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From: Mark Fowler
Date: 13:39 on 08 Nov 2004
Subject: FOAD iTunes
The iPod "Klegg" is linked to another iTunes music library. Do you want
to change the link to this iTunes music library and replace all existing
songs and playlists on this iPod with those from this library
No Yes
I see this dialog *every* *single* *time* I plug my iPod into charge on my
work Mac (i.e. the one that doesn't have my music collection on it.)
Where's the sodding "never" option then? Is it totally *inconceivable* to
the people in Apple that I might have more than one computer? Or does
this totally blow their pea sized brains?
Urge. To. Kill. Rising.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 12:03 on 08 Nov 2004 Subject: iPhoto crackfuledness So like most photo software iPhoto allows you to play "slideshows" of your photos, which is apparently touchy-feely speak for "show my photos in fullscreen". Most software provides a function to go onto the next photo after a set period of time. Which is nice I guess. So does iPhoto. But it doesn't (as far as I can see) allow you to turn this off for an album and just go to the next picture when you press a button. Wait just a gosh darn minute here. What the hell is the point in this? What if I haven't finished talking about my photos yet to the person I'm showing them to? Of course the computer MUST be right, and I the mere user should stick to the computer's schedule for showing MY pictures. Far be it for me to be in control. Because in real life lectures we see this all the time. The lecturer sits at the front and waits for the computer to change the slide for him and he talks for exactly the same length on each slide and is *always* done speaking on one slide after a set time. Oh wait, I'm talking crap. This is truely insane. It gets worse. Not only can you not disable the autotransition to the next picture for an album, but Apple will only let you display the pictures for up to a minute. For absolutley no apparent reason, Apple has chosen to force the user to accept an arbitary limit on the length of time the pictures can be shown. Why? Is there some secret flaw in the apple hardware that means that if it shows a static image for more than a minute it bursts into flames? Will a rampaging monkey horde spew from my drive bay? Will the computer summon a dark lord from the never-regions of hell and set it on the task of hunting down Steve Jobs' firstborn. I seriously doubt it. FFS Apple, I expect better. Mark.
From: Luke A. Kanies Date: 20:02 on 05 Nov 2004 Subject: Python I contemplated disgorging some mysql hate earlier this week, but that seemed so pedestrian... I know most of the scripting languages. I've done something in almost all of them. I was functional in ruby in four hours. I can write passable C, Java, LISP, and a good few others. I absolutely cannot write python. Maybe it's a read-only language? I don't know. Maybe I'm retarded? Maybe the gentoo install is retarded? I don't know. Whatever the deal is, though, python just doesn't make things easy. Whereas ruby operates on "least surprise", python seems to operate on "do it your damn self" or something. I haven't struggled this much at every step since I first started shell scripting almost a decade ago, and frankly, it was less troublesome then because I knew it was my problem. Will I get it all figured out eventually? Yes. Will I be sorely tempted to carry a gigantic python book around at all times, so the next time someone talks about perl being executable line noise I can hurl the book at said pythoner? Yes, yes I will be so tempted. Whatever drugs Guido was on when he figured out how module loading and classes and namespaces all should work, he should not do those drugs again. Ever. Ugh. The list goes on, but probably the stupidest things are all the namespace stupidities, and the fact that i can have 'class.method' as an individual line with no output and no warnings. "Why no, I'll not call that method; you are now referring to the actual method, not calling it." Great, but what are you doing with the method? "Uh, giving it to you." Yeah, fine, but there's no freaking lvalue, so do you print it? "No." At least perl freaking tells me that I have a value in void context, and it's trivial to figure out. Python? "Do it your damn self."
From: Nicholas Clark Date: 15:57 on 04 Nov 2004 Subject: fink Fucking fink. I run fink selfupdate. Firstly the git gives me CVS conflicts. So I figure out where the troublesome files are, wade in with sudo rm, retry and get past that hurdle. Then this one url -f -L -O http://distfiles.dkx.tn.us.finkmirrors.net/base-files-1.9.3.tar.gz % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Curr. Dload Upload Total Current Left Speed 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:01 --:--:-- 0 curl: (22) The requested file was not found ### execution of curl failed, exit code 22 Downloading the file "base-files-1.9.3.tar.gz" failed. (1) Give up (2) Retry the same mirror (3) Retry another mirror from your country (4) Retry another mirror (5) Retry using next mirror set "Custom Mirror" How do you want to proceed? [3] We go round this a few times, until I reach the conclusion that base-files-1.9.3 is too fucking new, and none of the mirrors have caught up. (Else it's not new, but all the mirrors I tried are stale, in which case if they would be so kinds as curl up and die and thereby get out of my fucking way) So I eventually [1] (Give up) and just try to install postgresql74. What do I get: curl -f -L -O http://distfiles.sbn.in.us.finkmirrors.net/libpqxx-1.5.1.tar.gz % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Curr. Dload Upload Total Current Left Speed 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:00 --:--:-- 0 curl: (22) The requested file was not found ### execution of curl failed, exit code 22 Downloading the file "libpqxx-1.5.1.tar.gz" failed. (1) Give up (2) Retry the same mirror (3) Retry another mirror from your country (4) Retry another mirror (5) Retry using original source URL How do you want to proceed? [3] What's wrong with the fucking mirrors? Why don't I just blow OS X away and install Debian instead? At least it has a functional packaging system. Nicholas Clark
From: David Cantrell Date: 11:24 on 26 Oct 2004 Subject: White-space sensitive file formats Today I am mostly hating Makefiles, for they require the use of tabs and not spaces.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 09:51 on 26 Oct 2004 Subject: firewalls Now, don't get me wrong - firewalls and security are a good thing. But the current policy of only letting DNS and HTTP through mean that there's a generation of mongtards trying to reinvent established protocols. Just over HTTP. But worse. *cough* RSS *cough*
From: David Cantrell Date: 15:34 on 08 Oct 2004 Subject: SOAP::Lite must die Yet again, SOAP::Lite is behaving in unexpected ways. If I have a chunk of text, which is utf-8, and return it from my SOAPy method, SOAP::Lite base64-encodes it before sending it over the network, for no apparent reason. This behaviour is undocumented. The most excellent Claes Jacobssen told me how to fix it on IRC, but the fix involves using an undocumented package supplied with SOAP::Lite in an undocumented way. From what I can tell, the philosophy behind the documentation for this appalling module is "it was hard to write, so it should be hard to use". This is, even though it appears to work, AWFUL software. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm having to expose my SOAP::Lite-ish server to another piece of awful software - .net. .net is unnecessarily picky and pedantic about, well, everything. It needs to have every little detail explained to it in triplicate or it throws its toys on the floor.
From: David Cantrell Date: 12:45 on 29 Sep 2004 Subject: WSDL, and its users, and its tools, and XML in general Remember back in January when I Hated XML, posting in this august forum? Well, I hate XML even more now. Here's some specific examples of all the various hateful things I noted in that earlier post. But first some background. At work, I am writing an application which exposes a SOAP interface so that another company can submit requests to our database. Apparently, the tools that this other company are using can't just make a damned SOAP request. They need me to specify my interface in WSDL. WSDL is a dialect of XML. It is so hateful that even those who like XML (and who like using the crippled tools that need it) recommend using third-party tools to generate it automatically. I took one look at the WSDL spec and ran away screaming. I agree with them, there's no way in hell I want to write that crap by hand. As well as having to define my functions three times in different ways, I have to contend with those weird namespace things, and the WSDL inventors in their infinite wisdom have decided to reuse words which have well-understood meanings, like "port", and use them for something entirely unrelated to what they normally mean. But can I find such a tool that *works*? Nope. In the end, I had to write stubs for all my methods in JAVA and use some Java tool to produce WSDL. I then had to correct the WSDL, by hand. Someone had recommended another tool which might even have been really good, but even though it is apparently free you still need to ask the vendor for a licence. Which I did, then they phoned me to talk about my needs, and said they'd send a licence. Which they never did. Even if I had had a licence, I bet it wouldn't have worked properly. Back to some more WSDL hate. I expect that at some point you have written a function which returns an array of data. Try explaining that to WSDL. It *might* be possible, but not using the Java thingy that I had. The solution we arrived at was to pass a string, with CSV in it. Because CSV is old, and works, unlike this crazy modern complex stuff. There seems to be no sane way of having functions with variable numbers of arguments. So again, we're using CSV strings. At this rate, I might as well have just listened on a socket for CSV and spat back CSV! XML seems to encourage this mad over-complex stuff. WSDL *could* be implemented using the simple version 1 XML that I eulogised in my earlier post here. But even if it could be, it would still be mad and make my brane hurt. I've seen plenty of other stuff in XML which is deliberately obfuscatory - and unlike the IOCCC or the Obfuscated Perl Contest, its advocates TAKE THIS SHIT SERIOUSLY. So I have to conclude that there's something wrong with XML itself, even the simplest version 1 spec XML, which makes people do this. And therefore I hate XML, even the version that I didn't hate earlier.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 11:59 on 24 Sep 2004 Subject: Outlook At my previous job I had to use Lotus notes. I hated it. At my new job I have to use Outlook. I hate it too. At this moment I'm hating the fact that the header displayed in the preview pane doesn't show a person's email address, just name. You can't get the name by clicking in the header, either, because it just gives options concerning turning off the preview pane. So what happens if I want to give person A person B's email address? Well, I haven't encountered an option 'always show me the email address' in headers, so this is how I do it now: 1) select the message. This opens the preview pane. 2) double-click on the message. This pops up another window. 3) right-click on the person's name in the header section of the popup. select 'properties'. You must click exactly on the name, or you will get header-related settings. 4) go to the email tab, where I can see the person's email address 5) the keyboard copy shortcut cntrl-c doesn't work on this address, so I then remember a portion of it, switch to the window I'm typing on, switch back, etc. If I'm lucky I can fit both programs on the desktop at the same time and keep my focus. Usually this doesn't work. I'm starting to wonder if this protection of actual email addresses is a foretaste of what Microsoft has in mind for DRM: so boring and annoying to circumvent that you'd rather not. I also don't like the fact that it has grouped my folders in to shortcuts. There's 'Outlook Shortcuts' and 'My Shortcuts'. All my mail folders are in 'My Shortcuts'. My Inbox and Sent mail are in 'Outlook Shortcuts'. Both Outlook and My Shortcuts cannot be expanded at the same time. Starting from my inbox, if I want to look at a saved mail, my steps are: 1) expand 'My Shortcuts' 2) Click on the mail folder I want, find the message and view it 3) expand 'Outlook Shortcuts' 4) Click on the inbox to get back to where I was Steps 1 and 3 seem quite unneccessary to me. Maybe there are ways around these problems...I wouldn't know, because I have no desire to learn about Outlook. Given that the product is supposed to be designed for easy use, I think if it is possible to do what I want, I should be able to figure it out from looking at half a dozen menus. - A
From: Aaron Crane Date: 09:51 on 24 Sep 2004 Subject: Vim Mutt in a terminal can show me these kanji characters: 風雨. Vim in a terminal can too. I can even type them using a sane input method: only four phonemic characters, plus two keystrokes overhead. But gvim under X? It insists on showing me the replacement codepoint-only glyphs, because it's _clearly_ too hard to render those characters in a font that has the right glyphs. Hate.
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Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi