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[ Page 58 of 76 ]
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 12:54 on 18 Apr 2004 Subject: More Lotus Notes hate I've hated this program for so many reasons... Today I'm hating it because I'm at work and I'm trying to print a file. The printer appears to be inaccessible (probably it's turned off). Of course the cancel button doesn't work, so I have to go to the task manager to kill Notes since it isn't responding. Now I can't restart Notes, because it terminated in a way it didn't expect. My options are to restart the computer (I'm used to this, whenever I have to deal with Windows, so I would grumble but do it), _OR_ log out and log in again. Why, if that's all that is required to fix this alleged problem, can't Notes run the damn start-up/cleanup stuff itself? Is it going to gain something by me having to type in 5 passwords all over again (1 login, 1 Notes, 3 htaccess restricted websites)? I also have a gripe about the way that the printing is handled, since Notepad also freezes up when I try to print, and I have to kill it with the task manager since the cancel button doesn't work. But Notepad, to its credit, is willing to start again without giving me any of this shutdown crap. Wow, 20 minutes down the drain just trying to get something printed, and it still isn't printed. - A
From: Earle Martin Date: 01:52 on 16 Apr 2004 Subject: Guest rant from ESR This may be old news to some of you, but I thought it seemed apropos. "CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System... [is] a system which despite its superficial pseudo-friendliness is so undiscoverable that it might as well have been written in ancient Sanskrit." http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html
From: Phil!Gregory Date: 22:17 on 14 Apr 2004 Subject: MS Word Collating Multipage Mail Merged Documents I don't want too much. I have a 6-page mail merge document. I want to do a merge and then print multiple copies so that all of the pages for the first person's first copy are printed, then all of the pages for the first person's second copy, and so on. With Word, I can either print one copy for each person before going back and printing a second copy for everyone (collated) or I can get all the copies of the first person's first page followed by all the copies of the first person's second page, and so on. You'd think they would have thought of this. Even if there's a limitation in the printing interface (though "collate in groups of N pages" shouldn't be _too_hard), you should be able to order the output of the mail merge to achieve the desired effect. But no. I have to mess with the data going into Word to get what I want. What I get for using the program in the first place, I suppose.
From: Geoff Richards Date: 11:43 on 09 Apr 2004 Subject: Unlock Computer - please? Windows XP seems to have an equivalent of xlock. It's been suspended all night and now it comes up wanting a password: "This computer is in use and has been locked. "Only IBM-02Q0DRWJTLA\qef or an administrator can unlock this computer." That would be swell, if I knew what the fecking password is. And why do I have to type this mysterious password to unsuspend, but not when I boot the machine? Couldn't a cracker just reboot? Isn't that what I'm going to have to do anyway because I have never heard of having a password on this machine? Bah.
From: Paul Mison Date: 20:21 on 07 Apr 2004 Subject: Finder list view selection and stuff In every Finder, ever, up to and including Mac OS X 10.2, you could drag a rectangle to make your selection in both list and icon views. This meant that you could do some slightly clever things in a list with disclosed items (you know, that little triangle pointing down instead of across? Yes, them), such as selecting the top level folders only by dragging a narrow vertical selection. Well, I've just realised that you can't do that in 10.3's Finder. (I'm very tempted to call it rude names, by the way. Loser, perhaps?) No, in 10.3, you don't get a little rectangle. You just select every folder as you go up the list. So you can't do anything clever to just view the top folders. You can't even do tricks to do with opening the parent of the folder and playing with option click to disclose, because * the Finder doesn't handle 'disclose all' properly (should be option click, but actually this only works for the immediate children) * the Finder doesn't enforce a single view per folder (as a true spatial interface would, and as the pre Mac OS X Finder did), so it wouldn't record your change properly anyway Oh, and what do you expect to happen if you drag a selection like: folder child_one child_two to the Desktop? Well, it thinks you want to keep child_one and child_two inside folder. (I thought it might make child_one and child_two wind up at the same level as folder; I think the Mac OS Finder would have, anyway.) Of course, it doesn't copy the view settings or anything. No, that would be TOO EASY. Oh, and sometimes Finder forgets how to respond to command keys. Like, oooh, command W. Or command O. You know, little things, like BEHAVING LIKE EVERY OTHER FUCKING APP ON THE MAC EVER. Right. I need to move files about. Time to start up a Mac OS machine and connect the Ethernet network to this one.
From: Simon Wistow
Date: 11:38 on 05 Apr 2004
Subject: "hating gcc" or "random errors make life interesting"
I am starting to get used to the fact that some specialist software,
which doesn't have the benefit of a massive testing base, doesn't do
what it says on the tin. The most recent one being some SAN software
that, despite its only real job being to hold a sequences of bits in
*precisely* the same order was when they were put down, err, doesn't.
Random flip-flop a-go-go. *sigh*
But that is a diffwerent hate. And at leats the developers are
responsive.
However gcc has *masses* of testing. Masses. It is, probbaly, the most
widely used compiler in the world or, if not, close. [0]
I have this code. It is fairly crufty because I've spent the last two
working days (well, 1 and a half including this morning) rewriting it
and rewriting it and cursing myself for inexplicably having a 2 day
braino.
Yes. I blamed myself. As Klortho's advice number 11907 says
-*-
Looking for a compiler bug is the strategy of LAST resort.
LAST resort.
-*-
And this was a potential mass of fence post erros and a whole other
county things.
while (i=files()) {
if (_start<0) _start = i;
if (_end<0) _end = i;
if (_end<i-1 || i<0) {
if (_start != _end) {
cerr << _start << "-" << _end;
} else {
cerr << _start;
}
if (i>=0) {
cerr << ", ";
}
_start = i;
}
_end = i;
if (i<0) break;
//cerr << "";
}
The code is designed to take a list of numbers such as
1,2,3,4,6,8,9,11
and turn them into
1-4, 6, 8-9, 11
Which is all well and good. Except, well, notice the commented out
thing at the bottom? If I uncomment it, it works perfectly. If it's
commented than it all goes tits up and never recognises the end of a
sub-sequence.
*sigh*
And turning off O2 optimisation doens't work either. I'm wondering if
it's some reserved token problem based on _end. Hrrmm, no. Changing it
to _foo doesn't work either.
My god, it really is shite. I hate you gcc. May a thosuand hairy backed
baboons violate your ocular cavities.
Simon
[0] Warning, contains traces of arbitary numbers and wild speculation
From: Juerd Date: 19:45 on 04 Apr 2004 Subject: Software that won't die Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT! Caught SIGINT!
From: Paul Mison Date: 15:21 on 02 Apr 2004 Subject: Finder 'apply to enclosed items' borkenness In Get Info in the Mac OS X Finder you can change permissions. It's pretty nicely done, and works fine. Until you try to "apply to enclosed items", the equivalent of chmod -R (or -r, or whatever. Case sensitivity rarely sticks in my brain.) This just plain fails to work for me. Time to break out the third-party utilities, or (sigh) the command line.
From: Claes Jacobsson Date: 12:21 on 01 Apr 2004 Subject: SOAP, XML-RPC, CORBA and other bloatware Today I heard a story about a load-balancer. That load-balancer had a SOAP interface for managing it.. What's that crap? What about SNMP??? SNMP is way older than SOAP and supported by way more management softwares than some proprietary SOAP implementation. You see, I don't have a problem with the idea of SOAP, I have huge problems with the specification and implementations of it. SOAP is supposed to be cross-platform and work with "any" language. But seriously, how many SOAP libraries are known to work well with each other (note the "well"). SOAP is probablly as bloated as CORBA these days except it's a lot easier to read what's transmitted by human. The big problem I see with SOAP is that the specification is too loose, you can do the same thing in many different ways and all implementations (ofcourse) do it differently. Why did they invent SOAP in the first place? - Is it because w3c or whoever didn't like CORBA? - Is it because the crack-monkeys have been set loose in the XML-era? - Is it because there-is-so-much-bandwidth-so-I-don't-care-if-a-message-is-huge? Instead of trying to solve the problem by inventing a whole new protocol - why not sit down, identify the problems, write a tight specification and invent some "100% SOAP compliant" quality certification??? Problem is we're still only human and it's in our nature to disagree. /Claes
From: Nicholas Clark Date: 16:35 on 30 Mar 2004 Subject: mail.app attach window So I want to attach a public ssh key to my message. Can I? Can I hell. mail.app's "attach" window has a file browser which doesn't show . files Or in this case the . dir .ssh. So I can't open the directory containing the file I wish to attach without some extra fandango with some other application. Hateful. Mmm. detach hate and now attach hate. Symmetry. Nicholas Clark
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