Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[Labrat101]

Ah! Thank you!

I thought the highlight on 'Modify profile' denoted the page I'm looking at, not that it's a button to press 

That Fine, Only 8 years it took . 2013 to 2021 (almost)
It could have been worse   
Press 'B" for money refund

[jfitzgerald]

When your computer time zone  is set to UTC, and the web site displays the time with AM and PM.   I am looking at you EEVBlog!

Hey, it's only a default.  Use Profile > Summary, then Modify Profile > Look and Layout, and pick your preferred Time Format there.

You made my point ... defaulting to 12 hour time display for UTC is a terrible default.

[PlainName]

defaulting to 12 hour time display for UTC is a terrible default

I am intrigued - is it different for any other time zone (i.e. less terrible)? If so, what's the difference?

[BravoV]

I was reminded of another peeve recently, entry forms that put every country on the planet in alphabetical order instead of guessing my location by my IP address and defaulting to where it thinks I am, or at least letting me type US in a search.

Some programmers these days, thought once they've mastered an IF THEN ELSE statement in programming, then they're so confident that they become computer AI expert. 

[CatalinaWOW]

This may be US specific, but why do so many forms require entering city, state and ZIP code (mail code).  Once you enter mail code the other two are defined.  And to the prior posters comment it pretty much nails the country, though this is not worldwide unique.  Easily could be though.

[SilverSolder]

This may be US specific, but why do so many forms require entering city, state and ZIP code (mail code).  Once you enter mail code the other two are defined.  And to the prior posters comment it pretty much nails the country, though this is not worldwide unique.  Easily could be though.

World ZIP codes are long overdue...

[Circlotron]

This may be US specific, but why do so many forms require entering city, state and ZIP code (mail code).  Once you enter mail code the other two are defined.  And to the prior posters comment it pretty much nails the country, though this is not worldwide unique.  Easily could be though.

World ZIP codes are long overdue...

Internet country code + ZIP code = problem solved!
Nothing new to be formulated.
Two things people are already familiar with.

[vk6zgo]

This may be US specific, but why do so many forms require entering city, state and ZIP code (mail code).  Once you enter mail code the other two are defined.  And to the prior posters comment it pretty much nails the country, though this is not worldwide unique.  Easily could be though.

World ZIP codes are long overdue...

Since AFAIK only the USA calls Postcodes "zipcodes", the easy way is to just prefix the US ones with a "Z".

Australian Postcodes narrow things down to a State City, & Postal area,but are just numeric, so the number combinations are probably not unique to this country.
British ones are alpha-numeric & pretty much take you down to the street level.
They are far more likely to be unique.

[james_s]

A postal code and a zip code are exactly the same thing, there's no need to prefix the US ones, they could just all be called postal codes and everyone would know what it meant, or change the label to zip code when US is selected as the country.

[CatalinaWOW]

This may be US specific, but why do so many forms require entering city, state and ZIP code (mail code).  Once you enter mail code the other two are defined.  And to the prior posters comment it pretty much nails the country, though this is not worldwide unique.  Easily could be though.

World ZIP codes are long overdue...

Internet country code + ZIP code = problem solved!
Nothing new to be formulated.
Two things people are already familiar with.

I like this approach.  Might take some doing to get widely used.

No reason for anyone to get tied up on names.  Zip or mail code it is all the same idea.  US ZIP+4 is much like British code.  I think it comes close to unique code for each dwelling unit.

The number of digits used and the character set varies world wide so it will take more than a few minutes to do all the coding.

[james_s]

There are quite a few countries that use the same or very similar format. I had to test something with postal codes at work a couple years ago so I wrote a script that would spit out all valid postal codes for about a dozen countries we were supporting, it didn't take very long, seems like there were 3 or 4 distinct formats among all of the countries I looked at.

[vk6zgo]

All of the above said, most of the time, the websites I use have no difficulty in accepting Australian Postcodes where it says "Zipcode".

[CatalinaWOW]

All of the above said, most of the time, the websites I use have no difficulty in accepting Australian Postcodes where it says "Zipcode".

That is because all those websites are just treating it as a lump of text, not trying to process it.

I never meant that the data processing was an intellectually challenging task.  Biggest job is probably generating the data base which ties code to the administrative units (city and state in the US case).  Some more code to deal with the people who don't include the country code.  A bit more to figure out how not to be too annoying to the customer.  Deciding how to allocate those three tasks between callable units.  Still something measured in man days or weeks, not minutes or years.

[TimFox]

People who can't keep their metaphors straight:  "Cast in stone" should be "cast in concrete" or "carved in stone".  How would one cast something in stone (I don't think lava is castable).

[Ed.Kloonk]

(I don't think lava is castable).

Tell that to the 35000 residents of Pompeii.

[TimFox]

Pompeii was buried in volcanic ash.  Herculaneum was buried under ash and pumice.

[Nominal Animal]

People who can't keep their metaphors straight:  "Cast in stone" should be "cast in concrete" or "carved in stone".  How would one cast something in stone (I don't think lava is castable).

  Intentionally mixing metaphors to confuse people is one of my favourite pastimes.

My favourite one is "Joka toiselle kuoppaa kaivaa, parhaiten nauraa".  It's a mash-up of two:
"Joka toiselle kuoppaa kaivaa, siihen itse lankeaa" – He who digs a pit for another will fall into it himself
"Joka viimeksi nauraa, se parhaiten nauraa" – He who laughs last laughs best

Besides, certain types of lava is actually castable.  Felsic lava, for example, produces obsidian, which is semi-castable.

It is also important to realize that "casting in stone" does not necessarily require high temperatures; only that the material is initially liquid, then turns into stone.  This is how sedimentary rocks like sandstone are formed, after all.

[PlainName]

It doesn't necessarily literally mean cast in stone - it's saying it is as if cast in stone, to imply it's not going to change easily. There is something of the hyperbolics about it to make the point, just as when we say "tastes like cat's piss" about a beer, we don't literally mean that but you perfectly get the idea that it's not very nice.

[DrG]

Obnoxious Forced Choice Options!

Just the other day, on software that I purchased (actually rented for a year). Basically the popup asks me if I want to install ANOTHER one of their products OR remind me later to install another one of their products. There is no other option - it is either install more of our crap that you did not ask for now, or we will annoy you later. Not even an 'x' to close the popup. So, to close the popup, I have "consented" to the later reminder.

It represents the discontinuation of the "don't remind me again" or "stop seeing this annoying spam message from us". WTF am I supposed to do - spent 4 hours figuring out where this is in the registry or finding someone who has written about it and presents a registry fix that is outdated and they (the software folks) have already decided to use another tactic.

I HAVE changed software (when it is convenient) for exactly these reasons.

[TimFox]

Roman Emperors used to propagate their legislation by carving it in stone for public display.  That made sense.

[Nominal Animal]

I HAVE changed software (when it is convenient) for exactly these reasons.

In the noughties, I rented a LOT of DVDs, until I got too fed up with the unskippable "Don't be a criminal", "FBI will talk to you if..." ads.  Told my friendly local rental place manager why, and never rented a single DVD or BluRay since then.

They, too, reminded me of the old "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question.

(That is, in both the software case and the above question, the question is deliberately phrased so that you, the answerer, must submit to the role the asker designated, with no true choice presented or question asked.  It is particularly annoying when they claim the question/answer as a proof [of anything].)

Roman Emperors used to propagate their legislation by carving it in stone for public display.  That made sense.

I think next summer I need to find a nice rounded river stone, and carve "Nothing" on it.  So that I can have nothing carved in stone always with me.

[TimFox]

And then you can skip the stone...

[Nominal Animal]

And then you can skip the stone...

Yeah!  "I'm skipping nothing!", or, to confuse, "No, I prefer skipping nothing carved in stone instead."  It's not unlike avoiding underutilisation of multiple negations.

I recall an episode of TruTV's World's Dumbest, where Tonya Harding says, "What comes around, goes around".  Easy to miss, but darn funny nonsensical mistake if you really think about it.

I can see why these can be a pet peeve for some, though.  It's not the same doing it deliberately, and doing it accidentally just because you don't care.
Missing the possessive suffix in Finnish is one of mine; common in speech, but stings like a bad pirate accent in written text. Arr.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Eddie Vedder's song Say Hi.

 

[eugenenine]

People who spell cord chord.  They are two very different things