The computing stuff rant thread

[Mr Larrington]

A pedant writes:

The heavily-armed and annoyed types inside the giant wooden rabbit horse of myth and legend were Greeks.

[Kim]

Hence the sayings "Beware of geeks bearing GIFs" and "Beware of Trojans, they're complete smegheads."

[barakta]

Fucking university fucking piece of fucking shit website.

[Mr Larrington]

If it's $DAY_OF_WEEK then it must be time to get narked at the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia.

Again.

iTunes 12.0.1.26!  Firstly the version number scrolls off the top of the "Help...About" wossname if you blink, but that's a minor annoyance.  No, picture the following scenario.  I have ripped a CD.  Teh Intarwebs has no idea what it is, which is no great surprise since it is a compilation of largely unknown bands from Captain Cook's Mistake, released in 1995.  Ergo I have to enter the details manually.

I am entering the name of a band.  We shall call them "The Powder Monkeys", because that is/was their name.  Clicky on the "Artist" box under "Get Info" (why the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia cannot call this "Properties" like everyone else is a yart¹) and start typing.  Get as far as "The ".  Then you decide that this track is by The Adverts and helpfully complete the box for me.  Because the first artiste in the iTunes Library whose name begins "The" something is The Adverts.  Geddit?

This was clearly the idea of a massive plank who wants badly to be introduced to Mr Shovel before being made to rip compilation CDs comprised of alternating tracks by "The ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha", "The Advertorials" and "The Brian Jonestown Massacre²" until they want to go to the toilet.  A lobotomised rat displays more BRANES than this.

Also, fondleslab!  When I'm trying to position the cursor to edit some text inna Big Box like for e.g. the "Reply" box on a well-known ranting cycling forum, quit moving the fucking text around.  Or give me some fucking arrow keys! 

• yet another rantworthy topic
• they exist.  And they're a Rubbish

[David Martin]

Another Mac PSU goes up in smoke. Cabe fracture just on the mac side of the PSU. I noticed the PSU was very hot and then saw the black and fractured cable.

A chance to select the 'Broken/smoking hardware' option on our IT support form..

[barakta]

Hope IT replace the mac soon.  Do you use macs in biosciences at your uni?

[Mr Larrington]

Macs!  Bah!

I am in a Mac-infested house ATM and for academic reasons needed to use Miss von Brandenburg's machine.  I eventually had to use Google to find the "On" switch.

Also it has a single-button mouse

[CommuteTooFar]

I have been hunting a kernel panic all week.  Eventually I manage to fix it then after about an hour of testing with memory stressing the machine panics for another unrelated  reason, which may not be the fault of my driver but it might.

[Afasoas]

bah.

If someone tells you a character/string column is unique, check whether their definition of unique is case sensitive/insensitive.

[ian]

Macs!  Bah!

I am in a Mac-infested house ATM and for academic reasons needed to use Miss von Brandenburg's machine.  I eventually had to use Google to find the "On" switch.

Also it has a single-button mouse

Cool, a Jurassic Mac. Did you travel back in time, or did the past catch up?

On other matters, last night's purge of malware from the familial computer took no fewer than four bloody hours. A browser took about a week to open because it was trying open six additional windows all helpfully offering updates to Java, Flash, etc. Every page was decorated with so many ads for vouchers and scams that it was pretty hard to see any content, every search was diverted somewhere strange that looked like Google, but every result link was scamtastic. I was, to be honest, impressed by the level of ingenuity. A steaming cauldron of self-referential malware. Have malware? Come on, collect the set.

Anyway, 564 items removed. The usual suspects, PC tune-ups, video 'conversion' utilities and downloaders (really father, at your age). For the four hundredth time, stop clicking every download link that a web page tells you to.

Not knowing much about the Windows world, is there a good anti-malware app for people with no internet sense at all? I ran Malwarebytes in free mode to clean things up, but there needs to something that lassoes the enthusiastic gullibility of my father before he can download and install something else. There's evidently no link he's not going to click if he thinks it takes him closer to naked mature ladies. And if the web thinks his PC needs a tune-up? Oh yes please.

[Woofage]

Not knowing much about the Windows world, is there a good anti-malware app for people with no internet sense at all?

I don't know much about the windows world either, but we have 3 win boxes in the house and none has succumbed to any kind of malware. Your parents obviously have some special knack. I'm pretty sure win can be locked down so nothing can be installed. I once had a work 'pooter like that during a period of IT Gestapo management.

My other suggestions would be Linux Mint, ChromeOS or (cough) Hackintosh .

[Mr Larrington]

Macs!  Bah!

I am in a Mac-infested house ATM and for academic reasons needed to use Miss von Brandenburg's machine.  I eventually had to use Google to find the "On" switch.

Also it has a single-button mouse

Cool, a Jurassic Mac. Did you travel back in time, or did the past catch up?

At first it felt like travelling back to 1989, when I last used a Mac for longer than ten seconds, but this one has Useful Features like a colour display, a hard disk and the ability to multitask without resorting to Horribles like Switcher.

Intensive use of Google suggests that it is a post-August 2007 Intel Alumin(i)um iMac.  I don't know whether it's the later model which ditched FireWire for another USB port.  The mouse may be a relic from Another Time.  Anyway, she says it's Old and Slow and will probably be replaced soon.  In the past she has mentioned replacing it with a Windows box on financial grounds but a short period of exposure to Win 8 seems to have cured that idea. She only upgraded to OS X Lion a couple of weeks ago coz the latest version of Vectorworks won't play under Snow Leopard.

Mr Sunshine's Mac is a big fuck-off deskside Thing with a Dell monitor and a two-button mouse with no markings except a label reading "Made in China".  And you can see the power switch without a dentist's mirror.

And I still don't have any biscuits.

[Mr Larrington]

I'm just a primitive creature of the heath, so pardon my savage ignorance, but when I wish to view upon my Fondleslab a PDF file saved to Dropbox, the stupid Dropbox app doesn't need to "update preview" if the fucking file hasn't changed since the last time I looked at it, does it?  Especially when it's a "favorite" (sic) and is therefore alleged to be stored locally.

The time spent dispassionately viewing a spinny thing is somewhat wearing.  Especially when the "smallest size" version of the file is still eighteen fucking megabytes big

[hellymedic]

The time spent dispassionately viewing a spinny thing is somewhat wearing.

This, in spades.
Seem to have had it lots when just browsing the interwebs since Yosemite 'upgrade'.

Tonight partner couldn't get our network printer to work.
Until I enabled printer sharing on my laptop.

Seems Yosemite 'upgrade' disabled our network printer sharing by default buggrit!

[David Martin]

Hope IT replace the mac soon.  Do you use macs in biosciences at your uni?

Yes. Both Mac and PC are supported managed desktops.
PSU on order..

[Ham]

Macs!  Bah!

I am in a Mac-infested house ATM and for academic reasons needed to use Miss von Brandenburg's machine.  I eventually had to use Google to find the "On" switch.

Also it has a single-button mouse

Cool, a Jurassic Mac. Did you travel back in time, or did the past catch up?

On other matters, last night's purge of malware from the familial computer took no fewer than four bloody hours. A browser took about a week to open because it was trying open six additional windows all helpfully offering updates to Java, Flash, etc. Every page was decorated with so many ads for vouchers and scams that it was pretty hard to see any content, every search was diverted somewhere strange that looked like Google, but every result link was scamtastic. I was, to be honest, impressed by the level of ingenuity. A steaming cauldron of self-referential malware. Have malware? Come on, collect the set.

Anyway, 564 items removed. The usual suspects, PC tune-ups, video 'conversion' utilities and downloaders (really father, at your age). For the four hundredth time, stop clicking every download link that a web page tells you to.

Not knowing much about the Windows world, is there a good anti-malware app for people with no internet sense at all? I ran Malwarebytes in free mode to clean things up, but there needs to something that lassoes the enthusiastic gullibility of my father before he can download and install something else. There's evidently no link he's not going to click if he thinks it takes him closer to naked mature ladies. And if the web thinks his PC needs a tune-up? Oh yes please.

This might sound too complicated (and it may be) but the thing to do is use a virtual machine image which is scraped clean every time it is started. it is actually easier than it sounds, I could send you a Virtualbox clone image that would give you 90% of what is needed.

[ian]

This might sound too complicated (and it may be) but the thing to do is use a virtual machine image which is scraped clean every time it is started. it is actually easier than it sounds, I could send you a Virtualbox clone image that would give you 90% of what is needed.

I was trying to keep my liabilities to a minimum on a IT support front. They do like their dodgy bookmarks and downloads, I'd hate him to have the restart the not-exactly-Indiana-Jones-like quest for the land of the milf afresh each time.

I'm thinking of getting them a tablet, that seemed to work with the inlaws, and minimises their exposure.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Cool, a Jurassic Mac. Did you travel back in time, or did the past catch up?

On other matters, last night's purge of malware from the familial computer took no fewer than four bloody hours. A browser took about a week to open because it was trying open six additional windows all helpfully offering updates to Java, Flash, etc. Every page was decorated with so many ads for vouchers and scams that it was pretty hard to see any content, every search was diverted somewhere strange that looked like Google, but every result link was scamtastic. I was, to be honest, impressed by the level of ingenuity. A steaming cauldron of self-referential malware. Have malware? Come on, collect the set.

Anyway, 564 items removed. The usual suspects, PC tune-ups, video 'conversion' utilities and downloaders (really father, at your age). For the four hundredth time, stop clicking every download link that a web page tells you to.

Not knowing much about the Windows world, is there a good anti-malware app for people with no internet sense at all? I ran Malwarebytes in free mode to clean things up, but there needs to something that lassoes the enthusiastic gullibility of my father before he can download and install something else. There's evidently no link he's not going to click if he thinks it takes him closer to naked mature ladies. And if the web thinks his PC needs a tune-up? Oh yes please.

Ding! Had the same thing with my son's laptop two weeks ago. Two weeks ago.

Last night he told me it is back to the same state again. Um, well I gave him the lecture but seems nothing went in. FFS.

A VM that's rewiped every startup would probably be a good idea for him. I wonder if this malware adware shite runs on linux?

[ian]

Oh and ranty. Passwords. They just updated our policy again so now we have to have a non-alphanumeric character and there's a similarity checker to stop password1, 2, 3, 4. Note that you can only discover this policy change through cryptic error messages. You have no idea how much I'd like to breed a strain of giant voracious flesh-eating earwigs and release them into the office of the people who make me do this shit. All those fucking ****s drive me ****ing ape****, you worthless sack of c***s. Fuck, it's what the internet would look like if midwesterners got their way. You don't think Jesus swore when he hit his thumb with an hammer? Heavens to fucking Betsy did he.

There's no one in my office. I'm alone. The only person who would see my passwords is a ghost. Ghosts are not an IT security threat. I don't want to have to guess whether ********************** is my correctly spelled 18 letter password with two numbers, a capital letter, an alphanumeric character, that bears no resemblance to any password I've used in the last ten years. I'll type it in a text editor. Oh whoopee, you've disabled copy and paste.

And don't get me going on personal security questions. Also *******ed so you don't fucking know if you've typed it right, and no I don't know who my third grade teacher was because we don't do third grade, you culturally insensitive dickmonkeys. I've got a personal question for you.

Anyway, you've made me write the damn password in very big letters on a post-it note and stuck it somewhere obvious. Because like I'm sure some hacker wants to submit my fucking expenses.

Hear me, I'm working on those earwigs, you IT fucks.

[Kim]

* Kim wonders if ian would like to ghost-write a book for Mr Larrington...

[perpetual dan]

I'm starting to wonder whether I've got multiple personalities and ian's one of them.
And if it can detect xxx1, xxx2 I do wonder how securely the data is kept on the server. DecentAny even vaguely useful crypto wouldn't let you test that.

[Afasoas]

Ironically, Microshaft who make these rules available through their group policy now advise that system administrators don't force users to change their passwords too frequently because it leads to use of weaker passwords.

[Feanor]

Indeed.   

On my home 2k8r2 domain, the passwords are set to 'never expire'.
And have been since the domain was a little NT4 toddler, sucking on it's NetBIOS dummy.

[Jaded]

Oh and ranty. Passwords.
Anyway, you've made me write the damn password in very big letters on a post-it note and stuck it somewhere obvious. Because like I'm sure some hacker wants to submit my fucking expenses.

Yes, but someone with your expenses password can bring down the whole mothership, can't they.

Every secure MF knows that.

ILOVEYOU

[Dibdib]

Everyone knows that the one true password is "correct horse battery staple" anyway. It's more secure than all the others, xkcd sez so.