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From: Claes Jacobsson Date: 18:34 on 12 Aug 2003 Subject: Standard C libraries - I hate some of them I hate all operating systems where the standard C library doesn't contain the char * strdup(const char *str) function. Altho it's not part of ANSI C standard library but a 4.4BSD thing, it should be too hard to include.
From: Chris Nandor Date: 15:30 on 12 Aug 2003 Subject: mod_perl modules on Mac OS X Mac OS X seems to be especially sensitive to symbols in libraries. I don't know why that is, it just is. So say you're building an module for Mac OS X, and at the top of your Makefile.PL you put: use Apache::ExtUtils 'command_table'; because that is what you are supposed to do. Well, you build it on Mac OS X and everything is just dandy. You install. It's all good. Then you come back later: % perl Makefile.PL dyld: perl Undefined symbols: _ap_add_module _ap_find_linked_module _ap_null_cleanup _ap_palloc _ap_register_cleanup _ap_remove_module _perl_clear_symtab _perl_cmd_perl_FLAG _perl_cmd_perl_TAKE1 _perl_cmd_perl_TAKE123 _perl_cmd_perl_TAKE2 _perl_get_startup_pool _perl_perl_cmd_cleanup Trace/BPT trap HUH? I just built and installed this 10 seconds ago, and now I can't build it! command_table require's the module if it exists, so it can see prototypes. But this causes a fatal error on Mac OS X if it sees undefined symbols, which it does. Because it was just too much trouble to use a sane dynamic loading system on Mac OS X. Or something. I figure that since I built it the first time without it "seeing prototypes" this way, it doesn't need to see them now, so I just comment out that line in the module, and hope that in some future Apache module it is not needed any more than it is with the ones I am working with presently.
From: Richard Clamp Date: 14:38 on 12 Aug 2003 Subject: dns caching in application So here's a not uncommon story. When I'm at home the local name server resolves http://hates-software.com as having an address just this side of the router. Webpages happen. I break free of the sofa magnetic pull, and take my laptop with me. Because I'm now talking to a different nameserver I get handed the address of the smoothwall router, when I do dns lookups, so ssh and everything else sane just works. Switch to the web browser, and it sits there and looks at me funny and then tells me that the connection timed out. "Funny, " I think, "this ssh session seems responsive and telnetting to port 80 on the box is working" And then you realise, it's being hateful again. The web browser has cached the results of a dns query internally. Internally - what don't you trust the resolver in the os to give that a go? Not only that, the only way to clear it is to quit the app and restart it. Yes mozilla, I'm looking at you, and all your bastard offspring, I have a few words to say to you. STUPID! STUPID! I WAS USING THAT BROWSER, AND YOU MADE ME KILL IT! STUPID! STUPID! ARGH! I DIDN'T HAVE EVERYTHING CAREFULLY BOOKMARKED, BECAUSE YOUR BOOKMARK SYSTEM SUCKS TOO! STUPID! One again the web seeks my destruction, even more than I seek its.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 13:58 on 12 Aug 2003 Subject: iMovie This stems from a while back when I was doing some freelance video editing for $games_magazine. I decided to use iMovie on a Titanium Powerbook. Don't ask. Now there are many reasons to hate iMovie but I worked with ti and appreciated some of the features. I let it lull me in to a false sense of security - even ignoring the fact that I had to jump through incredible hoops to convert NTSC to PAL. More fool me. Most non-linear video editing software has the concept of a shelf. You stick your movie clips on there and then construct stuff in the time line, cropping, editing and adding filters where necessary. Then you bake the movie and it works it all out for you. iMovie has a similar concept. Except it actually cuts up the movie clips and either has them in the shelf or the timeline. I can see why they did this. I don't have to like it but at least I can understand it. Except one time was moving everything off the time line and back into the shelf. I had saved the movie in advance of doing this. I thought I was ok. Except iMovie crashed. It had done this before. Lots. So I wasn't unduly worried. Except that it wiped all the assets being moved from the timeline to the shelf. So all the stuff I wanted then. I can only presume that it had some odd special move function to preserve space or something - I honestly don't know. 3 days work down the drain and a deadline looming. Laugh. I almost did. In a cackling, maniacally, verge of a nervous breakdown kind of way. My name is Simon Wistow and I hate iMovie.
From: Leon Brocard Date: 12:28 on 12 Aug 2003 Subject: dhcpcd First, why is dhcpcd a client and a daemon? What's going on? Why does it need to be a daemon if it is just a client and finds you an IP address every so often? I mean, that's worse than the X server/client terminology. OK, so we all know about DHCP. dhcpcd talks the magic protocol talk and finds you a new email address. All well and fine so far. So we're playing with a new AIX box in our test environment and it all seems good. The test environment uses DHCP but all is well. So we move it into the work environment so that we can start using it. Everything is well and we hack hack hack on it and start trusting it. Then an hour later after the move, it drops off the Net. Completely. No pinging. No routing. No ssh. Off. We ping syssies, get a console up on it (it has a DVD player but no video card, sigh) and try diagnosing. Turns out dhcpcd tries to recheck its IP lease every hour. The work environment didn't have a DHCP server, so what did it do? Instead of hanging on to the known, working IP address it set its IP address to 0.0.0.0 and kept on trying to find a DHCP server. Gah! Why is software so clueless? Keep on going as you were in the face of adversity, don't panic and drop off the Net! Static IP set, dhcpcd disabled, which I now hate. DHCP might be nice, if only it weren't for software... Leon
From: Arthur Bergman Date: 12:06 on 12 Aug 2003 Subject: ImageMagick, AIX, dynamic linkers and other evil stuff. So, work is moving from Linux to AIX, a move that seems opposite to what everyone is doing! (Maybe it is because we really want to set us up for a fight with SCO :). The reasons are sound, Linux cannot do 64bit clustered filesystems, it would be fine if it wasn't for the GODAMN ANAL LINKER that AIX uses! So off to Google, search around, see that even IBM says, use gcc (they ship it with AIX) and the Linux compatibility mode. So we compile using gcc, but THAT DOES NOT HELP because it is not xlc (note, xlC and xlc are different things, one is a c and another is a c++ compiler, and both are really named vac, or something, I still don't get it) that is giving us a headache, but rather the goddamn linker. So we use the shipped gnu ld which promptly tells us that linking on AIX is horrible broken and quits. In the end, after reading a thousand pages of manuals we find the -G option that you give to libraries to make them runtime linkable, however, the fucking idiotic m4 mess that is called autoconf tries to use the LDFLAGS to build it's sample test application, passes it a -G which makes xlc/ld complain since you ARE NOT BUILDING A LIBRARY BUT AN APPLICATION. So off I go and find which flags I do need. It turns out to be: CC=xlc LDFLAGS='-brtl -bnortllib -bautoexp -bM:SRE' If you wonder why I had to do CC=xlc, it is because otherwise it picks up cc which is like xlc (xlc uses it's invocation name to change parameters, so there is cc cc_r cc128 cc128_r xlc_r xlc_r4 you get the fucking idea), but with a weird modified ANSI command set. (using 'cc' gives us a freaky internal compiler error) So, now we are building, make checks works, do you think the PerlMagick thing works, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO of course not. It gets a freaky cannot find WriteOneJNGImage, so digging around a bit. JNG is PNG images using JPEG compression, but we have both libjpeg and libpng enabled... hmm...!!! No turns out libjpeg is not compiled into imagemagick because of asshole autoconf m4 shitty backwards mess. PLEASE MAKE AUTOCONF GO AWAY PLEASE DO NOT SHIP AUTOCONF WITH YOUR APP See, libjpeg hasn't been updated since 98, so it ships with a really old autoconf, now that makes a jconfig.h that stupidly is all the configure script managed to find, in this is the line #define HAVE_STDLIB_H However, it seems like modern configures write in thier config.h #define HAVE_STDLIB_H 1 Now, this is fine if you are gcc, but picky xlc says that I cannot redefine HAVE_STDLIB_H and makes configure go crap out and then it disables libjpeg. Ok, fine, but why does this break. Because the png delgate has #ifdefs around the WriteJNG code, but no #ifdefs protecting the USE of these functions. Lesser lds like GNU ld don't care, however AIX ld craps out because it cannot find this function anywhere it looks, and it craps out. So the solution was to patch libpjeg jconfig.h, add the weird LD flag options, then compile it using shared and VOILA everything worked. Amazingly no one has documented this on the web before, so that is why I am putting in the words How to compile build and link ImageMagick on AIX And please, just shoot m4. sky
From: Paul Mison Date: 11:30 on 12 Aug 2003 Subject: I hate Mac OS X browsers When you have a form shown on a web page, and a field selected, and you hit tab, what happens? Well, if you're using Safari, it moves to the next text field, ignoring buttons, checkboxes and so on. Camino, however, selects every form element in turn, including the buttons and checkboxes. Venerable oldie Internet Explorer offers this as a preference: http://2lmc.org/misc/ie_tab_option.png One of the things noted in that preference is that you can temporarily override the preference with Option in addition to Tab. What does this do in Camino? Nothing. In Safari? It inputs a real tab character in a form field. (I never need to do this. Is it a common request?) I hate Camino, because I prefer the Safari behaviour. I hate Safari, because sometimes I'd like to tab to form fields other than text ones, and then I have to use the mouse. I hate IE because the preference dialog is accessed with Command ; not Command , and anyway that dialog looks horrible. I also hate Mac OS X, because even when you enable Full Keyboard Access and allow it to tab to any field, that system-level preference isn't obeyed by Safari. I don't think I hate all this as much as Arthur does though.
From: Paul Mison Date: 15:29 on 11 Aug 2003 Subject: Canon PowerShot G3 driver and Windows 2000 Download PowerShot G3 driver from canon.co.uk. Double-click Setup.exe. Watch installer remove then reinstall TWAIN driver. Connect camera to computer. Watch Windows display 'New Hardware Detected' dialog. Wonder why the installer hasn't stopped this happening. Allow installer to run through once. No driver detected. Unplug and replug camera. Watch same 'New Hardware' wizard spring to life. Point it manually at the G3.INF file hidden in c:\mydocu~1\admini~2\common\, where WinZip's self-extractor has been persuaded to shit it (unlike, say, c:\temp, like it did last time). Watch as Windows searches all the places it searched last time, again in vain, then as it finds the .INF file it was pointed at and ignore it. Reboot, hoping something will be triggered. No effect. Scream at camera, impugn Windows loudly to the developer's corner of the office, and give up, hoping someone who cares will make it work.
From: Richard Clamp Date: 15:21 on 11 Aug 2003 Subject: I hates the hates-software software Not all of it, but most certainly the apache gubbins. Look at the quite evil gyrations you have to go to with mod_rewrite just to avoid hurting the existing vhosting. http://unixbeard.net/svn/richardc/hates-software/etc/httpd.conf Hateful thing.
From: Leon Brocard Date: 15:10 on 11 Aug 2003 Subject: Software Those electrons, those characters, the source code, the binaries... I hates it all! Leon
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Generated at 10:29 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi
