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[ Page 65 of 76 ]
From: Phil!Gregory
Date: 20:30 on 12 Nov 2003
Subject: Borland's Bloody Database Engine
*This* one continues to cause me many headaches and provokes the desire to
kick someone in the head.
As I may have mentioned, I use databases comprising Paradox tables,
accessed through the Borland Database Engine. The BDE's approach to file
locking is nothing if not annoying. When it wants to lock something
(table, record, whatever), it creates two files in the same directory as
the table, PARADOX.LCK and PDOXUSERS.LCK. These reference a third file,
PDOXUSERS.NET. In order to share files among processes or computers, all
three of these files must be visible to all computers. But PDOXUSERS.NET
usually lives in C:\, so it's a different file for each computer. Gah.
But that's okay; it's configurable. I can change the location of that
file in my program, so each department can have its programs all sharing
the same PDOXUSERS.NET file, which lives on a network share.[0] I can
change the file location for the entire computer, too, but what I *can't*
do is set it on a database-by-database basis. This leads to much
annoyingness as I try to access several different databases, each with its
files in different places.
Why couldn't Borland have just put all of the files in the database's
working directory? ARRRRGH!
[0] Oh, and I have to set LOCAL SHARE to TRUE. The default setting of
FALSE doesn't allow network-shared tables and can result in database
corruption even on a standalone computer. I discovered both of these
facts the hard way. It's the default because occasionally it results
in faster database access. <kick>
From: Phil!Gregory Date: 22:58 on 11 Nov 2003 Subject: Delphi and Inconsistencies At work, I write programs in Delphi. Generally, these programs access their databases using Delphi's built-in components and the Borland Database Engine. Occasionally, I need to change the structure of certain tables. I generally do this in the program, for various reasons, usually by handing the database object an SQL statement to run. (Note that these are often Paradox tables (and _that's_ a different hate), so I'm using SQL to update a Paradox "database".) Why SQL? Well, Borland's native components only support changing column definitions if you're creating a table; if you want to do it on the fly, you have to use SQL. I recently needed to change the primary index on a table. BDE SQL supports this. It even has a specific syntax for deleting the primary key (as opposed to a named secondary key). Does it have a special syntax for creating a primary key? Well, no. Actually, you can't create a primary key with SQL; you have to use a method from the built-in components. (Don't ask how long it took to figure this one out.) Argh! Hm. Need to be less long-winded in my hates. And possibly less obscure. But I've got a couple more Delphi hates kicking around, just waiting for me to be annoyed enough at them to vent.
From: Bob Walker Date: 17:26 on 10 Nov 2003 Subject: nslookup on sun rah! the nslookup shipped with solaris 8 is most hateful bash-2.03$ nslookup macrospace.com dns2 which sites there for a while. snoop shows its doign this:- koi -> dns2.macrospace.com DNS C 163.65.85.80.in-addr.arpa. Internet PTR ? a few times untill it comes back *** Can't find server name for address 80.85.65.163: No response from server *** Default servers are not available what you mean the server name i gave you ! gah meh! the version with bind 9 admitedly works better. djb++ dnsip is so much nicer
From: Simon Wistow Date: 11:23 on 06 Nov 2003 Subject: overloaded key combos This is partly due to the parlous state of *nix standardisation but Ihave one particiular hate which people are free to extrapolate. At $new work we standardise on WindowMaker as a window manager and, in general, it's ok. Like Enlightenemnt, only not as good. So I've attempted to customise bits of it to be more like Englightenment ncluding recycling muscle memory by remapping the "Move desktop (left|right)" keys to Alt+Shift+(L|R) Which is fine and works dandy. Except we also standardise on Nedit as an editor (or atleast, of the editors available I prefer that to Vi or Emacs). Switching onto a desktop containing an Nedit window that was previously in focus will, naturally, switch to that window. And Alt+Shift+(L|R) is interpreted as being the same as Shift+(L|R) which highlights the next character. Now the author of Nedit will claim it's the auhtor of WM's fault and vice versa but it's just plain fricking annoying that I'm shuttling between desktops and suddenly I'm hauled up short like rhino made of lint in a toffee gravel trap. Annoying is to weak a word actually. In fact, you could say I hate it.
From: Phil!Gregory Date: 17:40 on 03 Nov 2003 Subject: Dialog Boxes Dialog boxes are pretty simple creatures. They have some text and some buttons. Sometimes the text asks you to make a decision, and press different buttons based on your decision. Sometimes the labels on the buttons bear *no* resemblance to the actions they perform. I'm not talking about buttons that outright lie; fortunately, they're pretty rare. But in Windows, it's very easy to create dialog boxes with "standard" buttons, like "Yes", "No", "OK", and "Cancel". This leads to error messages like "The program has died unexpectedly. Press OK to quit and Cancel to debug." Oh, yes, "Cancel" is so much like "debug" in meaning. Thanks, Microsoft. (Yes, this was a Windows 2000 error.) Why can't more people take a page from Apple's HCI guidelines, which specify that button labels should be verbs? "Quit" and "Debug" would make so much more sense than "OK" and "Cancel".
From: Bob Walker Date: 15:46 on 31 Oct 2003 Subject: nagios i now hate nagios with a passion. we had it all workign nicely before but then we changed all our IPs so i thought i would take the oppourtunity while i was rewriting the config files to upgrade the version. This is where the pain started. Basic things now dont work it can mamange to ping a machien once but then fails after that. this is less than optimal in a program where this is a basic function. then to top it all the graphics stuff doesnt work either. libpng warning: Application was compiled with png.h from libpng-1.0.6 libpng warning: Application is running with png.c from libpng-1.2.4 gd-png: fatal libpng error: Incompatible libpng version in application and library [Thu Oct 30 13:29:19 2003] [error] [client 192.168.12.16] Premature end of script headers: /usr/local/nagios/sbin/trends.cgi even though the only png.h which exists on the system is 1.2.4 and then the older versuion doesnt even compile now bah i hate software
From: Jody Belka Date: 01:42 on 31 Oct 2003 Subject: pine & courier-imap It's important to realise that it's the combination of these two pieces of software that i find particularly hateful. At the same time, I place the blame firmly on pine in this case, as courier isn't actually doing anything wrong. Now, courier-imap lets you have both folders and messages in a single folder. Pine can cope with this. It starts to have trouble when courier puts everything below the inbox. Now this is completely and utterly legal (AFAIK); unfortunately, pine's folder list can't cope with this, and you have to enter the name of the folder manually. At this point we now clash with another feature of pine. pine has an Inbox-Path option, which is used anytime INBOX is specified as an unqualified folder name. it doesn't matter which server you have selected, INBOX always takes you to the Inbox-Path folder. So, if you only have one courier-imap server things aren't too bad. you set the Inbox-Path and everything works well enough. But add another server to the mix. Now you only have one Inbox-Path, so any time you want to go to the other servers inbox you have to type in the fully qualified folder name. that is, server name, user name, and any connection options that are required. that can be a lot of typing, and just pisses me off. i HATE software -- Jody Belka knew (at) pimb (dot) org
From: Earle Martin Date: 23:03 on 30 Oct 2003 Subject: Idiotic mail filtering An easy target: really stupid software that "filters" mail (read: blocks it for idiotic reasons). I just got a call from my dad asking me if I knew why a mail he sent to someone had been returned as blocked. I got him to forward me the error message. Here it is: -------- From: postmaster@xxxx.xxx.xx To: [ my dad ]@yahoo.com Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:50:06 +0160 (BST) Subject: From: [ my dad ]@yahoo.com Your Message has not been delivered because of LVSC's content policy. Details: - Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:50:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: Sender: [ my dad ]@yahoo.com Recipient(s): [ someone ]@lvsc.org.uk Scenario: Scenarios/Incoming/Block Profanity: The operation completed successfully. Text Analysis Results This report describes the search expressions found in this message. Scenarios/Incoming/Block Profanity found the following search expressions in '0.0.0': * The phrase 'britney spears' was found at the location(s): 4. -------- I would be amused that the software has reclassified the Pop Princess as being obscene, were it not for the fact that it's resulted in my dad's mail being rejected. The thing he didn't understand was that he didn't actually mention her in the original mail, which he sent to me too. It took one glance at it to work out why. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ That's right - Yahoo! Mail's software inserted Britney into my dad's mail as an advert at the bottom, and imbecilic software at the other end rejected it because of that. Fucking dimwits. Yes, lvsc.org.uk, I'm looking at you!
From: Juerd
Date: 21:45 on 30 Oct 2003
Subject: Data size units in software
top (procps, 3.1.9)
"m" => megabyte
iftop (0.11)
"KB" => kilobit
"Kb" => kilobit
"MB" => megabit
"Mb" => megabit
Konqueror, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape 4
"KB" => kilobyte
"MB" => megabyte
wget (GNU, 1.8.2)
"K" => kilobyte
"KB" => kilobyte
Correct would be:
"kb" => kilobit
"kB" => kilobyte
"Mb" => megabit
"MB" => megabyte
millibits do not exist => "mb" is wrong
millibytes do not exist => "mB" is wrong
Hate hate hate.
Yours,
Juerd
P.S. I hate "MiB" and friends even more. Bytes go per 1024 instead of
1000. Always. The hard drive manufacturers should change their
information, not the rest of the world.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 13:13 on 30 Oct 2003 Subject: Panther Hate Don't get me wrong. I quite like a lot of Panther, but I hate a lot of the new stuff too. And I've only been using if for an hour or so. First up, the installer is stupid. It keeps displaying random bars with random text. Installing foo. Processing foo. I'm not entirely sure what installing does if it's not processing the files (and vice versa,) but apparently it's a seperate thing. And the times are widly wrong. And you think you're done and it just switches to another random installation stage. I hate (I mean, really, really dispise) that Apple want to put my whole name "Mark Fowler" on the menubar for fast user switching. That's the most valuable screen real estate in the world, and they want my whole name there. Dumb. DUMB. DUMB! I just set up a new account for guest users to use my system, and I wanted to change thier default browser to be Camino. I spent ten minutes looking in every single tab in System Preferences until I finally remembered that they'd moved it inside Safari. So I have to load up Safari to tell it not to load Safari, but load something else instead. Huh? What kind of logic is this? Don't get me started on the weird expose bug where it would trigger every time I switched applications. Odd. I hate the new finder. I had nice icons set up there so I could drag things onto things onto the toolbar and things like opening a shell window or loading the file in emacs or setting the directory as the default location would happen. Now the space where the toolbar was is a large fake metal section and all my icons are down the side of the page taking up stupid amounts of space. I'm sure I can replace these with Folder Actions or something, but damnit, my old solution worked. Oh, and would it really have killed Apple to compile in X11 support for emacs? No, I don't think so.
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[ Page 65 of 76 ]
Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi