The computing stuff rant thread

[TheLurker]

You know about source control don't you? Course you do.  This terribly clever piece of software sits all Smaug like on top of a dirty great pile of dirty washing^w^wsource code and lets you share it in a controlled way with your colleagues so that you don't accidentally overwrite the safety critical changes made by Fred to module ShutdownReactor and module BlowupReactor. Yeah?

So it'd be a really good idea if your source control software could, reliably, give you the latest version of a file when you ask for it and not sit there gurning like the village idiot and swearing, 'pon me oath guv'nor, that all files are up to date even when they're not.  Don't you think?

Well if that's your opinion, nay requirement, then don't buy fucking TFS from Microsoft. This shitty apology for a source control system has for, about fourth or fifth time in the last year or two, managed to let someone check in a stale version of a file after that developer explicitly requested the latest version.  No merge warnings, _nothing_.

It took me the best part of 5 hours to reinstate the changes I'd made to a particularly tricksy and business critical section of code even with the help of diff.  Worse.  The poor sod in the test team will now have to repeat over a week's worth of testing because the stuff he thought he was testing wasn't in the code to be tested and, to improve the situation no end, we have a release deadline hard upon us.

So to sum up.  TFS is a degenerate, pox-ridden heap of malware masquerading as a useful tool.   If you have a choice don't ever, _ever_ use the untrustworthy heap of bit-rotten shite.

[Zipperhead]

TFS is such a pile of steaming runny shit that I wouldn't know where to start describing it's flaws. TFS is shittier than a dysentry sufferer the morning after a dodgy curry.

How about, if you don't like the way that microsoft think your workflow should be, you can get it to show you a nice diagram of the workflow but if you actually want to change it then you get dumped into an editor with tens of thousands of lines of xml.

My previous employers insisted on it as the corporate standard, which is probably why we also ran servers for svn & jira which supported more users than tfs so that people could get work done.

[Chris S]

Curiously enough, svn and jira is how I roll these days, too - though I only use svn because it has an integration with Visual Studio, otherwise I'd probably use git - if only because of its name.

I, and the company I work for on the basis of my recommendation, avoid TFS like the proverbial.

[Pickled Onion]

Apple Mail. You know what? Sent mail is important. That's why I have it set to "never delete". So don't quietly sneak in and change that to "remove from server when one month old". Now I have to go back through time machine restoring stuff and trying to work out how long ago it got changed. Last time I thought it must have been user error, but it's bloody happened again!

[TimC]

Apple Mail is the turd in Apple's pristine lawn of user-friendliness. Basically, it's shit.

[Mr Larrington]

Netgear router, what the actual, veritable and undeniable fuck are you playing at?  Laptop loses contact with anything downstream of that shelf over there /.  Start old laptop - cannot find wireless network.  Seems unlikely that magic smoke has escaped from both Babbage-Engines simultaneously.  Manipulation of remote controls allows The Doors to pass from NAS to speakers via router and networked AV amp.  Kindle will not speak to Internets.  All lights fucked on the hairy amp drooling on router showing green.  Nine of them

Reboot router while making cup of pre-Rugby Brown Drink.  All now fine.

Throughout all above arsery (except router reboot, obv.), fondleslab able to speak to yacf, audaxclubhackney, dropbox, Google ect. ect.

[Biggsy]

Windows waking up internal extra hard drives for no apparent reason at random times.  Bah!  It's enough to make me install physical power switches, which I have done in my desktops, but it's hardly practical with my laptop (with an HDD in place of the DVD, supplementing an SSD main drive).

[Mr Larrington]

My NAS seems to sit there chuntering to itself sometimes even though nowt else on the network is in a sufficient state of awake to be asking it to Do Stuffs.

[Jurek]

People who don't know about email etiquette, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the stuff.

My dear frend H.
I am flattered that you want to invite me to the private view of your art show, with a Shamanic experience (whatever the f*ck that is) thrown in, in trendiest Hoxtonia, later this month.
What possessed you to make my email address  visible when you CC'd 37 of your other invitees is making me  and is making my mind boggle.
I emailed you and was probably a little curt (no, that's not a spelling mistake).
I emailed you again, to apologise for my curtness, and offer some explanation, suggesting how you could do this in future using the BCC field, in a nice way, ending in 'lots of love, J, xx'.
On a normal day, my personal email receives spam emails numbering somewhere between 0 and 1.
This evening, on my return home, I open my email to find 137 spamtastic emails.
Thanks for that, H.

I had a similar thing from one of the organisers of the tw€€d run a year or two ago.
My email  addy CC'd to a number of addresses which ran well into three figures.
They had the unmitigated audacity to have a pop at me when I attempted to point out the error of their ways.
The curt. (that is a spelling mistake)

[Feanor]

Adobe InDesign.

Our training manuals are all created in InDesign; it's what print-houses like to use.
You'd think that it's option to output a quick n dirty PDF ( an adobe format ) would *just work*?

You are in a steep-sided canyon. The Frigid river runs North-South, to the Falls of Flatulence, just visible to the South.
Canyon>Inventory
You have an Adobe InDesign document, a printer, and a short length of 4x2.
It is pitch dark, you are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
Canyon>Print document as PDF
A hollow laugh echoes round the canyon walls.  Your magic does not work here.
Canyon>_

[Mr Larrington]

Grue: Om nom nom nom tasty Feanor <BURRRP>

[ian]

Adobe InDesign.

Our training manuals are all created in InDesign; it's what print-houses like to use.
You'd think that it's option to output a quick n dirty PDF ( an adobe format ) would *just work*?

You are in a steep-sided canyon. The Frigid river runs North-South, to the Falls of Flatulence, just visible to the South.
Canyon>Inventory
You have an Adobe InDesign document, a printer, and a short length of 4x2.
It is pitch dark, you are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
Canyon>Print document as PDF
A hollow laugh echoes round the canyon walls.  Your magic does not work here.
Canyon>_

Oh, lift up those petticoats and run, fair lady. InDesign is a gentle beast, suitable for petting zoos. Some of us remember Framemaker+SGML. Software that had to be kept in the cage to protect the unwary. Even Finestre, the Demon of Such Things, tiptoed around it whilst keeping one of her darker incantations in mind. There were commands, she hinted, buried deep in the labyrinthine submenus, in the darker corners of a UI that consisted entirely of dark corners, that could raise The Ones From Before.

Then we upgraded to 3B2 and a million kittens wailed as a great disturbance in the Force was felt. If only Jedis had kittens, things would have been a lot easier for them. 3B2 was best described as user hostile. The UI was practically Islamic State. You looked at it too long and it took your eyes hostage and made them beg.

[Feanor]

There were commands... buried deep in the labyrinthine submenus, in the darker corners of a UI that consisted entirely of dark corners...

Ah, you are familiar with our software product then?
It's a highly sophisticated and very specialised product, which has no 'general public' audience.
It's very expensive ( but much less so than our competition! )

The user interface is "Windows 98".
Seriously.

The only thing it's missing (usually) is the hundreds of cascading "DLL version error" dialogs with the accompanying *Dung Dung Dung* sounds.

[Kim]

ITYF the correct onomatopoeic representation of that sound is "Bing!  BingBingBingBingBing!"

[Mr Larrington]

O hai, Babbagery, plz to be not ripping that one CD at a fifth the speed of all the others I've done today.

kthxbai

[Mr Larrington]

Curiosity now tickled as CD reissues of pre-1988 recordings on label X average about 6x when ripping bust post-1988 ones on label Y did 18-20.  Does BGO Records oops what a giveaway use the optical equivalent of cheese when getting its CDs made or something?

[perpetual dan]

I've just made headless firefox work for the second time this afternoon.
Both times I did it by removing a file so that the other version of said file could be found. 
How come that bloody file reappeared?

[Pickled Onion]

Phoned Microsoft because I can't get my exam transcript off the MCP site. Follow the instructions given and get a blank page, so I ask if that's because I'm using Safari. The guy tells me to close Safari and open the page in Internet Explorer - err, I'm using Safari, therefore I'm using a Mac, and internet explorer hasn't been supported on OSX since 2003! And what happened to IE supposedly now being "standards compliant"?

[Mr Larrington]

Why, O Denon AVR, when I ask you to play $TUNE from the NAS do you insist on telling me that you are playing Leo Kottke's "The Brain Of The Purple Mountain" come hell or high water, and then not playing it?  It is neither big nor clever.  Stop it.

[Afasoas]

I've just made headless firefox work for the second time this afternoon.
Both times I did it by removing a file so that the other version of said file could be found. 
How come that bloody file reappeared?

selenium testing?

[Pickled Onion]

Curiosity now tickled as CD reissues of pre-1988 recordings on label X average about 6x when ripping bust post-1988 ones on label Y did 18-20.  Does BGO Records oops what a giveaway use the optical equivalent of cheese when getting its CDs made or something?

I'd never have taken you for a Shirley Bassey & Andy Williams fan.

[Jaded]

Phoned Microsoft because I can't get my exam transcript off the MCP site. Follow the instructions given and get a blank page, so I ask if that's because I'm using Safari. The guy tells me to close Safari and open the page in Internet Explorer - err, I'm using Safari, therefore I'm using a Mac, and internet explorer hasn't been supported on OSX since 2003! And what happened to IE supposedly now being "standards compliant"?

There is a Safari for Widows.

The last laugh will fall on the 'use Internet Exploder' morons in a few months. When it is eol'ed and replaced by a new one that I think is called "Shit".

[Mr Larrington]

Curiosity now tickled as CD reissues of pre-1988 recordings on label X average about 6x when ripping bust post-1988 ones on label Y did 18-20.  Does BGO Records oops what a giveaway use the optical equivalent of cheese when getting its CDs made or something?

I'd never have taken you for a Shirley Bassey & Andy Williams fan.

GIT!!1!
'tis the earlier albums of USAnian guitar maestro Leo Kottke...

[Pickled Onion]

I've just made headless firefox work for the second time this afternoon.
Both times I did it by removing a file so that the other version of said file could be found. 
How come that bloody file reappeared?

selenium testing?

PhantomJS?

Talking of which... If you're the first new high st bank in 100 years or whatever you claim to be, then try one of the above for your website. Using an HTML5 input type that's currently not supported by ANY major browser other than Chrome, and not programming any fallback, is quite frankly: shit.

[Mr Larrington]

Microsith!  If I wanted to disable add-ons to improve browser performance would I have installed them in the first place?

Why, no!  No, I would not.

Is there an add-on called "Disable fatuous messages from Microsith"?