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From: Sean Conner Date: 10:33 on 28 Feb 2008 Subject: So much hate, spread across so much software, it's incredible It all started some five hours ago with my own hateful blogging software, when the web interface (which is something I rarely use it's so loathsome, but that's my own fault) didn't work. It took me the better part of three and a half hours to track down the actual problem deep within Apache. It seems that the ErrorDocument directives I have break the basic Authentication directives I have. How, I don't know. All I know is that I wasted the better part of three hours tracking down *that* little problem, and thinking I found an actual bug in Apache (you don't say?) I thought I would mention it to the users@xxxxx.xxxxxx.xxx mailing list, despite the knowledge that the first thing out of *their* mouths would be "upgrade to 2.0.61^H2^H3/2.2.6^H7^H8 and try your plea again." Only when I sent my plea to the mailing list, only to get back: > Hi. This is the qmail-send program at apache.org. > I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. > This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out. > > <users@xxxxx.xxxxxx.xxx>: > Sorry, only subscribers may post (#5.7.2) That's odd. Then were do all these messages from users@xxxxx.xxxxxx.xxx that keep filling up my inbox come from? Obviously, I'm subscribed in *some* fasion to the list. Did my email client (mutt) puke and set the wrong from address? The users@xxxxx.xxxxxx.xxx mailing list is sending it to my "spc at conman.org" address, and yes, mutt sent it out as "spc at conman.org", so what is in fact, the problem? Maybe I'm half-unsubscribed? Who knows? Let me subscribe again. Okay, there's the confirmation, let me reply to that. *NOW* let me try sending in my plea. Great, now I get *TWO* copies from users@xxxxx.xxxxxx.xxx. Did I just spam the list twice? I sent a reply to that, apologizing for the double posting (maybe), when I get two replies from that. Okay, what the @#!$#@!#!$ is going on ... An hour later, and I have my answer, only I'm not exactly sure who to blame for this incredible mess. Is it: Me, for not noticing that I was subscribing to the list using not "spc at conman.org" but in fact "spc at brevard.conman.org"? Postfix, for setting a return path of "spc at brevard.conman.org" even though I told it to use a "myorigin" of "mydomain" and not "myhostname"? Ezlml (what Apache apparently uses for their mailing lists) for using the email address in the Return-Path: header and *NOT* the address that appears in the From: header? At this point, I'm pointing fingers and naming names at Ezlml. Why, oh, why, oh, why, would you use the Return-Path: and *NOT* the From: header? Grrrrrrrrrrrr ... -spc (When did this stuff get so difficult to debug?)
From: Abigail
Date: 10:57 on 26 Feb 2008
Subject: gphoto2
--qMm9M+Fa2AknHoGS
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A few days ago, I bought a new digital camera, a Canon. (Don't have
it long enought to hate it).
You can't simply mount its storage as a (usb) disc, but luckely, gphoto2
can connect to the camera and extract the images.
So far, so good. But gphoto2 is chatty. Annoyingly chatty. It'll report
what image it's going to download, displays a progress while downloading
the image, then a message which file it saved it to.
Reading the manual page reveals the '--quiet' option. So, if you're naief,
you'd expect gphoto2 to shut up; at most making a sound if something goes
wrong.
Not so. Sure, with --quiet, it won't tell you what image it's going to
download, but it still tells you the file it downloaded it too, and it
will also display the progress bar. To shut it up, you need to do something
like:
gphoto2 --quiet 2> /dev/null | cat
No progress bar when it's writing to a pipe, and it uses STDERR to inform
you which file it has written to; --quiet only silences STDOUT.
Of course, if something does go wrong, you won't see it, as all errors
go to /dev/null.
Abigail
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From: Timothy Knox Date: 21:20 on 25 Feb 2008 Subject: unrar is hateful Okay, for those of you for whom the above is not sufficient, let me elaborate: I use the following idiom to expand archives of various sorts: $ unzip archive.zip && rm archive.zip $ gunzip archive.gz && rm archive.gz $ bunzip2 archive.bz2 && rm archive.bz2 So good, so far. However, unrar, in its transcendent hatefulness, doesn't work that way. Oh no, of course not! No, the magic invocation is: $ unrar x archive.rar && rm archive.rar Fine, I generally remember to type the extra 'x', but what happens when I omit it? unrar helpfully prints out an error/usage message. That's nice. Helpful, even. But then it returns a 0 status code. That's not so NICE! You didn't succeed, you moronic program! You FAILED to do what I asked! And thanks to your deceitful ways, I've just wiped out the archive, and now must re-download it! AARGH!
From: Jeremy Stephens Date: 19:22 on 25 Feb 2008 Subject: head and tail I found myself needing to run awk on all the lines of a text file except the first one. So I look at some man pages. It turns out that head will accept negative numbers, but tail won't. At least in my Ubuntu Gutsy installation it won't. Boo.
From: Timothy Knox Date: 21:47 on 20 Feb 2008 Subject: Hating firefox and remote I spend my days in heavily Linux-y environment. My main machine is a Linux box, my dev box is Linux, my client-test box and my server-test box are all Linux boxes. Woo-hoo! I can run firefox on any of my boxes...or can I? Those of you who like to skip ahead to the end know the answer to this: Of course not! If I am running firefox on my main box, and am ssh-ed in to (for example) my client-text box, and try to run firefox there, surprise! Firefox, in its infinite hatefulness, decides that I must really want to run a firefox remote window in the firefox back on my main box. I couldn't possibly want to have a distinct instance of firefox on my client-test box, now could I? If, for example, my client-test box has TWO NICs, and one of them connects (via another box) to my server box, and I want to access my server box via the client box? Without all that tedious mucking about with routing tables (which is a hate all its own)? If, for example, the client-test, server-test, and intermediary box are all on a private subnet that I cannot reach from my main box? GRRRRR! Fortunately, the hatefulness is only about 99%, because the firefox command exposed on the command line is really a shell script that wraps around the REAL firefox command, and does the evil remote thing. So it was not too painful to hack it up to allow me to opt out of the whole evil remote thing, but: 1. What a pian! 2. The next time I upgrade I will need to reapply this fix. Grrr! Why can't firefox support this behaviour? I can understand not having it on by default, as I assume the thinking was that this behaviour would confuse the fewest number of people, but come on! Firefox is all about customisability, and yet there is no convenient hook for disabling this behaviour that I could find. It took me all of five lines of shell hacking to add it in, so we are not talking rocket science here. Firefox, burn in hell forever!
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 23:20 on 19 Feb 2008 Subject: Signatures I hate that it's 2008 and we're still signing documents with a pen. Let me explain. I'm working out the final details of a contract which involves signing a very simple NDA. The code is all public so the NDA is a mere formality. They took a PDF and printed it. Then they signed it. Then they scanned it. Then they emailed it to us to sign. We printed it. Then we crossed out a few objectionable clauses. We signed it and scanned it back in. The scan went to an office server. It was then emailed back to us and we will then email it off to the client who will hopefully accept it. If they don't we start this ridiculous process of transferring paper to bits to paper to bits all over again. It's not like we haven't had have secure, cheap digital signature technology for decades now. It's not like everyone with a PC, scanner and printer doesn't have the technology to forge a handwritten signature.
From: Smylers Date: 13:43 on 12 Feb 2008 Subject: mysqldump Error Messages $ mysqldump -p -d > current.sql Hmmm, that didn't prompt me for my password. And it finished very quickly! Wonder what it did. Let's look in current.sql: $ cat current.sql Usage: mysqldump [OPTIONS] database [tables] OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --databases [OPTIONS] DB1 [DB2 DB3...] OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --all-databases [OPTIONS] For more options, use mysqldump --help Nooooooooo! The whole purpose of having standard error is that it's the _standard_ place for _errors_ to go. Sending error message to standard output is just hateful. Smylers
From: David Mackintosh
Date: 18:06 on 11 Feb 2008
Subject: Outlook is driving me INSANE!
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Let's pretend that this kick in the nuts named "Outlook" is entirely
mandatory.
Let's further pretend that you have an email which you want to print
out so that it can be used to beat someone over the head with.
So you select the email, and click "Print", right?
Well no. That will print you a list of the emails in your mailbox,
which is a feature I've _never_ understood.
So you click the email so that it opens up in its own window, and
click "Print" there, right?
Yes. Well it will only let you print to the default printer, sorry
about that. That's not what we want.
So you click "Reply" on the email and open up another window, then
click "Print" on that window.
NOW you can select a non-default printer. Except of course you are
printing your "reply", meaning the nice fancy header section will be
ALL WRONG. =20
</gibber>
As a result of this (and other) nonsense, I've installed a
PDF-printer as the default device and now print to _that_ instead.=20
Doing this also has the pleasant side effect of making information
sent to collegues much less likely to be "accidentally" doctored
after the fact. =20
/me waits for PDF hate.
--=20
/\oo/\
/ /()\ \ David Mackintosh |=20
dave@xxxxxx.xxx | http://www.xdroop.com
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From: Simon Wilcox Date: 11:57 on 09 Feb 2008 Subject: Windows & Thunderbird to the headmaster's office immediately please Right then you two. Stand there. Stop fidgeting. Get your hands out of your pockets Thunderbird ! I don't care which of you two are responsible for this, it's just not acceptable behaviour in this computer and I won't tolerate it. Now Windows, what is it with this FTP extension in Windows Explorer ? It's all very flashy and "convenient" for your user but it would appear that Mr Thunderbird over here doesn't know what to do with it. Why is it that when I drag and drop a file from any normal drive onto a new email message Thunderbird attaches it but when I drag and drop from an ftp location it doesn't ? I wouldn't mind if that were all but it's not all is it ? Stop shuffling your feet and look at me you two ! Would either of you be able to tell me which of you is responsible for DELETING the file from the ftp location instead of COPYING it from the location as you two manage to do everywhere else ? AND can you explain WHY IT IS that that file IS NOT attached to the email message is JUST LOST ????? Anyone ? Anyone ? I thought not. I will not tolerate my programmes behaving in such a disagreeable way. Detention every day until one of you owns up. Dismissed.
From: Nicholas Clark
Date: 09:59 on 09 Feb 2008
Subject: autocrap error messages
configure.ac:6: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL
If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
See the Autoconf documentation.
make: *** [all] Error 1
Yeah right. How helpful. What would it take to actually be helpful and say
"you don't seem to have libtool installed"?
Nicholas Clark
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi