The computing stuff rant thread

[Zipperhead]

Windows 8 wants you to create an account before it will give you solitaire.

Google Chrome appstore (runs in regular chrome as well) has a variety of solitaire implementations.

[Mr Larrington]

Hello Freeola!

Thank you for changing my Babbage-Post settings over the weekend and not fucking telling me about it or anything.  No thanks to you shower of dunces I have finally persuaded Thunderbird to receive Babbage-Post to that address but no amount of faffage has yet persuaded it to send even a one-word message to my Mega!-Global! Exclamation! Mark! Corporation! of! Sunnyvale!, USAnia! address.  It's not as if that address gets used for anything very important, except for buying shit from the Mega-Global Sounds Like A Big River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia, and the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia store, and divers other things involving Money.

Sort it out u muppets!

[ian]

Hey, hey, happy Windows, I'm real glad you've installed an update. It's sure must be swell. Thanks for telling that you are so happy with your new update that you are going to spontaneously restart. Just for me. In 2 mins and 9, 8, 7, 6, 5... seconds. The countdown is very James Bond.  It's doubly nice that the postpone button is greyed out and there's no red wire to cut. Even better you hid this message under a tiny little flashing systray icon that I just happened to notice.

And there you go, despite whatever productive task my computer might have been engaged in, you've just turned the entire fucking thing off and gone into a long update cycle. The Amish build barns quicker.

Yeah, yeah, there's probably a setting, but I'm sure the mothership has creatively erected a large policy tent over it.

[Mr Larrington]

I aten't had the spontaneous reboot thing on Win 8 but suspect the mothership may be using Something Else.  XP did it all the time.

[mcshroom]

I have on Win8. The worst bit is that unlike XP, you can't just keep putting it off. It actually decides after a while to shut your computer down whether you want to or not

I suppose I should go looking for scheduled updates (or turn the computer off in the evening rather than leaving it to hibernate)

[davelodwig]

Hey, hey, happy Windows, I'm real glad you've installed an update. It's sure must be swell. Thanks for telling that you are so happy with your new update that you are going to spontaneously restart. Just for me. In 2 mins and 9, 8, 7, 6, 5... seconds. The countdown is very James Bond.  It's doubly nice that the postpone button is greyed out and there's no red wire to cut. Even better you hid this message under a tiny little flashing systray icon that I just happened to notice.

And there you go, despite whatever productive task my computer might have been engaged in, you've just turned the entire fucking thing off and gone into a long update cycle. The Amish build barns quicker.

Yeah, yeah, there's probably a setting, but I'm sure the mothership has creatively erected a large policy tent over it.

Yep that's a thing you can turn on on the network, we used to have to do it otherwise the developers would never install patches and then take down the network when their laptop got exploited.

I think you can set it so it only forces you after you've ignored a number of suggestions.

D.

[ian]

Hey, hey, happy Windows, I'm real glad you've installed an update. It's sure must be swell. Thanks for telling that you are so happy with your new update that you are going to spontaneously restart. Just for me. In 2 mins and 9, 8, 7, 6, 5... seconds. The countdown is very James Bond.  It's doubly nice that the postpone button is greyed out and there's no red wire to cut. Even better you hid this message under a tiny little flashing systray icon that I just happened to notice.

And there you go, despite whatever productive task my computer might have been engaged in, you've just turned the entire fucking thing off and gone into a long update cycle. The Amish build barns quicker.

Yeah, yeah, there's probably a setting, but I'm sure the mothership has creatively erected a large policy tent over it.

Yep that's a thing you can turn on on the network, we used to have to do it otherwise the developers would never install patches and then take down the network when their laptop got exploited.

I think you can set it so it only forces you after you've ignored a number of suggestions.

D.

Sadly all greyed out. That'll be the Group Policy, as dictated by the little Stalin on the IT deck (oh momma, we've outsourced to IBM). They also make my machine lock-screen every fifteen minutes. Drives me crazy but Cannot Be Changed even though I work in an empty house where the only security threats are cats and ghosts.

[Jaded]

It's not the cats or ghosts.



It's the bears.

[Mr Larrington]

<---- He heard that...

[Mr Larrington]

Mega-Global Sounds Like A Big River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia!  Your webby SCIENCE shews nine pages of albums by $ARTIST.  So when I click on an album on page three of the listing, view the details and then click "back" I should like to return to page three.

Not page fucking one

[mcshroom]

Our stupid, outdated Internet Browser (IE7!) is so crap that I've just frozen the computer three times trying to download PDF files of some Chemical MSDS forms from the supplier. Please to be having software that was actually written in this decade and makes at least an effort to meet standards.

Oh, and as a side show, if I log on to our company website using this company PC it tells me my browser is outdated and needs to be upgraded

[Wombat]

I feel your pain.  We couldn't access all manner of Govt related stuff we needed for our jobs, so they "upgraded" to IE8 a few months ago.  Is there some reason why we could go to the current version? (whatever that is, I don't use it at home so I've lost track)  We still have quite a few XP PCs, but many, including mine because it had a convenient breakdown  , runs Win7.

[ian]

Outlook, I appreciate your calendar runs my life like Stalin's more ruthless cousin, but remind me of the value of popping up a meeting reminder for a meeting that is '37 minutes' overdue. It was a thirty minute meeting.

Why, in the name of Finestre, does it do that? Was it too busy in advance of the meeting? You're the bloody calendar, you're not supposed to forget. That's evidently my job. Hi, I'm Outlook, you should have been in a meeting but it's finished now, soz. Bring back the animated cat. Office went downhill the day that disappeared. I trusted the cat.

[Clare]

Microshaft Office Professional (Ha!) Plus (plus what exactly) 2013, you are more shit than a shit thing that has fallen into a slurry pit, climbed back out and trodden in a steaming pile of poo.

[barakta]

It is rather (have a copy on a new work laptop). FUGLY Piece of Shit and I'm not sure where anything is.

ALL I wanted was remote-STTR (realtime captioning communications support) without HASSLE!  I didn't get it even on a tested setup.

MiFi Dongle thing? Why do you need the password again? You've not asked for it since I set it up but suddenly want the password as if you never had it. Fucker.

Citrix - why did you decide to load the fileshare once and then NOT load it when I got virtualisation confusion and saved the file with said password in it that I wanted to *FuckKnows* so I couldn't get the MiFi dongle password?  Seriously unamused. 4 browswers. 2 reboots... Two different working wifi networks.

Then back at the office, Citrix works as if nothing was ever wrong over wifi 2?  Could the fucking bastard IT bastards have taken Citrix shit down intermittently this morning?  Could the browsers have actually given error messages with meaningful info rather than *loady loady* *vanish!* and I suspect at least one browser is eating the plugin...

As for fucking sound, the less said the better. Digital fm system radio aid receiver was cutting out at a mere 15m from transmitter which isn't fucking good enough.  Also the sound setup I had working PERFECTLY last week on my desk Would Not Fucking Work so I had to dredge out backup analogue fm radio aid that I hurled into bag on way out (late) and use TWO sound systems when ONE should have been able to work...

Technology is clearly laughing at today's day and date...

[Martin109]

 Micro$haft Orifice!

[DaveJ]

VirtualBox 4.3.22 breaks my computer.  After installing it neither the network card or the USB2 controller work properly.  It does it repeatably too, as I found out after restoring the machine to a working state and trying it again (isn't that one definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and expecting different results?).

[Ham]

VirtualBox 4.3.22 breaks my computer.  After installing it neither the network card or the USB2 controller work properly.  It does it repeatably too, as I found out after restoring the machine to a working state and trying it again (isn't that one definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and expecting different results?).

I was wondering whether to upgrade, what's your config? Windows or Linux host?

[DaveJ]

Windows host, 8.1 64bit.  I don't use VirtualBox much, but it is useful when someone says "my XP/Vista/Windows7 machine does x", to see whether I can reproduce it. 

[Pingu]

BBC have borked iPlayer so that Squeezebox disnae play 6Music  Jist gonnae no 

[Mr Larrington]

I do not know whether the speed with which text typed in the latest version of Chrome on the fondleslab would improve by having fewer tabs open, but if it doesn't then the "update" is a big steaming bowl of wombat spooge.

Thanks Google

[Pingu]

BBC have borked iPlayer so that Squeezebox disnae play 6Music  Jist gonnae no 

Yay, it's back 

[David Martin]

Superfish. If you have bought a lenovo laptop recently then you should check of this and watch a brand reputation go south faster than a swallow in autumn.

[Afasoas]

Pity they were so silly. I've always rated Lenovo products.
And still, the American Telco's seem to get away with CarrierIQ

[tiermat]

I am in the market for a new laptop, and Lenevo are on the list.

Maybe surprisingly, after this, they still are. Why? Well I wouldn't be (and never have, with any laptop) running the stock build. The windows partition would be blown away and either replaced with a vanilla windows build or the machine just built with Linux.

I am not surprised about this, nor should anyone else who has worked with computers for a while, all manufacturers install tonnes of shit, some just more malicious than others.