The computing stuff rant thread

[ian]

The mothership has a new mobile devices policy for which I must sign up otherwise they'll wipe and disconnect them. Apparently I have to sign up for all three devices, possibly separately, it's not clear because the email seems to have been written by someone in linguistic distress. All the links go to the same place and offer no device selection, so I assume that it's just a one-off acknowledgement. But then I get reminders. So I do it again. And again. Finally, I find out there's a Blackberry (oh don't ask, it's my backup phone) portal for doing this, ah ok, maybe I need to do something different. Except it's the same page. And they keep sending the reminders though now with a helpful 'if you've already done this, ignore this reminder' addendum.

So have I or haven't I? I'm resigned to having something disconnected. I dunno, you'd think they'd put some thought into these things, maybe try them out first. I sense the dread hand of Finestre, the Demon of Such Things.

[Mr Larrington]

PC in the Estate Office has about 1Tb of Stuffs on it so wanting over 24 hours to back it up to a shiny new NAS is taking the piss.  I will have to poke it with a stick now that Slow Dempsey is finally showing a login screen after two and a half hours.

[Mr Larrington]

Aha, Microsith, I see what you did there!

A complete fucking upgrade from Windows 10 to, er, Windows 10, that's what   Trashing half my settings and eating another 15 Gb of disk space in the process.  Technology is out to get me this week, with one of the Seagate NASen requiring a reset after it gave up on a firmware upgrade, Acronis backup being twat-like and an update to Plex server on same being, er, the same.

Just stop it.  Go back to behaving yourselves and let me install my new monitor, you terrible ["Uncle Monty" - Ed.]

[Biggsy]

Is there a browser available for iOS that isn't shit?

Dolphin, if it's as good as the Android version (?).

[TheLurker]

Not really a rant, more a despairing wail.

You'd think the BCS would know better wouldn't you?  Sending out invitations to vote in the AGM in e-mail over the totally secure and totally (neologism alert) un-snoopable public internets, aye right, containing the following...

"To vote via internet you will need to enter the following two-part security code:

Security Code part one: {a six digit number}
Security Code part two: Please enter your date of birth in the format DDMM"

Wow. Using one of the most public and most easily obtained pieces of information about someone as the second part of the security code.

OK the BCS AGM isn't actually _important_ and it's the Electoral Reform Soc. doing the donkey work rather than the BCS itself, but... ohhh words fail me.

[perpetual dan]

This is one of the reasons I've started tweaking the truth about my birthdate for people that demand a date but don't seem to have a good reason to know it. Of course that creates the problem of remembering which date I gave out

[ian]

Booze sites that make me put my date of birth in. Erm, why? Firstly, I know of no mechanism or protocol for delivering alcohol through the internet, so merely visiting such site is unlikely to get me tipsy. TCP does not stand for Thirsty? Chug and now go for a Piss. IP. Boom boom.

Now assuming that youthful brains can be turned by such sites, you think they might not figure out the birth date security mechanism. I mean, it's devious, but I'm willing to bet that those fine young minds will find a way to circumvent it.

Plus, the fuckers are making me feel old, I means seriously, how many years do I have to scroll back to get to my DoB.

[Feanor]

Sigh.

I was *trying* to go to bed.
But Junior tells me he can't print his homework.

Hmm, he can't contact any of the network printers.
For that matter, neither can I.
Nor anything else.

DNS is down.
In fact, 80% of the network services are down.
I can't remote into the Domain Controller which hosts all these functions.
Rummage under desk, connect local monitor and kbd. All seems fine on local login.
Dunno. Reboot the thing. All comes up normally.
Shrug.

10 mins later, all the phones go down in an unrelated sympathy walk-out by the Asterisk box.
More head-banging under the desk to get a local console.
Nothing obviously wrong, so a shutdown -r 0 restores sanity.

Is there an IT fairy in a bad mood tonight?

[Pickled Onion]

Plus, the fuckers are making me feel old, I means seriously, how many years do I have to scroll back to get to my DoB.

Not really even as much as a whinge, but why do those scroll lists for your dob start from today??

On the rare occasions I've been on a site like that, I put in the earliest possible just to see if there are any sanity checks: "you're 186 next birthday? LIAR!"

[Jaded]

This is one of the reasons I've started tweaking the truth about my birthdate for people that demand a date but don't seem to have a good reason to know it. Of course that creates the problem of remembering which date I gave out

Apparently on some sites about a quarter of users were born on New Year's Day. I get quite a few happy birthday messages on NYD. It's the year I have to remember, but that's what 1Password is for.

[T42]

"To vote via internet you will need to enter the following two-part security code:

Security Code part one: {a six digit number}
Security Code part two: Please enter your date of birth in the format DDMM"

I liked the one that went "choose a password that is difficult to remember and do not write it down".  Forget what site it was for but it was something trivial.

[ian]

It's Friday and there are currently no logon servers to service my request. Which is the same as Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday. As this is my fifth restart, believe me my request is colourful. Oh god, please, please not the global service desk.

[ian]

After being offered the not very practical solution of sending my computer to IT support (much as I'd like, I can't throw it that far), I discovered that removing the laptop from the docking station and shaking it furiously at the merciful squirrels of the garden rattles loose a login server. I believe I've discovered a new aspect of the switch-it-off-and-back-on paradigm.

[Mr Larrington]

Is there a browser available for iOS that isn't shit?

Dolphin, if it's as good as the Android version (?).

Cheers, Biggsy.  First signs are encouraging though it doesn't appear to offer "Open image in new tab" when you tap and hold a picture.

[Mr Larrington]

Do not buy the 5TB version of Seagate's Personal Cloud NAS.  It is this: a steaming bucket of dog wank.  Apparently they contain New! IMPROVED!! disky SCIENCE which is anything but.

I am currently backing up approximately 1TB from Bruiser McHuge to one of these over a gigabit network.  It's been going since 15:00 yesterday and still reckons 12 hours to go.  Backing up the same system to its 4TB sibling reckons on about five hours.

Can I give it back to to the vendors with a strongly-worded demand for something that works properly and/or my money back?

[CrinklyLion]

Oh uggber.

It looks like the upgrage to Wordpress 4.xx has b0rked summat with the two themes that I have to deal with, removing the nice point and clicky WYSIWYG colour customisation options (no, I WILL NOT call them color customization ones) that we used to have.  I don't want to have to learn how to deal with custom css.  I iz not a website designer or developer, I just got lumbered with 8 of the bastard things to build/maintain/support in my vast amounts of free time, despite my abject lack of skill, talent or knowledge.  Bah.

[Mr Larrington]

I'm going to have to take back what I said about Seagate since it appears that backup performance is:

• just as shit to the 4TB NAS, and
• equally shit using Acronis True Image 2016 and Macrium Reflect

Suspicion is now starting to turn the spotlight on Windows 10 and I've found a Several of things that are claimed will improve matters.

[Bledlow]

Apparently on some sites about a quarter of users were born on New Year's Day

and are 116 years old.

[Andrew]

F*** me, I hate MS windows. Do any of the supposed MS support experts actually know any f-ing thing about the subject?!

.Net will not install on my Windows 7 system (Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643)) so I'm looking at the support forums. There are people there going around and around in circles looking for an answer and all those so-called experts can do is keep referring to same knowledge base articles that don't help. Strikes me that nobody really knows what goes on under the hood of this devil's spawn.

[Mr Larrington]

Early indications are that whatever I've done to Bruiser McHuge's network configuration have restored something akin to the sort of speeds one might expect from a halfway-decent network i.e. Acronis is currently telling me it expects to take about six hours to back up the entire system, as opposed to the 26 it took a couple of days ago.  This is entirely no thanks to anyone at Microsith because, as Andrew suggests, they are either totally lacking in Clue or else unable to admit that their network setup is brain-damaged.  Going round in circles and/or links to non-existent articles are just two of their many Crimes Against Practically Everybody.  Oh, and trying to install "Update for Microsoft Office 2013 (KB2965253) 32-Bit Edition" will produce an error, because it's not installed

The downside is that it appears to have eaten half the programs from the start menu.  The programs are still there, just the shortcuts missing

[Mr Larrington]

OK, so it was my fault for backing shit up to the wrong directory but really, Acronis, why do you claim it'll take five hours to move the backup file to the right directory on the same fucking disc . I could pack up the NAS and drive it to Newcastle in that time.

[Morat]

OK, so it was my fault for backing shit up to the wrong directory but really, Acronis, why do you claim it'll take five hours to move the backup file to the right directory on the same fucking disc . I could pack up the NAS and drive it to Newcastle in that time.

It takes a lot longer to make a copy of files on the same disk than it does to move them between disks. If you're just _moving_ them it's usually much much faster. I suspect Acronis may be being pedantic and making a copy because it's the sort of thing backup software does.

[Feanor]

It really shouldn't.

Moving files within the same filesystem should just be an exercise in changing the directory entries.
There should be no need to shuffle the actual data.

[TheLurker]

F*** me, I hate MS windows. Do any of the supposed MS support experts actually know any f-ing thing about the subject?!

.Net will not install on my Windows 7 system (Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643)) so I'm looking at the support forums. There are people there going around and around in circles looking for an answer and all those so-called experts can do is keep referring to same knowledge base articles that don't help. Strikes me that nobody really knows what goes on under the hood of this devil's spawn.

Ummm, I had summat similar a month or three back.  Couldn't install VS 2015. Kept choking on installing 4.6 framework.  Had to get the machine rebuilt from an O.S. reinstall.  Not sure why, but others in the team were similarly affected.

[Mr Larrington]

It really shouldn't.

Moving files within the same filesystem should just be an exercise in changing the directory entries.
There should be no need to shuffle the actual data.

Exactly.  If I'd done <Control-X> <Control-V> from File Exploder it would have been pretty much instantaneous no matter what size the file.