The computing stuff rant thread

[Zipperhead]

Have we gone back to the dark ages? I've got a one page (colour) PDF that I want to print 100 copies of. Should be simples, whatever molishes it sends it to the printer with that special code that says "and BTW, do this 100 times. thx bai".

No, data light continuously flashes and the big printer manages about 1 page *per minute*

WTaF is going on here?

[woollypigs]

Well the printer needs to plant. grow and chop down a tree before it can make paper to printer on, so it does need a wee time to have a cuppa between trees

[Kim]

WTaF is going on here?

Printers were sent from hell to make us miserable.

[ian]

I guess someone is still manufacturing 48 kilobyte RAM chips.

[Kim]

Or it's a terrible driver that's either too stupid to send the 'do this 100x' instruction or sidesteps the need for an in-depth understanding of $printer_language by sending everything as massive bitmaps

[Mr Larrington]

Windows, I wot not the meaning of "The shadow copies of volume C: were aborted because the shadow copy storage could not grow due to a user imposed limit." but I should be much obliged if you were not to do it again.

[Beardy]

Bastard software vendors and their headlong charge to the subscription model!

I've been a long time occasional user of Sketchup, and today decided to do some drawing that needed¹ 3D modelling. So I fired up Sketchup. Well I tried to fire it up. The version you are using on YOUR computer is no longer valid. You can pay us £200 a year to continue to use our software on your computer or you can log on to our computer and do your work there for free as before.

Well, I aint paying £200pa to use a piece of software I might use once or twice a year nd I'm really not happy with using there computer so I guess I need to look for an alternative. I'd be tempted to pay the asking price of £90 to use it on my fondleslab, if it was a one off payment, but again I'm not paying that per annum.

Bastards.

[TimC]

SketchUp Make 2017 is still available and still free.

Edit. Ah. It might not be any more. clicky. That’s a bummer. I use it every day. Might have to learn Blender properly now!

[Mr Larrington]

Every time I even try to understand the procedure for getting $TRUCK_SIMULATOR models into Blender I get a headache and have to lie down.  Which is a chiz, because I would very much like to fix the disembodied number plates afflicting bits of me mods.

[Beardy]

SketchUp Make 2017 is still available and still free.

Edit. Ah. It might not be any more. clicky. That’s a bummer. I use it every day. Might have to learn Blender properly now!

Yes, it complains when you try and use it, then does start but bombs out after 15 minutes or so.

[TimC]

SketchUp Make 2017 is still available and still free.

Edit. Ah. It might not be any more. clicky. That’s a bummer. I use it every day. Might have to learn Blender properly now!

Yes, it complains when you try and use it, then does start but bombs out after 15 minutes or so.

I think that's an issue with something else. SketchUp Make 2017 has been withdrawn from distribution, but it's working perfectly well on all 4 of my computers:

[Mr Larrington]

I have just noticed that just over 1400 tracks in my music library have file paths set by mp3tag to:

Code: [Select]

$num(%discnumber%,2)-$num(%track%,2) - %title%
when they should be

Code: [Select]

$num(%discnumber%,2)-$num(%track%,2) %title%

This is, of course, Wrong.  But if I just rename them then DJ Random will not be able to find them and I would have to tell iTunes where each of them is, which is unutterably tedious.  If I remove them from the iTunes library and re-add them their play counts will all be set to zero and DJ Random will play Stuffs he's already played since the last Great Reset, which is also Wrong.  So now I have to confect some SCIENCE to assemble a playlist of the files which are:

• Wrong, and
• Have a non-zero play count

so's I can delete them from iThings, rename them, re-add them to iThings and use the very splendid and worthwhile AdjustPlayCount wossname to reset them.  Because Wrongness cannot be allowed to persist.

Or wait until the next Great Reset, which could be years away chiz.

Bollocksbollocksbollocks

[SoreTween]

Mrs Tween was complaining that the big computer kept crashing while I was away. No greater detail could be prised. So I switched it on to a) use and b) see if it crashed for me. Booted, logged in, fire up firefox and click, it switches off. <bad swears>
Switch on again, almost through the raid bios boot & click, off again. More bad swears but a clue.
One more time switch on, click, off. Hmmmm. I'll give it 20mins.
20 mins later boot into bios & the cpu temp is galloping up through the high 50s & 60s.

That'll be my lovely quiet socket 775 water cooler dead then.

Bollocks bollocks bollocks bollocks bollocks bollocks bollocks bollocks bollocks. Bollocks.

[Feanor]

Dear the VTTA:

On your vet's standards tables, there's no such time as 0:34:60.
You did just blow up my Evening League vets-on-standard spreadsheet.

[Mr Larrington]

o hai Microsith o hai Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia!

You must, between you, employ a significant proportion of the world’s supply of Clever Buggers so if you could get some of them together to arrange matters such that doing complicated Stuffs in Excel — like typing, copying and pasting, you know, really CPU-bashing things — doesn’t cause iTunes to start behaving like a fucking Dansette on a sailing yot in a Force 9 why, that'd be just swell!  FruitCo, I'm looking at you in particular because iThings used not to do this and now it does and the Excel in question is from Office 20-fucking-13.

You useless cretinous morons.

[TheLurker]

o hai Microsith o hai Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia!

You must, between you, employ a significant proportion of the world’s supply of Clever Buggers...

The evidence in this thread would rather suggest this is *not* the case. That... or they are employed, but solely to prevent other companies using their talents and they are kept locked away and absolutely forbidden to fix any of the crappy rubbish.

[Mr Larrington]

O hai SCS Software!

If I haz a link to a particular thread on ur forum stored elsewhere, and I paste it into Chrome, please do not return the message “You are not allowed to read posts on this forum” when what has actually happened is that your The Mods have removed the topic on account of it breaking Teh Roolz by asking for Money.  Because there is a big fucking difference between a “topic” and a “forum” and you could just have had a 404 which would have made it immediately apparent that the target url wasn’t there any more rather than making me think I'd been booted off the entire forum for Transgressing teh Unwritten Law like wot you really did do to my chum Ciprian.  Or something.

You useless cretinous morons.

Kthxbai

[Mr Larrington]

FFS!  Using mp3tag to move music files onto the NAS now appears to require more faffing about with SSH to jibble ownership such that I can see them from the Estate Office PC.

Gagh!

[Wombat]

Microsoft (again)!

Please stop trying to kill my lovely but aged Sony Vaio laptop!

I shut it down a week or so ago, and waited to be sure the little green light had gone off, so it really was off, but no, I fish it out this morning, because I want to connect my Aftershokz headphones to it, and its as flat as a flat thing that has been steamrollered to deth.
The reason becomes evident when I plug in the charger, it had evidently done a Windows update secretly, which meant it wasn't off at all, it was playing with itself.  What benefits did I gain, from eventually getting it fired up with this wondrous new update?  The bloody bluetooth was dead, that's what.  That's a really useful update, killing the bluetooth, but not as bad as its previous habit of killing the wifi (on a laptop that annoyingly doesn't have an ethernet port, and relies totally on wifi).  I eventually re-find device manager, which is harder since control panel was forcefully removed from my clutching fingers, and find it claims not to have bluetooth, and it has several "unknown device" entries.  Finding the bluetooth drivers for an 8 yr old laptop is sketchy, but I find a hopeful looking one using the desktop, after having to download a utility that will actually tell me the model number of the laptop (I have nothing with its model number on it), and I try to email the driver to myself to pick up on the laptop.  No dice, gmail refuses to send .exe files... rummage for USB stick, take it to laptop, and yes, it actually installs, and actually works!  Can I have that hour of my life back please, Microsoft?

[ian]

That thing were you're forced (for no good reason) to change your password to something, so you do it, have your browser save that password, and then inevitably, it doesn't work when you next try to log in. It's the password I set, it's been remembered correctly, but it doesn't work.

Who seriously designs a system that makes you change your password and then refuses to acknowledge it? I mean, that's a significant fucking fail.

[woollypigs]

I think that's part of a normal service, Ian.

[ian]

For Workday, I suspect this is better than normal service. Also resisting the 'forgot password' option. No one is getting their holidays approved today. An excuse not to do someone's mid-year review... hmm, not so bad.

[Mr Larrington]

Had to enter characters 1, 2 & 5 from my “memorable wossname” on Horseybank's login page three times just now because the bloody thing kept jumping one character up the drop-down list while I wasn’t concentrating.  No wonder I overpaid* them

* See “Fecking Div” thread.

[ian]

I think honestly that it's down to special characters, so it insists you add one, but then can't handle it because it's 2022 and still computers can't handle a per cent symbol.

[rafletcher]

Had to enter characters 1, 2 & 5 from my “memorable wossname” on Horseybank's login page three times just now because the bloody thing kept jumping one character up the drop-down list while I wasn’t concentrating.  No wonder I overpaid* them

My wifes login page from TwatWest has a habit of pre-populating the first box of he PIN with Dog knows what, that has to be cleared using the backspace key prior to entry.