h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Web design:

- the tag
- homepages where the only content consists of awards the page has won (and they're not from Web Pages That Suck)
- Java applets used for navigation where JavaScript rollovers would do the same job better and in a lot less bandwidth
- colour schemes where the only way to read the text is either to highlight it with the mouse, or to paste it into Emacs.
- lots of other things I'd better not mention

People not pulling the inside bag out of the cereal packet before pouring, which results in lots of sticky lumps of cereal between outside box and inside plastic bag.

No it doesn't! It depends on how you treat the bag...

People squeezing the tube of toothpaste in the middle instead of from the end.

Drop-down boxes on Internet sites that list US and/or UK *first* and then the rest of the countries. U don't come before the rest of the world

-When your just surfing and find a site you like. Then ,before you can do anything, they ask for you to sign up. You go to the form and enter one user and password. You can't use that password. This repeats intill your name is; DARRENB_12_29_GURU_BEN_JIM_198.
then you never go back to the site because the thing you spent ages getting to was rubbish.


-Peple who think that saying 'hyper terminal mark-up lang-' is technical.

-People who spread the butter on toast, then lick the knife before you use it

-People who write LiKe ThIs To TrY AnD LoOk TeChNiCaL#

Old Jimmy

There's no competition on THIS one: the h2g2-censors!!!

What censors? I see no censors.

People who sit and nod and try to look like they know what you're talking about when they blatantly don't.

If you feel up to wading through the song-title thread on Orcus' homepage (no obligations, it's a whole lot), you'll see where they're hiding.

and people interviewing on the radio who pretend to know what the interviewees going on about when a) its blatently obvious but b) they just don't get it

That embarrasses me more than annoying me.

Lecturers who start off a lecture with a "quick" recap of the previous lecture that ends up taking over twenty minutes and resulting in the lecture overrunning. This of course only happens when
a) the lecture being recapped was easy and does not need a recap
b) you have another lecture immediately afterwards, and it's somewhere on the other side of the campus/city

Burping garlic and tasting it for the rest of the day after eating it once already. (yesterday)
Burping smoked mackrel and tasting it for the rest of the day after eating it once already. (today)

That must be like another pet gripe - having a song on the brain and not being able to get rid of it - the more stubborn the song, the worse it usually is.

Oh definitely. On a related note, musical acts who clearly have no talent whatsoever and sing songs that all sound very, very similar (wishy-washy vocals, airy-fairy instrumentals and formula lyrics with no unpredictability in them at all) just make me want to scream.

People who think that a lack of understanding of technology is some kind of badge of honour - especially people who should know a bit about it....and then they comment "You program computers? Blimey, I have trouble programming my video recorder" as if that was related to anything.

[I wasn't asking YOU about the DVD: it was a private conversation with your brother]

Related to that, people who claim that they find it impossible to program the video, but when pressed admit that they've never actually tried. People who can't program the video but have made a genuine attempt in the company of the instruction manual and/or someone who does know how to program that particular video are extremely rare and should be prized as People Who Try.

bands that are so polished that everything they play comes out sounding so smooth it puts you to sleep,then billing themself as a blues band.bands that put a round of solo's for every member in every song.muscians that insist on tuneing to perfect 4/40 picth then play out of picth anyway.guitar players that are so good that they can't play with another guitar player in the band.remote controls that wear out or stop working long before the component they control does.universal remotes that refuse to program for all your components leaveing you with still haveing to have at least two remotes

People who think that a BA is somehow better than a BSc (they're the same level, guys, it's just a different area of expertise).

On the car stickers thing, someone round the corner from my house has one that says 'Caution: Obedience dogs in transit'. I've been trying to work out what the need for this is. Is it that the dogs will get too excited if you're driving near their vehicle? In which case why doesn't their owner tell them to shut up? And if they won't shut up, does this mean that the sticker should really say 'I've got a car full of obedience dogs that won't do as they're told.'?

I also find the sticker that says 'Pull back: give my child a chance' absurdly over-dramatic.

Ooh yeah - those supposedly Christian fish shape things that people put on their cars.