Don't type anything funny!



  •  Data validation is Hard™. Many people try to implement it in some way, regexes, String replaces, etc. And if all else fails, only allow a-z A-Z and you are sure that everything will "work".

    I was trying out some Linux distros, because the latest Ubuntu versions are crap (my trusty 11.04 is grand, but on a new computer I feel like I need a new version. I already knew 11.10 is crap, but 12.04 is even more so).

    The creators of Linux Mint, or Cinnamon, or whoever made this, were just too lazy to implement any data validation:

    [IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/2yl4p6p.png[/IMG]

     

    Bonus wtf: when upgrading Ubuntu it asked me where I wanted to install Grub!? Luckily, I know a bit more about Linux than most people, but still... say you're a total layman, you want to upgrade your OS (yay! shiny new features!) and it starts asking you where to install Grub ("/dev/sda" or "/dev/sdb"). Errrrr.

    (To answer the inevitable question why I use Linux before it's asked. I just like command lines when I'm developing. And it's not that I really use the Operating System per se, right? I just use the applications which run on. Which are mostly fine. Mostly.).



  •  I think it's an attempt at avoiding becoming too "technical" for users, and it's just gone too far. That's partly why I avoid Ubuntu (although I realise it's actually a different distro there you're seeing that dialogue), successive distros have all assumed the user is a moron, and needs their hand held constantly.And asking where to install Grub? Does it not offer a better option like "use the existing install location", or "let the system pick what it thinks best"? That would be much more sane.



  • @ASheridan said:

     I think it's an attempt at avoiding becoming too "technical" for users, and it's just gone too far. That's partly why I avoid Ubuntu (although I realise it's actually a different distro there you're seeing that dialogue), successive distros have all assumed the user is a moron, and needs their hand held constantly.And asking where to install Grub? Does it not offer a better option like "use the existing install location", or "let the system pick what it thinks best"? That would be much more sane.

     

    It's Linux Mint. :)

    The Grub one did have a "hint" (but only when you hover your mouse pointer over the box long enough), saying I should just select everything if I was unsure. But I'm pretty sure that if I had selected everything, it would have broken horribly.

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     I wonder what that says in non-English localizations?

     English: Try to avoid spaces and funny characters

    French: Try to avoid spaces and normal, everyday parts of our alphabet

    Russian: Try to avoid spaces and normal, everyday parts of our alphabet

    Farsi: Try to avoid spaces and normal, everyday parts of our alphabet

    German: Try to avoid normal, everyday parts of our alphabet, or funny, unusued characters like spaces

    Turkish: LOWERCASE!



  • @Lorne Kates said:

     I wonder what that says in non-English localizations?

     English: Try to avoid spaces and funny characters

    French: Try to avoid spaces and normal, everyday parts of our alphabet

    Russian: Try to avoid spaces and normal, everyday parts of our alphabet

    Farsi: Try to avoid spaces and normal, everyday parts of our alphabet

    German: Try to avoid normal, everyday parts of our alphabet, or funny, unusued characters like spaces

    Turkish: LOWERCASE!

     

    Chinese: try to avoid typing anything.

     



  • @dhromed said:

    Chinese: try to avoid typing anything.
    You beat me to it!:)



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    I wonder what that says in non-English localizations?...

    Good point. Now why don't you clone the source on github and fix the problem?

    /imitation-of-pedantic-foss-mode



  •  I am the fastest.



  • @pbean said:

    Don't type anything funny!

    That'll never happen on this forum.



  • So if I type "archie bunker" then it crashes their system? Brillant!



  • @dhromed said:

     I am the fastest.

    That's what she said.

     

    Edit: you know, it says "try to avoid" rather than "don't use". Maybe they're just concernedabout other systems not coping well with an odd name.



  • @Zecc said:

    Maybe they're just concerned about other systems not coping well with an odd name.
     

    Maybe they could have given a fuck about the end-user enough to explain why spaces and "funny names" are a bad idea.

    To me it looks like they're shifting the burden of data sanitisation onto the user without much clear guidance. I mean, will the universe implode?



  • @ekolis said:

    So if I type "archie bunker" then it crashes their system? Brillant!
     

    Interestingly enough, I tried some "funny" characters (of course it had to be done), ranging from ", ., / and $ to ¿, ³, € (but no cyrillic or anything) and it worked just fine. I don't even know why they ask to not type anything funny, since it's just an identifier for some connection you're setting up, so there is no reason at all to sanitise it that much (probably stripping any control characters and line endings would be enough).


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Cassidy said:

    Maybe they could have given a fuck about the end-user enough to explain why spaces and "funny names" are a bad idea.
     




  •  What is the problem with that? The casual language?

    Host names should not have spaces (altough I'm not certain that they create any error, they just shouldn't be used), and shouldn't have any character that isn't usual in your language. That's a human rule for avoiding confusion, not a constraint.

    Since somewhen at the 90's Unix and DNS started to accept host names with non-ascii characters, if that is what you are wondering. The rule is just to not include a '\0' (or a character that isn't on your keyboard, or one that most people don't know how to type) at your hostname, since that'll only give you trouble.



  • Personally, I consider <space> to be the worst kind of funny character. Generally it causes far more WTFery than characters like é, ß, æ and €.

    Like Visual C++ 4.2 (I think) where projects would fail to build if there was a space in the project's path. What was the default path for projects? C:\Documents and Setting\User\My Documents"!



  • @havokk said:

    Personally, I consider <space> to be the worst kind of funny character. Generally it causes far more WTFery than characters like é, ß, æ and €.
     

    Only for systems that don't cater for this character. Such as Visual C++ 4.2 (as you've said) and Oracle 11g



  • @havokk said:

    Like Visual C++ 4.2 (I think) where projects would fail to build if there was a space in the project's path. What was the default path for projects? C:\Documents and Setting\User\My Documents"!
    Hahaha, no, the default path for projects was "C:\Windows\Profiles\User\Documents"!


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     @TwelveBaud said:

    @havokk said:
    Like Visual C++ 4.2 (I think) where projects would fail to build if there was a space in the project's path. What was the default path for projects? C:\Documents and Setting\User\My Documents"!
    Hahaha, no, the default path for projects was "C:\Windows\Profiles\User\Documents"!

    See, that's why I don't have too much of a problem with to OS that the OP was talking about retricting which characters can be in the username-- since the username becomes their ~ home path. We've had whole threads about the fuckery that is unix pathing.

    BUT the wtf is the stupid way they chose to relay that criteria. What makes for a "funny character". Do they not realize that some of those "funny characters" are perfectly normal ones, and by saying "funny character", it makes them sound like an ignorant jerk who won't order off a menu that has "weird curry things that towel-heads eat" (when they're eating at a Japanese restaurant).

    And furthermore, why "try to limit". Either a single funny character or space is going to mudge things up, or it isn't. This isn't like deli meat to someone one a low cholesterol diet. "Try to limit intake of fatty meats". Ok.  But exactly how many accent aigu does it take to cause "ls" to have a coronary? Will grapefruit juice help?



  •  To all the people gleefully jumping on the chance to cry ethnocentrism, I'm fairly certain "funny characters" in this case refers more to characters that have special meaning in the contexts where the input might be used, such as \ * < > $ rather than non-latin letters. After all, any modern linux distro has had complete unicode support for years

     ...and the vague "try to limit" language likely means that advanced users can user whatever they want as long as it's escaped properly, but they know explaining that will confuse the layman so they simply say those characters are bad and hope that people who know what they're doing will pick up on what they mean



  • @Zolcos said:

    To all the people gleefully jumping on the chance to cry ethnocentrism, I'm fairly certain "funny characters" in this case refers more to characters that have special meaning in the contexts where the input might be used, such as \ * < > $ rather than non-latin letters. After all, any modern linux distro has had complete unicode support for years

    Well ok but it's still a fucking awful UI.



  • @Zolcos said:

    After all, any modern linux distro has had complete unicode support for years

    If by complete unicode support, you mean the ability to handle hundreds of thousands of characters that it can't display, in all of the available character sets (Note: possibly not hundreds of thousands that it cannot display in any of the character sets; there's probably at least one character set for most of them. But no character set I've found will handle even a significant minority, and the ASCII set.  (I haven't really checked those that can't handle the ASCII set, because that's 99.9+% of what I *use*.)) then YES!  Admittedly, it's been a couple of years since the last time I went looking...



  • @tgape said:

    If by complete unicode support, you mean the ability to handle hundreds of thousands of characters that it can't display, in all of the available character sets (Note: possibly not hundreds of thousands that it cannot display in any of the character sets; there's probably at least one character set for most of them. But no character set I've found will handle even a significant minority, and the ASCII set.  (I haven't really checked those that can't handle the ASCII set, because that's 99.9+% of what I use.)) then YES!  Admittedly, it's been a couple of years since the last time I went looking...

    ... huh?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @tgape said:
    If by complete unicode support, you mean the ability to handle hundreds of thousands of characters that it can't display, in all of the available character sets (Note: possibly not hundreds of thousands that it cannot display in any of the character sets; there's probably at least one character set for most of them. But no character set I've found will handle even a significant minority, and the ASCII set.  (I haven't really checked those that can't handle the ASCII set, because that's 99.9+% of what I use.)) then YES!  Admittedly, it's been a couple of years since the last time I went looking...

    ... huh?

    What he means is



  • Wow. A snowman.



  • @Ben L. said:

    What he means is
    Really? I thought it was
    💩</font>



  • @dhromed said:

     I am the fastest.

    That's what your ex says about you



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @dhromed said:

     I am the fastest.

    That's what your ex says about you

     

    Possibly.

     



  • @dhromed said:

    @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @dhromed said:

     I am the fastest.

    That's what your ex says about you

     

    Possibly.

     

    ...but he is known to be a sour puss so maybe he is just bitter



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @dhromed said:

     I am the fastest.

    That's what your ex says about you

    I had already done that joke, but I'll forgive you because you have Supaplex on your signature.

     


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