Arbitrary abbreviations in phobos considered ridiculous

[Nick Sabalausky]

"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote in message 
news:mailman.454.1331448329.4860.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 09:14:26PM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote in message
>> news:mailman.447.1331426602.4860.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> [...]
>> > In the past, I've even used UserJS to *edit* the site's JS on the
>> > fly to rewrite stupid JS code (like replace sniffBrowser() with a
>> > function that returns true, bwahahaha) while leaving the rest of the
>> > site functional.  I do not merely hate Javascript, I fight it, kill
>> > it, and twist it to my own sinister ends.  >:-)
>> >
>>
>> I admire that :) Personally, I don't have the patience. I just bitch
>> and moan :)
>
> Well, that was in the past. Nowadays they've smartened up (or is it
> dumbened down?) with the advent of JS obfuscators. Which, OT1H, is silly
> because anything that the client end can run will eventually be cracked,
> so it actually doesn't offer *real* protection in the first place, and
> OTOH annoying 'cos I really can't be bothered to waste the time and
> effort to crack some encrypted code coming from some shady site that
> already smells of lousy design and poor implementation anyway.
>
> So I just leave and never come back to the site.
>

I'd prefer to do that (leave and never come back), but unfortunately, the 
modern regression of tying data/content to the interface often makes that 
impossible:

For example, I can't see what materials my library has available, or manage 
my own library account, without using *their* crappy choice of software. 
It's all just fucking data! Crap, DBs are an age-old thing.

Or, I'd love to be able leave GitHub and never come back. But DMD is on 
GitHub, so I can't create/browse/review pull requests, check what public 
forks are available, etc., without using GitHub's piece of shit site.

I'd love to leave Google Code, Google Docs and YouTube and never come back, 
but people keep posting their content on those shitty sites which, 
naturally, prevent me from accessing said content in any other way.

Etc...

And most of that is all just because some idiots decided to start treating a 
document-transmission medium as an applications platform.

I swear to god, interoperability was better in the 80's.

(And jesus christ, *Google Docs*?!? How the fuck did we ever get a document 
platform *ON TOP* of a fucking *DOCUMENT PLATFORM* and have people actually 
*TAKE IT SERIOUSLY*!?! Where the hell was I when they started handing out 
the free crazy-pills?)

>
> [...]
>> In 1994, games had to come with their own sound/video drivers. In
>> 1995, MS fixed that and there was much rejoicing.
>>
>> But in 2012:
>>
>> - Every piece of content is packaged with a pre-chosen viewer.
>
> Blame flash. And JS.
>

It's more than that. Even without one line of JS or Flash, a purely 
(X)HTML/CSS web app is *still* likely tying content to interface. The only 
exceptions are things like forum.dlang.org which merely present data from an 
already-publically-accessible external source. Of course, even *then* the 
URLs are still tied to the (inevitably web-based) NG client (What's needed 
is a universal NNTP URL system that's 100% independent of NG client - Just 
like we already have for HTTP, and FTP, and SSH and five billion other damn 
things. Image that!)

>
> [...]
>> - If you want to use GitHub/BitBucket-style DVCS features you have to
>> use whichever interface is *provided* by whoever's hosting the repo.
>> BitBucket can't access GitHub-hosted repos/projects. GitHub can't
>> acces BitBucket-histed repos/projects. Neither can access local or
>> self-hosted repos/projects. WTF is this, 1990 all over again?
>
> Yeah seriously. So much for "semantic web". Smells like a pipe dream to
> me.
>

Yup. Fortunately, HTTP APIs are becoming more and more common though, so at 
least there's that ray of hope that some of those can consolodate into some 
standards.

Speaking of all of this though, I have to *rave* about Linode: I just 
switched to them from my old (and recently bought-out) shared web host a few 
days ago, and already I *LOVE* it. Not only is it a fantastic service all 
around, and they *actually* seem to know what they're doing (unlike *every* 
shared web host I've *ever* encountered), but *everything* about their site 
and control panel is *PERFECT*. Absolutely flawless, from the functionality 
and content, to the security, the speed, the compatibility and graceful 
degredation, all the way down to just simply the *style*: Flawless every 
step of the way. And they offer an HTTP API for the control panel. I can't 
remember the last time I saw a site this *professional* and well built. It's 
one of those exceedingly rare things that's created by grown-ups, for 
grown-ups. I'm genuinely stunned by it.