Another day, another fissure in the Internet. This time : eBay.

eBay requires javascriptIn my lifelong quest for sanity in all its forms, I was recently on eBay looking for a new mouse.i

As you can see in the screen capture above, my quest is being actively and increasingly hindered by the ‘televisionisation’ of the Internet.ii Javascript, a contemptible blight of ‘responsiveness’ upon the face of the once-great marketplace, itself one of the few survivors of the first web bubble,iii is now required for searching on eBay. REQUIRED! As if people came to a portal providing access to unusual and eclectic miscellanea were somehow looking to be wedged into a used garbage bag and thrown down the stairs first.

Because seriously, what’s better than inserting attack vectorsiv into a trust-based reputation system for conducting financial transactions ?v This is like having a perfectly lovely yacht, one that’s aged well and has a charm all its own, and painting it with six coats of sulfuric acid because “it’s time for a change.”

This is an excellent way to push the cool kids out the door, just like Twitter did, leaving nothing but the cockroaches scurrying about, lost and generally left yelling at each other over who took the last piece of cheese and why no one has seen Tim since that big *snap* was heard coming from under the sink.

In any event, I’m now accepting suggestions for both mice and markets.

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  1. The one I have works well enough, but it’s a bit small for my giant mitts. My hands, for reference, span 24 cm at a stretch and measure 20 cm from top-to-bottom.

    Perhaps the solution is… command line ?

  2. Also known as ‘appification.’ Now with moar channels !
  3. eBay was founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar, today better known as the guy who tried to make a Qntra and failed. How much can change in two short decades, eh ?
  4. For more on Javascript’s suckiness, see teh logs.
  5. I shudder at the thought of the WoT requiring such glaring cruft.

One thought on “Another day, another fissure in the Internet. This time : eBay.

  1. […] seems that services like Amazon and eBay, for all their shittiness, have spoiled me. I now very much expect anything and everything that I might desire to be […]

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