he OS X Finder overwrites directories without aggregating files in both source and the destination. For example, when a directory called /Photos is copied to /Directory/Photos, it will delete its the contents of /Directory/Photos rather than merging. That serves as a case study where the user is not sufficiently involved and, consequently, data can be lost. This behaviour must have been inherited from Mac OS 9 as Linux does not have this problem and neither does Windows.

Yesterday I spent hours driving myself mad as I realised I had lost data 4 months ago. No back-ups could resurrect that data. File dialogues must always be verbose as data loss is the most frustrating experience of all.

A KDE “overwrite file” dialogue; click image for full-sized view

Developers must begin to involve users in choices that are made, as the example above suggests. “Easier-to-implement” or “automatic” are usually a bad idea. For the very same reasons, for example, image2.jpg appears after image10.jpg in file managers. That is simply a common ‘bug’ that mushroomed into a norm.

The Firefox community has become aware of ‘new-style’ pop-ups that manage to fool various built-in blockers. Here is a tweak that can make your life pop-up-free once again:

• In the address field, type in about:config and press ENTER
• Open a context menu (mouse secondary button) and hit New -> Integer
• Type in privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins at the first prompt
• Type in 2 at the next prompt (value)
• Also find privacy.popups.firstTime in the list and change its value to false

You can now enjoy the Internet without seeing its ugly sides. Also make sure that advertisements are blocked.

have the pleasure to have been ranked second in the world for my contributions to MATLAB last month. This equates to my position in July 2004, but exceeds the number of monthly downloads, which was just under 2,000 at the time. To celebrate this occasion, I treated myself to a cup of coffee with two three sugar.

n relation to the previous item, research in MIT has produced a small application which turns English into computer code.

This small milestone can have an effect on the entry bar for programmers. However, one would argue that this the strand of work is pointless. Ambiguous languages can now (supposedly) turn into (ambiguous) code, which cannot be trusted. Will one be able to rely on translated ‘code’ of this kind? It’s the equivalent of sending E-mail from speech-to-text recognition without prior proof-reading.

A little sarcasm of mine; click image to view

Big trouble lies ahead if planning is neglected before a project begins. This statement extends beyond the field of software development and reflects on situations in many aspects of work.

Spolsky who authors Joel on Software phrased this rather nicely:

Software engineers who dive into code without writing a spec tend to think they’re cool gunslingers, shooting from the hip. They’re not. They are terribly unproductive. They write bad code and produce shoddy software, and they threaten their projects by taking giant risks which are completely uncalled for.

According to Mishoo, Internet Explorer leaks memory.

The problem I’m discussing here is that Internet Explorer leaks memory on certain occasions. If your script complies to this behavior, you will usually notice an abnormal slowness when IE executes it, usually after 40-50 requests made within the same browsing session…

This comes as a surprise to some and nonetheless it gives another reason to upgrade to Firefox.

Open-source advocates must have come across odd GUI‘s where formality is neglected. An example is presented below (from GIMP 1.2.3, edited using the GIMP):

Firstly, have a look at the window title. Is the exclamation mark necessary? Secondly, look at the poor layout of the buttons. Thirdly, is the message at the bottom helpful? It does not make the application look professional. Is it inexcusable that open-source programmers cannot deploy their products in the commercial world?