| Application Annoyances |
14 May 2008 06:25pm |
And now, it's time to take a look at an entry in the long list of annoyances that plague modern computer applications:
Uninstall Doesn't
I don't know when this behavior became en vogue, but these days it is literally impossible to completely remove an application from your PC. Oh, there are probably 3rd-party solutions to this problem, but installing another program whose sole purpose is to uninstall programs ties my craw right up in knots.
The symptoms of this aberrant behavior can manifest as mildly as simply having 150 different folders in your Program Files directory, like some sort of fossil record of all those freeware games and time wasters you failed to enjoy over the years. Of course, if that's what your system folders look like, imagine the landfill your registry must be. And now we're leaving the realm of the benign, because we're starting to talk about potential performance hits. Unused shared libraries? Abandoned--but still loaded--helper (or not-so-helper) processes? Why not? It's not like these assholes care, you're no longer one of their users.
It's not all slipshod development and flagrant corner chopping, however. Applications these days all seem to think that one day you'll realize the mistake you made when you uninstalled their under-performing bloatware, and they want to make sure that you're able to pick up right where you left off. This means keeping every scrap of user profile information generated after the program was installed. It doesn't matter that those save games are 50MB a pop. It doesn't matter how terribly corrupted your settings may have become. It doesn't matter that maybe the user knows what they're doing, and uninstalled the program because they wanted to fucking remove it.
Developers, if you're that concerned that I might want to keep any of that vital profile information, you know what you could do? Make a damn checkbox. This is software, we're not paying by the word here. I mean, think about it. Maybe, just maybe, the reason I uninstalled your crap is because it boned itself up so bad that the only foreseeable way to fix it was to reinstall it. How useless is your software if it immediately reverts to its cocked-up state upon reinstallation?
Totally and irreversably, in case you were wondering.
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| New GameFly GameNest |
13 May 2008 02:59pm |
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As luck would have it, GameFly just opened a new shipping center...in Austin. Perhaps--I hope against hope--this means (for me, at least) GameFly can finally elevate itself to the status of "service" from its long-held descriptor "slightly better than paying full retail price for games I'll probably only play for 3 or 4 hours anyway." Methinks it is time to send back Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters (oh, how unfortunately accurate that title turned out to be) and see if I now measure the turnaround time in days instead of weeks.
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| This is What it's Like When Memes Collide |
23 Apr 2008 04:10pm |
I haven't decided yet whether this rather masterful incorporation of two tired internet memes into First Life is lamely cheesy or gloriously cheesy, but one thing is for certain: it is amusing enough to share.
You see, someone has baked their boyfriend a Portal cake for his birthday...
Oh snap! THE CAKE IS A LIE!
You just been RickRolled, SUCKA!
No, I take it back. This is brilliant.
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