Author Topic: The computing stuff rant thread (Read 404328 times)

Woofage · « **Reply #1100 on:** 12 May, 2016, 05:11:36 pm »

I don't know which developer is responsible, but the print to file dialogue has been buggered about with for Firefox 46

.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1101 on:** 22 May, 2016, 10:29:08 pm »

Very kind of you, Logitech, to "upgrade" the game controller software on Bruiser McHuge. But I think it would have been better if you had left my G27 with H-shifter alone, rather than unilaterally deciding it had turned into a G29 without H-shifter. Thus rendering it entirely unfit for fucking purpose, you gobbinous poomonkeys

Fortunately I still had a copy of the original installer lying around so was able to restore functionality.

dave r · « **Reply #1102 on:** 23 May, 2016, 10:27:51 pm »

My phone and computer have stopped talking to each other, if I want pictures off the phone I have to send them to myself via E-Mail

fortunately my contract is up next week, I recon I might treat myself to a new phone.

mrcharly-YHT · « **Reply #1103 on:** 24 May, 2016, 08:22:15 am »

Is your phone just connecting for charging? Have you checked on your phone to see if it has an explicit option to switch to 'disk' mode?

dave r · « **Reply #1104 on:** 24 May, 2016, 12:02:30 pm »

Quote from: mrcharly on 24 May, 2016, 08:22:15 am

Is your phone just connecting for charging? Have you checked on your phone to see if it has an explicit option to switch to 'disk' mode?

The choice is MTP or camera, I've been connecting to upload pictures for about two years and its always worked faultlessly, why it should stop is puzzling, I suspect a fault or a settings changed on the phone.

Kim · « **Reply #1105 on:** 24 May, 2016, 12:38:32 pm »

Try another cable. They do go dodgy.

dave r · « **Reply #1106 on:** 24 May, 2016, 12:42:47 pm »

Quote from: Kim on 24 May, 2016, 12:38:32 pm

Try another cable. They do go dodgy.

Changing the cable was the first thing I did

Wombat · « **Reply #1107 on:** 24 May, 2016, 12:56:49 pm »

Um, surely if you want to transfer media, then media transfer protocol that its offering you, is what you need?

dave r · « **Reply #1108 on:** 24 May, 2016, 03:53:34 pm »

Quote from: Wombat on 24 May, 2016, 12:56:49 pm

Um, surely if you want to transfer media, then media transfer protocol that its offering you, is what you need?

Thats the one, but even in that it doesn't connect. I shall be asking for my PAC number at the end of the week and going phone shopping at the weekend, I've had the phone, a galaxy fame, two years now and my contract is up at the end of the month.

Pickled Onion · « **Reply #1109 on:** 25 May, 2016, 07:51:05 am »

Quote from: Kim on 24 May, 2016, 12:38:32 pm

They do go dodgy.

My phone cable went dodgy on my last trip to the ABROADS. It started by telling me it wasn't a genuine cable (it is) so expect it to misbehave. Then it stopped charging altogether. I blame the state of the roads. Having 50% of my mapping on the phone without paper backup was perhaps not the brightest thing in the world

Quote from: Kim on 24 May, 2016, 12:38:32 pm

Try another cable.

Finding an Apple Lightning cable in Кам'янець-Подільський is not exactly straightforward. When I did, it was in a locked display cabinet, priced at a whole €2. I asked if it was a good one, the guy cheerfully said "about 50:50".

Kim · « **Reply #1110 on:** 25 May, 2016, 11:29:57 am »

Well if you're going to use fruity products, you've got to expect cable trouble.

Pickled Onion · « **Reply #1111 on:** 25 May, 2016, 12:33:33 pm »

You're not wrong there. The usb end of the cable was fine, the proprietary end had broken some of the little gold contacts through constant road buzz/potholes. I suppose I should be thankful the connector is sacrificial and I don't have to pay Genius^® quantities of money to replace the socket in the handset.

Kim · « **Reply #1112 on:** 25 May, 2016, 12:44:48 pm »

On a related note, is it just me, or are micro-USB connectors a lot less effective in their sacrificial-bit-at-the-cable-end than the specification would imply?

Some of the blame lies with the shallow surface-mount sockets you tend to get in things like phones. There's no way that's not going to put the solder/PCB under loads of stress. But the connectors seem to do a good line in bending and no longer holding the cable securely, too.

Bledlow · « **Reply #1113 on:** 26 May, 2016, 10:16:13 pm »

Quote from: Pickled Onion on 25 May, 2016, 07:51:05 am

Finding an Apple Lightning cable in Кам'янець-Подільський is not exactly straightforward. When I did, it was in a locked display cabinet, priced at a whole €2. I asked if it was a good one, the guy cheerfully said "about 50:50".

Have you visited the castle? i'm told it's very good, & that the surviving parts of the old city are also fine.

Oaky · « **Reply #1114 on:** 27 May, 2016, 10:26:36 am »

Quote from: Kim on 25 May, 2016, 12:44:48 pm

On a related note, is it just me, or are micro-USB connectors a lot less effective in their sacrificial-bit-at-the-cable-end than the specification would imply?

Some of the blame lies with the shallow surface-mount sockets you tend to get in things like phones. There's no way that's not going to put the solder/PCB under loads of stress. But the connectors seem to do a good line in bending and no longer holding the cable securely, too.

Acorn#1's hudl socket has gone that way (Although not through normal wear/tear... she was using it plugged in and didn't realist she'd bent the micro-USB plug through almost 45 degrees

. The socket has deformed so the cable is very loose and nowadays if you want it to charge, you need to apply lateral pressure to the cable (popping an appropriate thickness of book under the plug so that the weight of the hudl does this seems to work OK).

woollypigs · « **Reply #1115 on:** 27 May, 2016, 10:30:57 am »

I have lost count of how many USB/laptop cables/chargers Peli has killed over the years, for some reason she likes to put weight/pressure/angles of these things.

Kim · « **Reply #1116 on:** 27 May, 2016, 12:14:11 pm »

I'm a fan of StarTech right (and left) angle micro USB cables for this sort of thing. Much less stress on the connector if you're using the device while plugged in, or charging it from a battery/dynamo in a bag or something.

Pickled Onion · « **Reply #1117 on:** 27 May, 2016, 01:35:17 pm »

Quote from: Bledlow on 26 May, 2016, 10:16:13 pm

Quote from: Pickled Onion on 25 May, 2016, 07:51:05 am
Finding an Apple Lightning cable in Кам'янець-Подільський is not exactly straightforward. When I did, it was in a locked display cabinet, priced at a whole €2. I asked if it was a good one, the guy cheerfully said "about 50:50".
Have you visited the castle? i'm told it's very good, & that the surviving parts of the old city are also fine.

Indeed, couldn't miss it. Rather more impressive on the outside than the inside though.

Afasoas · « **Reply #1118 on:** 27 May, 2016, 10:07:25 pm »

I arrived home to reports of "The interwebs are broken". After a day of investigating SAN issues and oscillating packet loss from a firewall (suspect hardware) it was the last thing I wanted to come home too.

I've had periodic problems with the current dual WAN set-up - which I think relate to some incompatibility between pfSense and the Virgin Media SuperHub in Modem only mode. The link is effectively up and down like a Yo-Yo. The logs show ARPRESOLVE bleating repeatedly so I kind of suspect some ARP funkiness. A packet capture revealed nothing odd, save for lots of ICMP TTL Exceeded packets coming back in response to a packet trace (MTR) - and I guess that's hinting at a network loop somewhere. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, the TalkTalk modem isn't even managing an ADSL connection.

There are interludes of happiness where VM just works, but they don't seem to last long. What are the odds of two WAN connections failing in completely different modes on the same day?

Ham · « **Reply #1119 on:** 28 May, 2016, 07:14:33 am »

Quote from: Afasoas on 27 May, 2016, 10:07:25 pm

There are interludes of happiness where VM just works, but they don't seem to last long. What are the odds of two WAN connections failing in completely different modes on the same day?

The last time I had to sort anything like that out (some 15 years ago) it turned out that the installing engineer had plugged the resilient routers, not to the dual power supplies available in the cabinet, but into the same wall socket - one that served the floor, too. And someone had plugged in a duff kettle.

HTH

(as I recall that was with a 2Mb circuit serving a building with c 500 users)

Afasoas · « **Reply #1120 on:** 28 May, 2016, 09:47:50 am »

I have got too many other single points of failure to really consider what we have HA. The Internet as provided by TalkTalk has been broken quit lately.. Of course the decision to use TalkTalk was taken before I got an IT job and the Internet connection became essential. So now we have Virgin Media too which my employer kindly pays for.

It turns out the VM Superhub doesn't negotiate the link speed properly with the Firewall. Forcing it to 1000BaseT-FullDuplex means that when the Superhub restarts, connectivity is restored soon afterwards. The Superhub is still restarting every 40 ish minutes.

TalkTalk fixed itself as soon as I restarted the modem the morning.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1121 on:** 29 May, 2016, 08:36:44 am »

While on the subj. of Virgin Media and their soi-disant "Super" Hub, I was pleased to find that it Just Worked but not so pleased to find it lacks a USB port for hanging a printer on.

Bah!

Kim · « **Reply #1122 on:** 29 May, 2016, 12:53:23 pm »

If it needs a USB port, it's a printer-shaped-object.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1123 on:** 29 May, 2016, 05:33:49 pm »

Hence the lack of W10 drivers. For it.

T42 · « **Reply #1124 on:** 01 June, 2016, 07:53:33 am »

Is the rudeness of most software a reflection of the modern world? I was in the middle of composing an important missive just now when a window popped up in the middle of the screen asking me to allow some officious bit of code to update itself, and when I hit the get-on-with-it button the infernal thing took over the entire screen. In human terms that's like walking into the middle of a group of people engrossed in conversation and shouting "shut up, I'm talking". Makes me feel like beating the offending item about the head and booting it back below stairs.

Correct behaviour would be to utter a polite cough, as befits an underling, then to wait at parade rest at a discreet remove until told to carry on, whereupon it should carry out its duty quietly and with as little fuss as possible, rather than hauling one off by the scruff to observe as it cleans out the commode in Lady Margery's second dressing-room.

It's so hard to get properly-trained staff these days.