XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips
From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid
On Sat, 18 Oct 2025 17:22:03 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:
>Paul S Person writes:
>>On Fri, 17 Oct 2025 08:54:48 -0700, Bobbie Sellers
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>On 10/17/25 05:47, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>> When somebody runs over a pedestrian it doesn't even make the =
>>newspaper in
>>>> a big city. It might make page three of the weekly paper here in =
>>rural
>>>> Virginia, along with the article about the high schooler who got a =
>>scholarship
>>>> to Yale and the new hotdog shop opening.
>>>
>>> These days you are lucky to have a Newspaper in a major conurbation.
>>> The accidents are frequently covered on TV in San Francisco and=20
>>>sometimes the
>>>SF Chronicle will give the accident and susequent problems space=20
>>>especially if the
>>>term "DUI" comes up. The incidents covered involving the driverless=20
>>>vehicles show
>>>that people are interferring with vehicles more often than vehicles are=20
>>>interfering
>>>with people. Auto-navigating Cars have not been designed to deal wit=20
>>>anti-car
>>>protesters.
>>
>>An excellent illustration of the failure of programmers to consider
>>all the possibilities.
>
>Care to elaborate on that? The universe of possibilities is infinite.
You snipped the elaboration. Naughty!
I web site I am trying to reconnect to runs me through a process
designed to revalidate the account. It reaches a screen whose
announced purpost is to have me select "two more security questions"
(it already has three available to it, and has used one on login so it
knows this).
Problems:
1. there are three drop-down boxes with answer boxes below them, not
two
2. there are no questions listed in the drop-down boxes
3. when I try to move on, red error messages appear below each of the
three boxes and below each of the three answer boxes (which suggests
that, even if there were questions available, I would need to add
three, not just two) and it refuses to move on
4. when I complain, all I get is nonsense
5. when I try to capture the screen, I find that the drop-down boxes
are programmed to retract when I click anywhere else; IOW, I can't
save anything showing that they are empty
I then took a photo of the screen itself, showing the Emptiness of the
Box, and submitted that.
I also pointed out two things:
1. the proper behavior here for the user would be to tell him to call
in, not whine at him for not doing the impossible
2. it might also not be a bad idea to send a message to a responsible
party about the fact that the drop-down boxes have no content, as that
is clearly a problem
So, here we have a clear case of a web-page programmer not considering
the possibility that the drop-down boxes might be empty and
programming a way to deal with that situation.
The programmer was, however, crafty enough to hide the evidence (by
having the box retract the list if any sign of an attempt to capture
the image of the empty list was made).
I haven't heard back since. I imagine I will eventually need to call
in to get the problem solved. Provided, of course, that their
telephone customer service people are able to solve it or refer to
someone who is oriented toward solving problems with their own website
instead of blaming the customer and pretending he can somehow fix it.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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