The computing stuff rant thread

[Mr Larrington]

Microsith, directory listings generated from the command line are in alphabetical order, yes?  And sorting a column in Excel using "Sort... A-Z" sorts stuffs into alphabetical order, yes?

Then why the fucking fuck of Fuckhamptonshire are they NOT THE SAME BEFORE AND AFTER SORTING?  You useless, cretinous morons

[fuaran]

Microsith, directory listings generated from the command line are in alphabetical order, yes?  And sorting a column in Excel using "Sort... A-Z" sorts stuffs into alphabetical order, yes?

Then why the fucking fuck of Fuckhamptonshire are they NOT THE SAME BEFORE AND AFTER SORTING?  You useless, cretinous morons

Depends on what sort of DIR command you used. If you don't specify the sorting, it is not necessarily alphabetical order. Depends on the file system etc. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140304-00/?p=1603
Use something like this if you want it to be alphabetical.

Code: [Select]

dir /on
Don't know about Excel.
The other confusion is Windows Explorer tries to be clever, and uses natural sort order, instead of alphabetical sorting.

[Mr Larrington]

Ta.  That explains quite a lot, including the rank stupidity of motor-car audio systems that have no notion of playlists and thus require one to spend the first evening of one's hols repopulating a USB stick with 2000 mp3 files in A Certain Order.  Yes, Chrysler, I'm looking at you

[pcolbeck]

Multicast, how I hate thee. Is all a pain in the backside especially in fabrics. TRM ah well you need to buy the latest switches for that.

[ian]

Mothership IT. OK, so it seems we're rolling out some new flavour of MFA for our email. I'm sure that's very secure.

Is truly the best way to initiate this by sending everyone an email with a link embedded in it?

[Mr Larrington]

• Use FINDSTR to, well, Find a String¹ in a bunch of files, outputting to a text file
• Use notepad++ Find & Replace function to rid the text file of unwanted colons and spaces and make the thing tab-separated
• Paste into Excel, copy the column I need back into notepad++
• Use pre-existing notepad++ macros to Do Stuff to text so it stops being a list and starts being something SCIENCE can interpret
• Save, propagate to Certain Folders in the SCIENCE-approved structure, use pre-existing .bat file to update SCIENCE-approved archive and copy to folder where SCIENCE looks for This Sort of Thing
• Run SCIENCE
• Scratch head wondering how the actual fuck the sub-string "t680" has been turned into "t60" during the above

I take it Finestre, the Demon of Such Things, does not have Sundays off, unless this is her subtle way of telling me I need to learn a Windows-compatible scripting language.

1: which definitely contains correct information because the SCIENCE would have complained much much earlier

[Ham]

• Use FINDSTR to, well, Find a String¹ in a bunch of files, outputting to a text file
• Use notepad++ Find & Replace function to rid the text file of unwanted colons and spaces and make the thing tab-separated
• Paste into Excel, copy the column I need back into notepad++
• Use pre-existing notepad++ macros to Do Stuff to text so it stops being a list and starts being something SCIENCE can interpret
• Save, propagate to Certain Folders in the SCIENCE-approved structure, use pre-existing .bat file to update SCIENCE-approved archive and copy to folder where SCIENCE looks for This Sort of Thing
• Run SCIENCE
• Scratch head wondering how the actual fuck the sub-string "t680" has been turned into "t60" during the above

I take it Finestre, the Demon of Such Things, does not have Sundays off, unless this is her subtle way of telling me I need to learn a Windows-compatible scripting language.

1: which definitely contains correct information because the SCIENCE would have complained much much earlier

My money is on Excel choosing to reformat automatically based on the content of your paste.  Best to save and then import CSV where you can specify handling of each data field. Oh, and if you only need to use Excel to columnise copy, consider Textpad, which has a block copy mode (and understands regular expressions)

[pcolbeck]

Oh, and if you only need to use Excel to columnise copy, consider Textpad, which has a block copy mode (and understands regular expressions)

Notepad++ already has block copy and regular expressions.

[Mr Larrington]

It's difficult to imagine how even Microsith can interpret the string "kw_t680.a.single.timmys" as anything requiring conversion, especially when Excel is perfectly happy with "volvo_vnl.c.single.nancre".

Note to self: investigate this block copy malarkey

[Kim]

In the absence of a serial terminal connected with insufficiently wet string or my laughable attempts at writing shell scripts that pass complicated parameters to things, Excel would be the prime suspect, thobut.  Simply on the basis of concentration of accumulated evil.

[Mr Larrington]

iTunes lost interest in speaking to the amp in the Great Hall over the network last night.  Much stopping and starting of things before the balance of power was restored.  Throughout which it was happy to continue communicating with the Airport Express in the Chips Room

All this excitement seemed to scramble DJ Random's tiny brane, because he started playing stuff in alphabetical order by album artist as opposed to:

Code: [Select]

10 Play first track on list
20 Disappear track once played
30 Add new track to bottom of list
40 GOTO 10
I eventually unearthed a thing in the View menu* which restored his normal behaviour but really, FruitCo, why/how did you change it in the first place?

* Not helped by my habit of putting iTunes on the further-away monitor of the two in the Estate Office, so it's almost beyond the reach of the naked uncorrected eye.  Though it rarely remembers that this is where it's supposed to sit, so I have to move it manually almost every time I start it, which I don't have to do for anything else I choose to put there.

[Afasoas]

It seems in 2020, putting boxes you are happy to have talking both IPv4/IPv6 and boxes you only want to talk IPv4 on the same network is a bad idea. Well, it works in some scenarios and not others.

Also, it seems DNS resolution still doesn't work. 5 second pause (depending on which glibc system call was used) in resolving DNS requests because one of the external DNS resolvers was unreachable. Due to a stuck (multiple:notraffic) firewall state.

[DaveReading]

How is it that Chrome on Android doesn't understand what an effing scrollbar is ?

[pcolbeck]

It seems in 2020, putting boxes you are happy to have talking both IPv4/IPv6 and boxes you only want to talk IPv4 on the same network is a bad idea. Well, it works in some scenarios and not others.

The network isn't the issue it really doesn't care. If its L2 switches they dont know if its IPv4 or IPv6 they only understand Ethernet. If its L3 switches or routers then they will ignore IPv6 if they aren't configured for it (and visa versa) but if they are configured for bot then they will handle both appropriately.

The issue will be the compute operating systems. If they have both IPv4 and IPv6 enabled they sometimes do dumb things like use IPv6 DNS before trying IPv4 so you have to wait for the timeout before you try IPv4. You cant confuse the network itself by using both.

[Kim]

If they have both IPv4 and IPv6 enabled they sometimes do dumb things like use IPv6 DNS before trying IPv4 so you have to wait for the timeout before you try IPv4.

That isn't dumb, assuming the IPv6 DNS server is working.  If it isn't, then it's either an incorrectly configured operating system or a broken DNS server.

[pcolbeck]

If they have both IPv4 and IPv6 enabled they sometimes do dumb things like use IPv6 DNS before trying IPv4 so you have to wait for the timeout before you try IPv4.

That isn't dumb, assuming the IPv6 DNS server is working.  If it isn't, then it's either an incorrectly configured operating system or a broken DNS server.

Well yes. Its dumb because some O/S come or have come with IPv6 enabled by default (Ubuntu I'm looking at you here) which a lot of users wont think to disable after installation. Corporate OS wonks should know this of course.

[Feanor]

Having IPv6 enabled by default on an OS is not a dumb default, IMHO.

Having a network configured such that the network-operator provisioned DNS server happily doles up IPv6 AAAA records whilst at the same time being unable route to those addresses is a broken network configuration.

Of course, I'm assuming that the client device is configured to pick up DNS via DHCP from the network operator, and not hard-coded to a 3-rd party DNS server, which the network operator has no control over, other than to firewall out external DNS lookups.

[Kim]

Oh, that's a different problem, and not really DNS-related at all.  (A DNS resolver removing AAAA records sounds like a nasty hack.)

If a box doesn't have a route to the IPv6 internet, it needs not to think that it does.  IPv6 link-local addresses are harmless and possibly even useful, so disabling all IPv6 support on the OS is a poor workaround that actively discourages IPv6 adoption.  As ever, it's going to come down to poor IPv6 support in consumer routers and half-arsed implementations by ISPs, and the best way to fix that is to make them better (even if that's just informing the client that the IPv6 internet is unroutable in a timely manner, so you don't have to wait for a timeout).

(IME this timeout problem usually happens when there's a tunnel to the IPv6 internet that doesn't work, like that Teredo thing that was briefly popular.)

[TheLurker]

I have to create an XML file for import into MS-Project.  Shall I stop now?  No?  OK.

I have the schemata.  Excellent, I think, this'll be a doddle* just identify all the mandatory fields and stuff appropriate data into them.  Odd, I think, nearly everything is "optional" (minoccurs= "0").  How accommodating of MS....   Some days and a lot hunting up and down teh intarwebs and not a insignificant amount of tyre kicking later.... it works. 

Would you be surprised to learn that many of those "optional" elements are anything but?  Thought not.  So let's a have a big round of applause for Microsoft and their ongoing dedication to providing programmers everywhere with utterly shit and almost totally useless documentation.  Fucking idiots.


*Yeah, yeah I know.  You'd think I'd have learnt by now, but no; unthinking, blind optimism does kick in in from time to time.

[Mr Larrington]

Fondleslab!  Kindly explain why you decided to restart yourself and demand I re-enter my FruitCo ID details when I was in the middle of Doing Things.  Is it because it was your birthday?

[CommuteTooFar]

Grrrh I have spent a day and a half trying to setup my  Fitbit charge 4.
Firstly it would not connect to my pc.  A error message told me to reboot my phone (Its a Windows 10 desktop pc)
So I try to connect with my phone.  Still cannot connect properly to the fitbit which was still telling me to do the setup.
The app seemed to attach to the Charge 4. It had been paired with the bluetooth and displayed a screen showing my
street and a green button saying gps on.  The charge 4 remained on the setup start screen.
Today I removed the bluetooth pairing and deleted the entry for the charge 4 from the app.
Start again this time when I tried to get the app to find the charge 4 it complained I needed to use the app to connect to the charge 4.
So I think new device, perhaps there is new software. So I deleted the app. When the google store and requested fitbit app. Google
Play says requires Android 7 (Nougat). I quickly check the version of android and discover version 6. Oh dear.
So Windows will not connect and the app will not work on my phone.
I do have another android device. So I press the button on my tablet computer. It springs to life and demands to be charged.
I connect the tablet to the wall and download the newer version of the fitbit app. This app connects and announces the charge 4 battery
is flat and and cannot pair properly. This is much further than I have been before. So I put the Charge 4 in its charging cable again.
I delete the bluetooth from the tablet and fitbit app. I rescan a pairing code appears on the Charge 4 I enter it in the app.  A proper
error free connection is made.  The charge 4 is clearly doing something the pattern on the setup screen is rippling. The app announces
a successful installation of the Charge 4.
Not quite.  the Charge 4 is still displaying the www.fitbit.com/setup (tells you to use app and phone) screen and would not swipe past it.
I knew the charge 4 had done something.  So I stuck it back in its power cradle. Held the side button for 10 seconds. It vibrates a smilie face appears then blank as it restarts.
This time the time appears and I can select other functions. 
Success - Fitbit do not make it easy.


 

 

 

[Feanor]

Gah. Canon.

Because I don't have access to the photocopier / scanner at work right now, I've bought a basic Canon LiDE 400 scanner.
Downloaded the driver / scanning softwre package and tried to install it on the work laptop.

"You need to be logged on as an administrator. Please log out and log back on with an Administrator account."

WTF? I *am* an administrator!
R-click and 'Run as Admin' no better.

Try on my own home PC.
Exactly the same!
And I'm a Domain Admin on that network!

After a *lot* of googling, it turns out it needs to be a *Local* Admin account, a Domain account with local admin rights is not good enough!
WT Absolute F?
So I had to create a temporary local account on the machine to be able to run the installer.

Now, it turns out the downloaded installer is not a full offline installer, it's a stub which connects to their servers to find the latest versions of stuff, as is the annoying way of things these days.
So when you launch the stub installer, and UAC asks for further Admin credentials, you *must* use the same local account credentials you logged in with, not any other Admin credentials eg your domain ones, or you get a cryptic message that it can't connect to their update site.

What a steaming Pile of Poo User Experience.

[TimC]

Bloody Google. They've cut off my cycling club's website for some unknown reason. It was indexed, verified and appearing in search results up to 4 April, but is now cast adrift, and is 'unknown to Google'. Trying to get it to read the sitemap.xml is an exercise in futility, yet it gives precisely no information about what it doesn't like. Nothing's changed in the coding (which is pretty opaque to me anyway - it's a Wix site), and Google Console and Analytics can both see it. Gah!!

[Morat]

Gah. Canon.

Because I don't have access to the photocopier / scanner at work right now, I've bought a basic Canon LiDE 400 scanner.
Downloaded the driver / scanning softwre package and tried to install it on the work laptop.

"You need to be logged on as an administrator. Please log out and log back on with an Administrator account."

WTF? I *am* an administrator!
R-click and 'Run as Admin' no better.

Try on my own home PC.
Exactly the same!
And I'm a Domain Admin on that network!

After a *lot* of googling, it turns out it needs to be a *Local* Admin account, a Domain account with local admin rights is not good enough!
WT Absolute F?
So I had to create a temporary local account on the machine to be able to run the installer.

Now, it turns out the downloaded installer is not a full offline installer, it's a stub which connects to their servers to find the latest versions of stuff, as is the annoying way of things these days.
So when you launch the stub installer, and UAC asks for further Admin credentials, you *must* use the same local account credentials you logged in with, not any other Admin credentials eg your domain ones, or you get a cryptic message that it can't connect to their update site.

What a steaming Pile of Poo User Experience.

That Local Admin not Domain Admin thing is completely annoying. I can see why MS don't want you to manage an entire network from one set of credentials but sometimes you NEED one login to rule them all for installing stuff like AntiVirus or other agents. You just end up adding a domain account to the local admin group on all machines and you're back to square one.

[Mr Larrington]

Microsoth: I'm sorry, Dave.  I'm afraid I can't do that.  Contact your Network Administrator.
/me: I AM the Network Administrator!  Get in the fucking sea.