Incompetence in computer programming #1

This is 2013 but I still run into incompetent computer programming as if it were 1995 (the heyday of Microsoft and the sloppy coding practices that it both embraced and provided as a bad example to others). Here are four examples.

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Minnesota Public Radio: I wanted to make a nice comment about Corky Miller on this story published in 2005. On Aug. 10, I duly filled out the information and wrote a comment but when I clicked on "Post", I got this error: "Comments are not allowed on this entry."

MPR, if you're not going to allow comments on this story, then let me know on the article page, not as an error after I try to post!

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Apple: On Aug. 18, using Apple's own browser, Safari, on a Macintosh, this is what I saw at this page:

Yes, I have reported the error to Apple but no fix yet.

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Employee portal error: A certain Cincinnati employer (which I am not going to name) provides a portal for its employees to show their availability to work. Recently, I saw this error:

The error, in case you can't read it, is: "The following request error has occurred: String or binary data would be truncated. The statement has been terminated." The same error occurred in three different browsers, two on Macintosh and one on Windows so I'm concluding it happened on the server. I was told later what the error should have been: "Changes to availability must be submitted before the deadline. The deadline for start date 9/8/2013 is midnight Sunday 9/1/2013."

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Kenmore: This is a picture of the front of a 5,000 btu/hr. Kenmore air conditioner. The rightmost light is telling me that the filter needs to be cleaned. But the filter was cleaned several days ago and really doesn't need to be cleaned again. The incompetent computer programming: You can only reset the filter timer if the light is on. So when I pushed the button to reset the timer after cleaning the filter with the light out, nothing happened. Only now that the light is on can I reset the timer.

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That's all for now. I will add more posts as I run across ICP.

I'm tired of "sex with pit bull"

Fox 19's web site, like many news sites, has suggested articles at the bottom of their news pages. However, someone at Fox 19 is apparently obsessed with having sex with pit bulls. A reference to that story has been running for over a month now.

Fox 19, can you find a more appropriate selection of local stories to highlight or are you going for the sleazy viewers on the Internet?

Update Aug. 8: Good news, bad news. The story about the pit bull is gone, but the replacements are no better than the originals:

Do I really want to read about a teenager being raped in June? (Note that this screen snippet is from August.)

Update Aug. 9: It looks like I updated too soon. The woman and her friendly pit bull are back along with a father and daughter in an incestuous relationship:

At least now it's clear that this is provided by a service.

Update Aug. 18: I have won this battle. I installed AdBlock for Chrome, Safari and Opera on my Safari browser and below is the current result. AdBlock has two modes, which are combined by default: You can use a list of advertising web sites that should be blocked or you can train it to block specific ads. I turned off the lists and am just using the training. That way the normal, reasonable ads show up while I can block the ads mentioning sex with pit bulls in Las Vegas. (Whatever happened to "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?")

iOS 7 or iPhone 6: Improvements that I would like to see

Apple Computer is going to release iOS 7 for the iPhone and iPad this fall. They are also expected to release a new iPhone this fall (either a 5S or 6). I currently am using an iPhone 4S running iOS 6. Here are some improvements that I would like to see in the new operating system and/or phone:

• The date on the Calendar app changes every day. I want the Weather app to show the correct current temperature (now it always shows 73º) and the Clock app to show the correct local time (now it always shows 10:15). I understand that changing the Weather and Clock apps could use up the battery faster but I'm confident that Apple can figure out how to accomplish this without wasting battery power (mostly by not updating when I can't see the display).
• I want to select the default browser (I prefer Chrome to Safari) and the default maps (Google Maps is still more accurate than Apple's Maps app).
• Many apps (such as Facebook and LinkedIn) include a browser within the app. When you're done with a page in the browser, you tap the back arrow at the top of the screen to go back to the app. Others (sorry, I can't come up with an example) use Safari to display web pages. However, in Safari, there is no back arrow to go back to the app; you have to leave Safari and try to remember which app you were in. The link to Safari should have a back arrow to take you back to the app.
• Speaking of back arrows, why is Safari's at the bottom of the screen instead of the top like every other app?
• Here's one that has to be fixed in hardware: There are two speakers at the bottom of the phone. That's great for portrait mode, but when I rotate the phone to look at a video in landscape mode, the way it was designed to be seen, all of the sound comes out of the left side. There needs to be one or two speakers on the top as well (the second added speaker is for people who rotate the other way).
• When I go into a restaurant with free Internet through wi-fi my phone connects to it with a minimum amount of hassle. So far, so good. Sometimes, the wi-fi is dog slow and I can't do anything with it. Currently, I have to turn the wi-fi off so I can get the faster speed of 3G (yes, it does happen that 3G is faster). I want the phone to select the faster of wi-fi or 3G (4G for later models) for my connection in this situation.
• I would like two improvements to the Contacts list in the Phone app: The ability to rearrange the sequence of phone numbers in a contact and the ability to display the company name in place of the phone number type. For example, if I look at my recent calls, I see that Sam at "work" called me recently. I would prefer that the entry say Sam at Acme Staffing Service (not the real company) instead. I usually don't care what number within the contact he used to call me.

That's all the changes I want today. Let's see how many of these get fixed in the next release of software and hardware.

Updated July 21 to fix grammar and formatting.

I want a touch screen on my laptop

I'm a big fan of John Gruber and Daring Fireball, but this time I think he's wrong. He's right in that I don't need the same user interface (UI) for both a phone/tablet and a personal computer but I do want a touch screen on my laptop. I played with Microsoft's Surface on Thursday and touching the screen seemed natural to me. Sure, I still want the trackpad for the fine work (I don't use a mouse with my laptop) but I'm used to a touch screen from using my iPhone. If I had a choice, I would rather have a touch screen than a Retina display.

And if I could have a numeric keypad it would be the icing on the cake (Hey, it's my blog, so I can ask for anything). By the way, I noticed the two-finger method worked on the Surface; did Apple license their patent to Microsoft?

My current laptop is a MacBook Pro (with the 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 processor). I expect my next laptop to have a touch screen. If Apple isn't going to provide it, then I'll have to buy one from someone else. I may go the Hackintosh route but I may not; Windows 7 is working well for me.

I like the annual improvements in the Apple products, but I do worry that they're not improving enough. Why, on my iPhone, when I am reading an ABC News story on Chrome do I get a request to install the ABC News app, when I already have it installed? Why can't I make Chrome my default browser (I like it better than Safari and it syncs my bookmarks between my iPhone and my laptop)? How is it that Chrome can automatically update itself when other apps can't?