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> for having such inconvenient preferences; at no point were they in the > slightest bit apologetic for the fact that their system was hopeless at > being helpful in my circumstances. I know this list is about hating software -- but oh, whine whine whine, WHY should *they* be *apologetic* to *you* about software they were not responsible for? > Yup, no list to pick from; no autocompletion; no textual searching by > real-world names; no map to point at: the interface requires the person > using it to have memorized the 3-letter IATA code for all the > destinations' airports. Autocompletion, yes, maybe, that could be useful, but I have to say that the couple of times I've had a clear view to the software the travel agents are doing I must say that I have been *impressed* by the speed they type away and find and check stuff. I have no idea what software they are using, sorry, but to me it always looks very much like mainframe operator work, and when they are good at it, they are very good at it. We've all memorized silly things which we use daily without thinking because we need them in our work. They need IATA codes. I still remember the IP addresses of machines long gone, for example. Why should they be forced to use whiz-bang GUI interfaces? I can only imagine the horror of a drop down menu of all the world's airports... > And a hateful side effect of this specification by airport rather than > location is that there's no easy way to request departures from 'any > London airport' -- you have to list "LGW", "LHR", etc separately. > Except that there are only 3 of these fields for providing acceptable > departure points, and London has more than 3 airports, so you have to > perform separate searches to check all of them. And when you go back to > change the departure point all the other fields get reset too ... Without any idea of what software they were using and without any idea of what kind of software is out there, I hazard a guess that *maybe* they didn't quite know how to use the software the best way? Again, I have in general been very impressed, even for my sometimes "unconventional" requests. > Hate! > > Smylers -- Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@xxx.xx> http://www.iki.fi/jhi/ "There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. It is 'dead'." -- Jack CohenThere's stuff above here
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