The computing stuff rant thread

[barakta]

Ah, I have one of those, hadn't got as far as verifying it for authenticity and checking with Kim/real Pc when my domains were due for renewal.

[Mr Larrington]

I just had one of them as well.  Had me fooled to start with but rang the alarm bells as it didn't contain the word "Larrington".

[tiermat]

As I mentioned above, this was the final give away (last line of SMTP trail)

Received: from 65-255-51-142-static.dsl.tciway.tc ([65.255.51.142]) by
     mx.kundenserver.de (mxeue001) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id
     0LeDb3-1ZYbp93Yon-00qBiu for <XXXX-Tiermat's-RL-Email>; Tue, 12 May 2015
     13:43:06 +0200

[Afasoas]

Have you all got 123-reg domains? Sounds like a possible data breach ...

[Kim]

Ah, I have one of those, hadn't got as far as verifying it for authenticity and checking with Kim/real Pc when my domains were due for renewal.

Your domains are registered under my account, for ease of DNS-jibbling, so if you're getting emails they're spam.

[mrcharly-YHT]

.doc files are viewable in Google docs, which won't run any included macros.

[Mr Larrington]

Have you all got 123-reg domains? Sounds like a possible data breach ...

Mine's done through Heart Internet but Dog knows whether they're just an intermediary in the process or not.  But Babbage-Post concerning that goes to a different address from the one which received the dodgy message

[Woofage]

Spammers, stop getting sneaky.

Just got an email purporting to be from 123-reg.co.uk.  IT has a .doc attached, claiming to be a bill.

I've had plenty of those today. .doc rather than PDF? Run a mile, so to speak.

[bikesdontfloat]

Why don't the spammers rein themselves in a little?  When you have 5 or 6 emails at a time, all purporting to come from 123-reg, it looks well dodgy from the off.  You would have thought that dialing it back a little would be more convincing.  We must have had 30 or so today just between 2 email addresses at work today.

Though looking thinking about it there must be folk out there like Kim who have muliple sites registered - though you would hope that these would be the least likely sort of people to fall for something like this.

[Kim]

And ironically, I haven't had any 123-reg spam.

Correction:  I have, but spamassassin caught it.

[barakta]

Ah, I have one of those, hadn't got as far as verifying it for authenticity and checking with Kim/real Pc when my domains were due for renewal.

Your domains are registered under my account, for ease of DNS-jibbling, so if you're getting emails they're spam.

I had sort of assumed that but I was reading emails while waiting for Helldesk to sort our remote access to $Database so had merely filed as "ask Kim later" cos I couldn't remember whether you had my domain or not... Then your comment reminded me that it's cos I trust you not to hijack my domains if we ever split up. 

[David Martin]

Oh look, mac white screen of deth. joy.

[Afasoas]

Why don't the spammers rein themselves in a little?  When you have 5 or 6 emails at a time, all purporting to come from 123-reg, it looks well dodgy from the off.  You would have thought that dialing it back a little would be more convincing.  We must have had 30 or so today just between 2 email addresses at work today.

Though looking thinking about it there must be folk out there like Kim who have muliple sites registered - though you would hope that these would be the least likely sort of people to fall for something like this.

I suspect multiple spammers are using the technique, probably running bots on compromised hosts which have no/minimal command and control.

[Mr Larrington]

Congratulations! are! due! to! the! Mega!-Global! Exclamation! Mark! Corporation! of! Sunnyvale!, USAnia! You really have fucking excelled yourselves this time.  You have fucked flickr so badly that ["simile removed on the advice of our lawyers" - Ed.]

• Your new interface looks shit.  I can live with that, but it's still shit.
• It crashes Chrome on the fondleslab if looked at askance.
• It looks shit.  All that whitespace round the sides wastes electrons, and looks shit.
• There is no way to select bbcode from under the "Share" wossname.  I can't press <CONTROL-C> on this thing, you thick fucks!  And "Select all" selects something almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated to the thing I actually want to copy.  By all accounts it doesn't work on Android devices either.
• Did I mention that it looks shit?  Well, it does.
• Your auto-tagging SCIENCE is also shit.  And I can't find a way of turning it off.
• It looks shit.
• I don't want to change my password either.  This is a generic failing of the Mega!-Global! Exclamation! Mark! Corporation! of! Sunnyvale!, USAnia! but I thought I'd mention it.
• I just looked again but no, it still looks shit.

Point 4 is the biggie.  A major fucking issue.  A cockup that renders flickr Not Fit For Purpose.  And there is a major drawback with the workaround suggested by one of your gnomes, which is this: IT DOESN'T TWATTING WORK

Schlimbesserung doesn't even begin to cover it; there'd have to be some scheiße thrown in for starters.  And you put the link to the help pages right at the bottom so after having waited for a fortnight to get there, the page starts loading more thumbnails and the link flies south like a coconutless swallow.  I suspect this is deliberate, to stop people like me from complaining about it in public.

Tw@s.

[Mr Larrington]

It gets worse.  Apparently their asinine auto-tagging SCIENCE cleverly categorises pictures of the liberation of Auschwitz as "team sports"

[TheLurker]

Congratulations! are! due! to! the! Mega!-Global! Exclamation! Mark! Corporation! of! Sunnyvale!, USAnia! You really have fucking excelled yourselves this time.  You have fucked flickr so badly that ["simile removed on the advice of our lawyers" - Ed.]

• I don't want to change my password either.  This is a generic failing of the Mega!-Global! Exclamation! Mark! Corporation! of! Sunnyvale!, USAnia! but I thought I'd mention it.

I have found the following works for Oohay! anbaric post.

• Create bookmark/favourite to login page.
• Switch off javascript.  I normally work this way anyway.
• Go to login page via bookmark.  Enter user name and pwd.
• When irritating shroud-waving, "Change your pwd" page is displayed click on login bookmark again.
• When irritating shroud-waving, "Oh noes javascript is disabled" page is displayed click on the [continue] link.

And lo! You will be able to send and receive anbaric post.  Whether or not this will work for Flickr is another matter, but it might be worth a try.

A useful side effect of switching off javascript is that you aren't constantly tripped up by Oohay!'s constant tinkering with the anbaric post UI as the version sans scripting is left well alone.  This may not be the case with Flickr, but there's nothing to lose by trying.  As far as the anbaric post goes you do have to switch scripting back on to attach files these days, but as it's a rare day when I send files to anyone it doesn't inconvenience me overmuch.

[Mr Larrington]

I tend only to use the Mega!-Global! Exclamation! Mark! Corporation! of! Sunnyvale!, USAnia!'s Babbage-Post with Thunderbird so am not getting constantly prompted to change my password but it's still a Massive Fucking Annoyance when I do have to use their stinky web interface, which keeps changing and looks shit.

[Chris S]

You'd think by now I'd haven't learned this basic IT tenet - if you get something working, DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT EVER AGAIN!

Sigh...

XUbuntu worked great on my laptop, but I was tempted into straying from the path of righteousness by the promise of Eye Candy from KUbuntu.

What a shocking heap of turd that is. Sure - looks great - doesn't fucking work. Chrome browser - tab and menu fonts are fucking HUGE, and bear no resemblance to the fonts in the rest of the system. Come on Linux Distro folks - how can you STILL be having font issues after all these years, and all those chances to just Get It Right?

Also - hear that? That's the system fan running flat out. That never happened on XUbuntu. You're just sitting there with an empty desktop and the machine is being thrashed? I can see my battery lasting about 20 minutes.

Also - turns out, KUbuntu doesn't ship build-essentials by default. What. The. Fuck? This is LINUX FFS - no build-essentials? Would you ship a car without an engine?

Fine. I'll do it myself.

> sudo apt-get install build-essentials

"Please insert /media/cdrom0"

Oh come on! You retarded fuck - this machine doesn't HAVE a cdrom, nor a dvd drive - you were installed from a USB stick.

* Gives up *

It's enough to make you run Windows.

[woollypigs]

That is one thing I miss about windows, even after years not using it I can find stuff. And no matter what program I have used on windows I have had no issues with the font or GUI (might be ugly but it works).

Every distro I have tried the design, lay out, name of setting/option/etc are all just different and look a bit dated. Windows and iOS looks good and is consistent throughout.

Why Ubuntu and all its flavours can't put their heads together and come up with some guidelines, I do not know. Yes I know it is all open source, GNU and all that jazz but to help the development and expansion of linux it would be great if there was some similarity and guides.

Linux is still a tinkers OS, which I do like to do with my computers. Ubuntu and Debian is getting close to the install - give it a name, user name and enter WiFi details - and forget. I was very surprised how fast and easy it was to install win 8.1 (if you ignore all the junk that the hardware vendors like to add and all the nag screens) when I tried about a year ago.

[Woofage]

That is one thing I miss about windows, even after years not using it I can find stuff. And no matter what program I have used on windows I have had no issues with the font or GUI (might be ugly but it works).

That was certainly true until win8 

Linux is still a tinkers OS

It allows you to if you want, but it's not necessary. That's one of its strengths.

[Mr Larrington]

That is one thing I miss about windows, even after years not using it I can find stuff. And no matter what program I have used on windows I have had no issues with the font or GUI (might be ugly but it works).

That was certainly true until win8 

While it is true that the Fisher-Price "Start Screen" nonsense is an hateful thing, it is mostly easily fixed.  Microsith still insist on hiding some Stuffs where Control Panel can't find it, though, the bowl of dicks.

Linux is still a tinkers OS

It allows you to if you want, but it's not necessary. That's one of its strengths.

ITYM tinkerers' OS, unless it really does appeal to itinerant kettle-fettlers

[woollypigs]

That is one thing I miss about windows, even after years not using it I can find stuff. And no matter what program I have used on windows I have had no issues with the font or GUI (might be ugly but it works).

That was certainly true until win8 

Linux is still a tinkers OS

It allows you to if you want, but it's not necessary. That's one of its strengths.

Oh yes I'm knocking it, I like it a lot.

[pcolbeck]

Kubuntu has always been the scrappiest Ubuntu spin. SUSE is the best distro if you want KDE or Arch for a pure unmodified KDE but with Arch there is lots of fiddling to get it setup right with non KDE apps (and just to get the system running).

[Pickled Onion]

• Switch off javascript.  I normally work this way anyway.

Srsly? Does anything work on the the internet nowadays without javascript?

And:
 (b) why?

[ian]

Microsoft, your 'about a minute' was, in fact, 37 precious earthling minutes. Which means I'm starting to write my exciting document about 40 minutes after I'd foolishly clicked OK to the Office update (which after 3 minutes of urgent scurrying decided to run some 'package scripts' in 'about a minute').

I suggest you might want to sue Southern Trains as they seem to have stolen your concept of the 'long minute.'