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From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 14:16 on 11 Jul 2006 Subject: You're just a text editor, that's not your file. TextForge: just because I used you to edit a config file that doesn't mean you own that file. Stop pissing on every file you touch and making it smell like you: if it was opening in Terminal before I edited it, then it bloody well should open in Terminal afterwards.
From: Zach White Date: 19:24 on 10 Jul 2006 Subject: Start -> Shut Down -> Log Out Can anyone think of a more asinine proceedure for logging out? Not only is it completely unintuitive, but the very way it operates is hateful. I have this particular Win2k box I log into once a week or so via RDC. About a month ago I had to reboot the box, after it had been up for months. So of course, when I follow my normal log out proceedure, everything goes as planned until I get to the Log Out phase. Because I've previously rebooted, Windows assumes I want to reboot again. Never mind that in over a year of operation I've logged out 50 or 60 times and rebooted maybe 5 or 6 times. Granted, WinXP and 2003 get this better, and admittedly I could use the logout option in the start menu itself that can be enabled, but that action isn't burned into muscle memory from years of hitting Win, u, enter every time I wanted to log out. -Zach
From: sabrina downard Date: 16:29 on 10 Jul 2006 Subject: DRM can bite my ass Dear Apple: As I'm sure you know, I've been a pretty unrepentant Mac fangirl for a while. I like shiny things. I like your laptops. I like your operating system (and I used to like your old one, too). I like my transparent terminal windows. I like not having to run OpenOffice just to read the attachments people insist on sending me. I like Quicktime. I like a lot of things you do. But I've got to tell you, this iPod destructive mind-meld "link" to a specific computer, or whatever the hell it is, is just fucking stupid. So I've got two powerbooks. One's my "real" computer, which has a slowly failing hard disk, and so I've also got a loaner from work. I copied my home directory over to the new one via drag and drop and everything worked very well -- thank you -- such as my shareware apps recognizing my previous registration codes, all my photos and documents and the cruft accumulated over years. Even my Firefox plugins came over (and, it should be noted, that the Firefox on this laptop doesn't exhibit the completely wack-ass behavior that Firefox on my other laptop does -- so that seems to prove well enough that it's not my preferences or plugins or something that's causing it, interestingly enough). Everything was great. ...Until this morning. I had ripped some music over the weekend, onto my external hard disk and added it to the real laptop's iTunes library therefrom. I wanted to listen to it at work today, but my upload speed from home is pretty crummy, so I decided I'd just throw the music on my iPod Shuffle and take that to work and listen to the tracks off of it. I hopped in the car, happily listened to my new MP3s on said faithful iPod on the way in, arrived at work, and plugged in the iPod to my loaner laptop. Whereupon I got a message that said something like "Some songs have not been copied to the iPod 'wee' because this computer is not authorized to play them, including '$song_by_some_other_band_that_was_in_aac_format_but_i_dont_care_about_that_band.'" Okay. Whatever. I have that album on this laptop and I don't know why you're whinging about it anyways, as I didn't ask you to "copy" anything. 'Cos it was already *there* and all. But whatever, I didn't want to listen to that band at the moment (and I can always go type in my stupid iTunes Music Store password if I did). I want to listen to those new MP3s......hey, WHERE THE HELL DID THEY GO? What I'm assuming happened here is that my iPod, named 'wee' (what? it *is*!), had some sort of sympathetic bond with my old laptop, "shiny." It liked shiny. It was evidently involved in a fiercely monogamous relationship with shiny. When I plugged it in to my loaner laptop, "snooty," it decided that, as a part of automatically updating the iPod (why was snooty auto-updating wee if wee is married to shiny?) it would delete the MP3s that were not a part of snooty's music library. Despite the fact that they're not AAC files and had no DRM of any kind. And it's not just that iTunes is not showing them; I downloaded and fired up PodUtil just to check. Then I plugged the iPod directly into my external speakers. Gone, daddy, gone; the love has gone away. Attention Apple: Those were my bloody MP3s. I wanted to play them for myself on my bloody iPod. You morons have just fucked me over because now not only can I not listen to them on my laptop speakers, but you deleted them off the iPod entirely so I can't listen to them in the car or over headphones until I get home tonight. (I would be SO PISSED if this had happened while I was travelling and away from my home computer!) In practical terms, won't someone please explain to me the legal reasons I have *less* right to listen to music I purchased on one set of speakers versus another, to the point where the laptop not only disables the music in question but outright destroys it? You disabled the AAC files that were not authorized. If you wanted to similarly refuse to play back the MP3 files that were not in my currently-connected laptop's music library, why was it necessary to REMOVE them and not simply disable them? I used to carry my old 5G original iPod around with music on it and plugged it in to listen to on other people's computers with some regularity. That was evidently okay behavior back in the halcyon days of, what, 2002? The times they are a-changin'. Suck my dick, Apple. --s. p.s. no anti-IMS anti-DRM advocacy rants need to be sent. I know, I know, I know. I did not deserve what I got in this instance, I don't think, and I'm not ready to pick up a sign and start picketing the Apple Store just yet, but jesus fuck this was a stupid fucking thing for them to do. p.p.s. I'm totally firing up OurTunes and seeing if anyone else on campus has that album so I can pirate it so I can listen to THE MUSIC I FREAKING BOUGHT. You *shits*.
From: Phil Pennock Date: 13:53 on 07 Jul 2006 Subject: Niggling little changes I have OpenLDAP providing data, including as a backend for Heimdal. Yes, I know, but I was playing and I want to be able to sync with one protocol which has been more exposed to scrutiny. Update OpenLDAP from 2.2 to 2.3. Take the opportunity to split the Kerberos backend off into a separate DB. Start slapd, fine. Start kdc ... no principals. Revert the split of Kerberos to separate DB. No difference. Finally isolate the cause: I use ldapi:// and SASL EXTERNAL, so that I avoid needing cryptography in the data passing loop and the server can just ask the kernel "who is talking to me?". To accomplish this, I have: sasl-regexp uidNumber=([^,]*)\\+gidNumber=([^,]*),cn=peercred,cn=external,cn=auth ldap:///ou=People,dc=example,dc=net??sub?(&(uidNumber=$1)(gidNumber=$2)) The problem? From the logs: gidNumber=0+uidNumber=0,cn=peercred,cn=external,cn=auth@xxxxxxx.xxx They reversed the order. They frigging reversed the order! Breaking every documented technique for handling unix socket peer credentials. Why? Just ... WHY? For robustness, I now use a second regexp, keeping the old one instead of changing it. But ... wtF?
From: Earle Martin
Date: 23:55 on 05 Jul 2006
Subject: Windows XP
The software you are installing for this hardware
$SOFTWARE_NAME
has not passed Windows Logo testing to verify its
compatibility with Windows XP. Continuing your
installation of this software may impair or
destabilize the correct operation of your system
either immediately or in the future. Microsoft
strongly recommends that you stop this
installation now and contact the hardware vendor
for software that has passed Windows Logo testing.
[ Continue Anyway ] [ STOP Installation ]
...and repeat TWO DOZEN FUCKING TIMES. Because Microsoft is TOO FUCKING
RETARDED TO PROVIDE A "DON'T ASK ME AGAIN" button. And it's a modal fucking
dialog, so I can't do anything else until the install has finished.
As if that wasn't moronic enough, the message sounds like it was written by
an amateur lawyer. "Destabilize the correct operation of your system"?
"Either immediately *or* in the future"? WTF? And add to that the FUD factor
of what the message is implying.
Hate. Hate. Hate.
From: Joshua Kwan Date: 18:52 on 03 Jul 2006 Subject: the Criminally Ungood Printing System This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enigB6415A1BCF129CEE00F50790 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable This sort of incident should be a thing of the past, I think. It's quite possible that someone, somewhere, has come up with a workaround that I would be satisfied with. It might even be in the codebase somewhere. It should be enabled by default, and it should work out of the box. Instead, I would have to spend 15 minutes googling for it (or ask a mailing list about it), and for software as pervasive and possibly useful as CUPS, that is unjustifiable and hateful. The story is rather simple. So I usually use US letter paper with my printer, set up using CUPS on Linux. I acquired some A4 paper gratis, and figured it should be a matter of tweaking Page Setup-type settings to get that working. Right? Nah. That would be too easy. I also have to change the paper setting in CUPS' asinine web interface to match. WHY? SO FULL OF HATE --=20 Joshua Kwan --------------enigB6415A1BCF129CEE00F50790 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: http://triplehelix.org/~joshk/pubkey_gpg.asc Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iQIVAwUBRKlZV6OILr94RG8mAQIKCQ//Uac7/fEKZSNdZs2T+k00fiVPQUX4p/p9 dwnOuqip4SekHGSqvsUpYCvCbYwx1PEKeqO0+bgHFIQjRrdYFzPQz9QvNuw2wIrz QwImgJ69o2PlbI64+8Lz7FQYkhEHRp6JKt9n7azK4msoaTwcUveDSUJ4YAK+2iqI oQtkqrxkCAvAntSfiivqAterg+UeQmgPg90gqqH25Tfxra/SvdNxLbl0M4L4g4hw t5POSiNDwIo9jdmDENsrUI7C9IHhabpMUoEFEPh7njCzab1R76wbRgTw0g0kV3nf fd9U7H+BWN9SYuKJ2WFAwdtVN9fu1Ar1XnIiBkTXorIFoz1r+pGMGQU+wK8+CgxH 1I7hm6Sy8n1bq9Grg473iHNEkL+Ls/BicFRxIYyhxQGITUEgu/QOAgtxMwNhyPQS P6DThL0Qk4EH2SWU0md5BWJ8s0nWPuiwe/uwolfvf5WgbgkwCtjqBdYLzX2ZLt7a lXezF4qrUaOPSDML808Fz9x0KdGHSkb1sQ1Gev0QArJExAuiMUdFkCz3QfEhAzMh CjMvnQGPxGwojG/81tBUQwTAtZxuC/ZNrddNmNHfSruJeu9HO6xog02L/Sp13epr HR4AdcWC4WFyHmYNCwn+TSn+GFBal00ZZmKgw9TOEloHXq3HlNoTTRRlxdko5iKv vqUJYi0ru+E= =4yF/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enigB6415A1BCF129CEE00F50790--
From: Aaron Crane
Date: 13:11 on 27 Jun 2006
Subject: CGI.pm
OK, now I know that CGI.pm's HTML-generating functions are considered mor=
e
than somewhat d=E9class=E9, but I have to maintain an application that ma=
kes
liberal use of them. One of the most persistent sources of niggly and
unpleasant bugs in this application is caused by CGI.pm's insanely hatefu=
l
and broken behaviour.
Allow me to explain. Here's how you generate a hidden field with CGI.pm:
print hidden('field_name', $field_value);
This has the benefit of being simple, comprehensible, and elegant. Sadly=
,
it also has the disadvantage of being wrong.
How's that? Well, suppose we're processing the result of submitting the
form that contains this hidden field, and the $field_value you've just
calculated isn't the same as the one that got submitted. In such a case,
CGI.pm thinks that the best thing to do is to COMPLETELY FUCKING IGNORE w=
hat
you told it, and instead SCRIBBLE OVER YOUR DATA with whatever random cra=
p
it received from the form submission. (I'm not going to labour the point
about inappropriately trusting data received from the internet, but pleas=
e
do be aware of it.)
Of course, you can fix this. Here's how to code defensively against this
retarded API:
print hidden(
-name =3D> 'field_name',
-default =3D> $field_value,
-override =3D> 1,
);
(Just for good measure, note how this simple thing now takes up five time=
s
as much vertical space on my screen to fit into 80 columns, and that scre=
en
space is a non-renewable resource.)
This API is just astoundingly fuckwitted. I can't conceive of any situat=
ion
in which it would be desirable behaviour, and it has caused huge numbers =
of
bugs in the software I maintain. And that's in spite of the fact that I
know about this brokenness -- it's so stupid that it's apparently impossi=
ble
to remember to use the ridiculous workaround.
Hate.
--=20
Aaron Crane
From: Minty Date: 15:19 on 23 Jun 2006 Subject: init.d I want to start Apache2 on my Debian Sarge box to test something quick. I want to start it just this once for testing, then shut it down again. I do not want it to start on boot $ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start Not starting apache2 - edit /etc/default/apache2 and change NO_START to be 0. $ vi /etc/default/apache2 # 0 = start on boot; 1 = don't start on boot NO_START=1 1 != don't start on boot 1 = don't start
From: Simon Wistow Date: 14:35 on 23 Jun 2006 Subject: YAML and its parsers I have an app. It stores some data (in this case CVS commits) as YAML. Don't ask. Then something else consumes the YAML and turns it into RSS. Again, don't ask. So YAML.pm (for these are in Perl) creates a YAML file for me. Then, int eh RSS generator it reads it back in. And throws an epi claiming it's not valid YAML. Some diagnostics indicates that it may be a problem with new lines. I try upgrading YAML (which imports half of CPAN in a scary way that makes me nervous) and it still doesn't work. I try YAML::Syck and that only parses out the first record. I try YAML::Tiny but that claims not to support 'partial-line comments'. WT and might I also add F?
From: Nicholas Clark Date: 21:00 on 22 Jun 2006 Subject: modal dialogue boxes So M$ Outlook has just thrilled me with 4 levels of modal dialogue box crack. I can move the top one about the screen. What's wrong with the idea of me moving any of the previous ones around then? Maybe I want to see what's in the one 2 down without hitting cancel twice. Oh, and if I hit OK in the sub-sub-sub dialogue, but cancel in the next level up, does that cancel the effects of OK? Yes/No/Shrug_it_depends_but_you_need_to_check_the_source? Meanwhile, competition. I'm sure that 4 isn't the largest stack you can get. Which software provides the ability to produce the most hatefully deep stack of modal dialogue boxes, and by what contrived route through the options? Nicholas Clark
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi