box for "All" like in OSX?

    How about when you're moving a large amount of files, and one of them has an error? It stops the entire move operation, presents you with an error box and an OK button, then dumps you back to whatever you were doing. Was the rest of the move after the problem file completed? No. Was the partially-successful operation rolled back, moving the files back to their original location? No. You're left with a half-finished move operation, and now you have to pick through which files weren't moved manually, or just repeat the whole operation. With large or deeply-nested folders, this can be a real PITA.

    What about when you delete/move/copy/rename files, and then you're somewhere else (Desktop, explorer, etc), possibly hours later and you accidentally hit Undo or Ctrl-Z? Whoops! Whatever file operation you did last, anywhere on the system, has now been undone. Does Windows tell you what that operation was? No. Does it let you redo the action? No. Hope it wasn't anything important.

  • (cs) in reply to Yazeran
    Yazeran:
    EvanED:
    rsynnott:
    (How does Windows handle this, actually? I know none of the default filing systems are case-sensitive, but it's possible to add support for UFS and ext3 at least, IIRC; isn't there also a case-sensitive version of NTFS?)

    No idea what happens if it hits this problem, but NTFS is technically always case-sensitive. However, the Windows API provides a case-insensitive view of it. If you access it through the Unix subsystem for instance, it's case-sensitive.

    Again no clue as to the mechanics of how the two views interact...

    Well speaking of MS fubar file system, just tried this with cygwin under WinXP:

    [/snip]

    In result the file system recognises case, but ignores it with commands WTF???!!????

    Um, yes. That's called case-preserving. That's the sane way of doing things.

    Cygwin uses the Windows API and so doesn't get NTFS's case-sensitivity.

  • Opie (unregistered)

    shift + no = no to all in windows.

    Enjoy

  • (cs) in reply to rsynnott
    rsynnott:
    EvanED:
    boolean:
    However, when I look at it from the computer's standpoint...

    Stop right there. Why should I look at it from the computer's standpoint? Shouldn't you look at it from the user's standpoint?

    Depends. A lot of software, and some operating systems, are not really FOR users.

    Okay, fine. But if we're talking about standard OSs, that run programs that people use and tell "open file.txt", which is sorta what I assumed, I keep my stance.

  • htg (unregistered) in reply to pinkduck
    pinkduck:
    I felt like having a bash at making this a better phrased dialogue...

    "Some items already exist in the destination folder with the same names but differing case. Do you want to overwrite them?"

    Yes | No

    Mac OS X can have case sensitive filenames. fish.png and FISH.PNG can be separate files.

    It should be:

    "Files exist in the destination folder with the same name as the files you are copying, with different case.

    Click here for information regarding filenames in Mac OS X.<

    Do you wish to overwrite these files, add the new files keeping the existing files intact, or not copy the files?

    Overwrite | Add | Don't Copy"

    Actually that's rather scary, I wouldn't want to doom (captcha) the average user with that actually!

  • (cs)

    The commercial I can't wait to see:

    Mac guy standing with a big frown. PC guy: What's the matter? Mac guy remains motionless with frown. PC guy: Can you restart? Mac guy: Dodo-de-do. Mac guy goes back to frowning. PC guy: So, how are you supposed to tell what the problem is? Mac guy remains motionless with frown.

    Macs don't bluescreen, and PCs don't give unhappy MAC faces.

  • (cs) in reply to Opie
    Opie:
    shift + no = no to all in windows.

    Enjoy

    Wow, that rules. I'll have to remember that one.

    Here's another... um, innovative UI feature from our friends at Redmond: in Excel, shift-click the edit menu. A new item will appear, copy picture, which is very useful to get a chart or something into a JPG/GIF/PNG/whatever. Saves printscrn, paste, crop.

    (In MS's defense on that second one, it's probably meant to be a debugging feature. The dialog it opens is pretty clearly not meant to be actually used.)

  • (cs) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:
    rsynnott:
    EvanED:
    boolean:
    However, when I look at it from the computer's standpoint...

    Stop right there. Why should I look at it from the computer's standpoint? Shouldn't you look at it from the user's standpoint?

    Depends. A lot of software, and some operating systems, are not really FOR users.

    Okay, fine. But if we're talking about standard OSs, that run programs that people use and tell "open file.txt", which is sorta what I assumed, I keep my stance.

    Hmm, good point. There I go thinking about the programming side rather than the HCI side again. Bad code monkey! It's time out for you!

  • non-user (unregistered) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:
    boolean:
    However, when I look at it from the computer's standpoint...

    Stop right there. Why should I look at it from the computer's standpoint? Shouldn't you look at it from the user's standpoint?

    I dunno about that - most of the users I've encountered are pretty stupid/clueless/idiotic/... Personally, I think you would get a more rational perception from the computer's perspective...

  • Woodie (unregistered) in reply to Andrew

    I have yet another dialog I find to be more appropriate to the majority of Apples users:

    "You asked for a computer for Christmas and your parents being suckered by clever marketing and catchy commercials bought you this instead. Oh, By the way, did you want to overwrite these files or what?

    Yes|No|Install Windows|Go to www.NewEgg.com

  • (cs) in reply to non-user
    non-user:
    EvanED:
    boolean:
    However, when I look at it from the computer's standpoint...

    Stop right there. Why should I look at it from the computer's standpoint? Shouldn't you look at it from the user's standpoint?

    I dunno about that - most of the users I've encountered are pretty stupid/clueless/idiotic/... Personally, I think you would get a more rational perception from the computer's perspective...

    Logical yes, rational I doubt it.

    Logic != Rationality

  • Doubts (unregistered)

    I'm not sure this is an OS-generated message. Ir seems much more likely to be in some third-party app. Anybody could write crap like that and it wouldn't have anything to do with the quality of the OS itself.

    FWIW, I can't figure out any way to produce that message, or even get that error at all, with any message other than the normal "some items already exist" caution with all the appropriate options available.

  • iMalc (unregistered)

    The strangest thing I ever saw on a Mac (many years ago) was this error that popped up for no apparent reason and said: "An error occurred because: An error Occurred" and it had only an okay button.

    But I wasn't really even doing anything.

  • James (unregistered)

    Hmm, what version of OS X does this? The latest (10.4.9) gives a stop/continue dialog with the same text. While a single OK button is a WTF, the dialog text is quite clear in my opinion and doesn't constitute a WTF at all. As a matter of fact, any OS that supports both case-sensitive and case-insensitive file systems mounted at the same time should do this. If they don't that is the real WTF.

  • (cs) in reply to pinkduck
    pinkduck:
    I felt like having a bash at making this a better phrased dialogue...

    "Some items already exist in the destination folder with the same names but differing case. Do you want to overwrite them?"

    Yes | No

    That won't work. Think about it: you're allowing the operation to "continue" if the user clicks "Yes". Well, which files are being overwritten? There's no way to know in advance, and since there might be thousands of files with conflicting names (remember, this isn't just "File" versus "file", it could also be "FILE", "filE", "FiLe", etc.), the Yes button is always doing a huge disservice to the user. So the only sensible options would have to be "Skip all the files which would have conflicting names" and "Stop this operation immediately".

  • (cs) in reply to Anonyposter
    Anonyposter:
    I'm surprised the Linux people haven't gotten with the program and adopted NTFS. It's such a superior file system and could benefit even more from all that OSS development effort, rather than spreading effort around all the various other file systems that basically replicate each other's functionality.

    That comment is the biggest WTF in the thread so far. You've basically exposed your cluelessness about Free Software / Open Source issues.

    There are many reasons why NTFS would be unsuitable for Linux use. To start with, the full specification isn't available, so any non-MS 'NTFS' wouldn't be exactly the same, leading to troublesome conflicts. MS update the NTFS spec periodically too.

    Secondly, it's covered by MS patents. Using it as the default Linux filesystem leaves the distro wide open to being sued/hounded by MS.

    Thirdly, how the heck would NTFS "benefit even more from all that OSS development effort". If the Free implementation is copyleft, MS can't use it or won't want to. If permissively licensed, MS will take the good stuff and not give back a line of code.

    There can only be two outcomes of what you're proposing

    a) FLOSS developers struggle to keep reverse-engineering each new version of NTFS that MS make, and don't have time to properly work on the driver b) Linux 'NTFS' diverges from MS NTFS, seemingly rendering the whole exercise pointless

    and either way, MS hold the patents, and might use them, instantly making all that effort have been in vain.

    And of COURSE most of the OSS filesystems replicate functionality. They're supposed to! A filesystem has to have certain functionality or it wouldn't be a filesystem, just as a word processor has to have certain functionality or it wouldn't be a word processor. What differs is how the functionality is implemented, which leads to variation in detailed feature set, performance, and of course reliability.

  • James Schend (unregistered) in reply to EvanED

    What's even worse is when Linux/open source systems "alphabetize" by ASCII value instead of, you know, actually alphabetizing things.

    Files: apple.png, pear.png, raspberry.png, Artichoke.png, Peach.png

    Think about this one, open source programmers: Which is easier to remember? That the filename starts with an A or that the filename starts with a capital/lowercase?

  • (cs) in reply to James
    James:
    Hmm, what version of OS X does this? The latest (10.4.9) gives a stop/continue dialog with the same text. While a single OK button is a WTF, the dialog text is quite clear in my opinion and doesn't constitute a WTF at all. As a matter of fact, any OS that supports both case-sensitive and case-insensitive file systems mounted at the same time should do this. If they don't that is the real WTF.

    No, that's not exactly true either. The message in this error window (and the icon) are really part of Mac OS X. But the version I'm getting (I'm on 10.4.9) has two buttons, "Stop" and "Continue". Sounds to me like someone is complaining on WTF about a bug which has already been fixed. On the one hand, that's a little unfair, but on the other hand they accept errors from Windows 98 every so often, so I suppose what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

    Instructions for reproducing the error on a Mac whose boot drive is formatted as normal (i.e. case-insensitive) HFS+: (note that this will replace any file named "CaseSensitiveTest.dmg" on your desktop, if you have one and it isn't already open): Open Terminal and type the following (on one line, if it comes through as two):

    hdiutil create -size 5m -fs HFSX -volname CaseSensitiveTest -ov -attach ~/Desktop/CaseSensitiveTest.dmg

    This will create and mount a case-sensitive disk image (a 5 MB case-sensitive non-journaling HFS+ volume, if you must know) whose volume name is "CaseSensitiveTest". Now copy a small file onto the disk image, then open the disk image, duplicate the file, and give the copy a name which is identical to the original, but with a different set of cases. Now drag both files onto the desktop. You will get an error from the Finder which has the exact same icon and message as shown.

  • kaekae (unregistered) in reply to Opie
    Opie:
    anne:
    the Mac guy is so irritatingly smug.

    Congratulations, you just described 90% of Mac users. Odd how a lot of them generally can't seem to handle tasks through which their hand is not held, when working with a computer.

    Oh, that's a lovely generalization. I can't remember the last time I needed my hand held when working on a Mac or a Windows PC. Just because someone prefers a Mac does not mean they are incapable of using Windows. They choose not to use Windows (or to use both). Just as many people choose Linux, its a choice. I use a Mac at home because I work on Windows all day and want to play when I get home. It's less hassle. I can (and do) fix Windows, but I don't want to. Frankly, if this is the worst WTF in an OS, then that's a pretty good record (and yes, I sure this are other WTFs in OS X). Oh, if anyone cares, the dictionary in OS X isn't a spell-checker (it can act as one, of course), it's actually a dictionary.

  • (cs) in reply to James Schend
    James Schend:
    What's even worse is when Linux/open source systems "alphabetize" by ASCII value instead of, you know, actually alphabetizing things.

    Agreed. What year is this, 1980? Windows even sorts files like "1 - blah", "2 - blah", ... "15 - blah" correctly. (That's not "15 - blah" between "1 - blah" and "2 - blah" for those keeping track.)

  • iToad (unregistered) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    Opie:
    A thought... If that four-state tri-bool was stored in a table and was null, does that mean it's a penta-bool? Do we have a winner?

    You might want to reconsider what you store your data with, if that's so.

    No, the fourth state of the tri-bool is for the non-initialized value. This is what I thought most people wanted the third state in a boolean for.

    I still need a fifth to drink after that one though.

    Actually, a tri-bool stored in a table with an uninitialized value is a quad-bool. A quad-bool stored this way is a penta-bool, etc... This is an excellent example of extending the definition of a boolean variable using mathematical induction.

    Like the CAPTCHA says: ewww

  • (cs) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    Actually, a tri-bool stored in a table with an uninitialized value is a quad-bool. A quad-bool stored this way is a penta-bool, etc... This is an excellent example of extending the definition of a boolean variable using mathematical induction.

    I'm just waiting on the Fibonacci-bool to show up. This one comes close but is simply an iterative-bool.

  • Pedant (unregistered) in reply to boolean
    boolean:
    EvanED:
    bstorer:
    EvanED:
    I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this I know, but the Real WTF is that most filesystems support case-sensitive file names.
    There's a difference between preserving case and case-insensitivity.

    I know. Case-preserving is good. Case-preserving makes sense. Not case-preserving would be really obnoxious.

    Case-sensitivity, to me, seems like a dumb idea. (This applies to programming languages as much as filesystems.)

    I see what you're saying, and I can see the convenience/annoyances of both ways.

    However, when I look at it from the computer's standpoint, why should "FILE" and "file" be the same? They're composed of completely different ASCII characters. When you get into case-insensitivity, you have to define what ASCII values are equivalent to one another. What happens when you get into UTF encoding, and different languages or dialects that may or may not have upper-/lower-case equivalents to certain letters? Purely hypothetical, as I'm not aware of any language that behaves this way, but it seems that case-sensitivity leaves less room for error.

    Um, have you actually looked into how Unicode works? Sorting (aka "collation") is a huge part of i18n, and all the characters in Unicode that actually represent letters in scripts that have properties have them defined as part of the standard. Check out Java's Character class for some examples of the sorts of properties Unicode defines.

  • Dnanzfloop (unregistered) in reply to Gedoon

    When I'm using Linux or Solaris, I watch Apple's ads and movie trailers using VLC. These days most "Quicktime" movies are H.264 encoded in a quicktime container, which VLC can play just fine.

  • Steven Fisher (unregistered)

    I created a case-sensitive file system and tried copying to a standard case-preserving file system just to reproduce this. I got the exact same message, but I got two buttons when I tried this: Stop and Continue. Maybe try again wtihout the graphics editor and/or haxies?

  • Joseph Newton (unregistered)

    Three questions arise:

    What country was this dialog outsourced to? What is the language of daily use in that country? What is the prevailing wage there?

  • Steven Fisher (unregistered) in reply to Steven Fisher

    For those of you without a Mac, here's how the dialog actually appears: http://pyile.com/2007/03/worse-than-failure/

  • Joseph Newton (unregistered) in reply to Opie
    Opie:
    4-state logic can be achieved with 2 bits and can be accomplished with standard logical operators and no WTFs whatsoever. Who the bloody hell at Oracle allowed someone to create that?

    That actually upsets me and raises questions in my mind about what is going on under the hood in Oracle.

    It took this to raise that question?

    For me it was my first install of the bloatware they put out. Three GB of my hard drive consumed before a bit of data had been input, no evident entry point for the application, etc. After about the third time an unrelated search had been bogged down slogging through the Oracle directory structure, it was time to say goodbye--uninstall with extreme prejudice.

  • (cs) in reply to Joseph Newton
    Joseph Newton:
    Three questions arise:

    What country was this dialog outsourced to? What is the language of daily use in that country? What is the prevailing wage there?

    As far as I know, the answers are:

    1. It wasn't outsourced. Apple's code is written in the U.S.
    2. English
    3. We're mostly talking about people living in Silicon Valley or Cupertino. You tell me.
  • (cs) in reply to Steven Fisher
    Steven Fisher:
    For those of you without a Mac, here's how the dialog actually appears: http://pyile.com/2007/03/worse-than-failure/

    <sarcasm>Interesting; I've never seen a dialog in the Finder that said "Error establishing a database connection" and mentioned "db.pyile.com" before.</sarcasm>

  • Steven Fisher (unregistered)

    Either Dreamhost is having sql problems, or something else is afoot. Either way, here's the screen shot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/56953868@N00/435542840/

  • Steven Fisher (unregistered) in reply to Steven Fisher

    Didn't realize links weren't parsed. Here it is in clickable form. http://www.flickr.com/photos/56953868@N00/435542840/

  • Steven Fisher (unregistered) in reply to The Vicar
    The Vicar:
    <sarcasm>Interesting; I've never seen a dialog in the Finder that said "Error establishing a database connection" and mentioned "db.pyile.com" before.</sarcasm>

    It actually is slightly interesting to me, but only because it worked before I posted the link here. There's a few options for what it could be, but I'm sure my host's support can figure it out.

  • (cs) in reply to jaserlet
    jaserlet:
    ...Pitty MacOS X doesn't ship with the complete works of Shakespeare, as NeXTstep did back in the 1980s.
    You can download CWS in any format you desire. No need to wait for Apple to include it.
  • James (unregistered)

    Your cases differ. You wish to preserve your files? Unacceptable.

    I ask a question, but listen not for answers. It's rhetorical.

    /Sorry. Still haven't got it out of my system from last week.

  • (cs)

    While not quite in the same vein, I am unhappy that Vista changed the save as dialog in notepad:

    "Do you want to save changes?" Choices: "Save" "Don't Save" "Cancel"

    In previous versions of windows it was "Yes" "No" "Cancel".

    Not only do I now I have to hit 'S' to save (instead of 'Y'). it doesn't make sense. You asked me a yes/no question, let me respond yes or no.

  • Weaver (unregistered) in reply to James Schend
    James Schend:
    What's even worse is when Linux/open source systems "alphabetize" by ASCII value instead of, you know, actually alphabetizing things.

    Files: apple.png, pear.png, raspberry.png, Artichoke.png, Peach.png

    Really?

    touch apple.png pear.png raspberry.png Artichoke.png Peach.png ls -1 apple.png Artichoke.png Peach.png pear.png raspberry.png

    Of course, if you really want Linux to, it will:

    export LC_COLLATE=C ls -1 Artichoke.png Peach.png apple.png pear.png raspberry.png

  • (cs) in reply to chrismcb
    KattMan:
    Anonymous:
    pinkduck:
    I felt like having a bash at making this a better phrased dialogue...

    "Some items already exist in the destination folder with the same names but differing case. Do you want to overwrite them?"

    Yes | No | Maybe | File not found

    Fixed.

    And don't forget, the return type HAS to be a boolean yet still allow all four of those values plus a fifth for the programmer to drink whenever he encounters one of these.

    A FileNotFound drinking game? Count me in.

    chrismcb:
    While not quite in the same vein, I am unhappy that Vista changed the save as dialog in notepad:

    "Do you want to save changes?" Choices: "Save" "Don't Save" "Cancel"

    In previous versions of windows it was "Yes" "No" "Cancel".

    Not only do I now I have to hit 'S' to save (instead of 'Y'). it doesn't make sense. You asked me a yes/no question, let me respond yes or no.

    This is one of my bigger gripes with mac/linux HCI, but not because of whether it makes logical sense or not. Basically just because I don't give a damn what stupid verb the designer came up with for the action, I'd much rather use the muscle memory without having to read & parse the question and answers everytime. Particularly since verb standards are mostly nonexistent in the *nix world, though Apple keeps a pretty tight reign on theirs.

    I guess that's the price of progress, though.

    EvanED:
    Here's another... um, innovative UI feature from our friends at Redmond: in Excel, shift-click the edit menu. A new item will appear, copy picture, which is very useful to get a chart or something into a JPG/GIF/PNG/whatever. Saves printscrn, paste, crop.

    (In MS's defense on that second one, it's probably meant to be a debugging feature. The dialog it opens is pretty clearly not meant to be actually used.)

    HOLY SHIT A UI WTF IN OFFICE, STOP THE PRESSES EVERYONE.

    Seriously, picking on office here is like clubbing baby seals. The office designers have to hate users and actively hide all useful features in a forest of menus and context menus, it's part of the specifications.

    I'll grant that's pretty useful to know, though, I always wondered how it was done but never enough to find out.

  • (cs) in reply to foxyshadis
    foxyshadis:
    chrismcb:
    While not quite in the same vein, I am unhappy that Vista changed the save as dialog in notepad:

    "Do you want to save changes?" Choices: "Save" "Don't Save" "Cancel"

    In previous versions of windows it was "Yes" "No" "Cancel".

    Not only do I now I have to hit 'S' to save (instead of 'Y'). it doesn't make sense. You asked me a yes/no question, let me respond yes or no.

    This is one of my bigger gripes with mac/linux HCI, but not because of whether it makes logical sense or not. Basically just because I don't give a damn what stupid verb the designer came up with for the action, I'd much rather use the muscle memory without having to read & parse the question and answers everytime. Particularly since verb standards are mostly nonexistent in the *nix world, though Apple keeps a pretty tight reign on theirs.

    I think that this change is plenty worth the relearning though.

    I do know where you're coming from though. My school uses a custom GINA which replaces the ctrl-alt-del dialog with one that has useful information like the amount of disk quote we're using and new options like refreshing kerberos credentials. However, they screwed up the usability of that dialog IMO. I used to lock the computer with ctrl-alt-del enter. However, the default option in this GINA is "change password" rather than lock computer. So that goes out the window. What's another option? ctrl-alt-del K (lock). That doesn't work either... the shortcut key is W (the wording changed from lock computer to lock workstation). Even if you get the W, in the standard GINA, you can just press a key... ctrl-alt-del T brings up the task manager. However, in this, you have to press ALT-T.

    (That said, Win-L is now my method for locking the computer, which is an improvement to what I used to do, so it worked out.)

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