The computing stuff rant thread

[Vince]

I know some people don't like W3Schools, but I find it a useful reference.

Until last week.

I know you now need to get my permission to put cookies on my computer, but do you need to do it on every page of your site every time I visit?

Makes it almost completely unusable.

[Jaded]

Chuffing cookies!

Several sites I go to ask me to state what cookies I’ll allow. I say none, and the next time I visit I have to tell them again. Surely they aren’t so stupid that they don’t keep a record of what users want?

Oh, and BBC,

CAN YOU STOP RESETTING PREFERENCES FOR AUTOPLAY ON YOUR CHUFFING VIDEO SECTIONS. IF I WANTED AUTOPLAY I WOULDN”T HAVE TURNED IT OFF, WOULD I!!!

[Vince]

Chuffing cookies!

Several sites I go to ask me to state what cookies I’ll allow. I say none, and the next time I visit I have to tell them again. Surely they aren’t so stupid that they don’t keep a record of what users want?

They do store it... in a cookie... which you've denied them from using.

[dave r]

Chuffing cookies!

Several sites I go to ask me to state what cookies I’ll allow. I say none, and the next time I visit I have to tell them again. Surely they aren’t so stupid that they don’t keep a record of what users want?

Oh, and BBC,

CAN YOU STOP RESETTING PREFERENCES FOR AUTOPLAY ON YOUR CHUFFING VIDEO SECTIONS. IF I WANTED AUTOPLAY I WOULDN”T HAVE TURNED IT OFF, WOULD I!!!

I don't keep cookies I have the same problem, its annoying to keep being asked.

[Jaded]

Chuffing cookies!

Several sites I go to ask me to state what cookies I’ll allow. I say none, and the next time I visit I have to tell them again. Surely they aren’t so stupid that they don’t keep a record of what users want?

They do store it... in a cookie... which you've denied them from using.

I thought that might be the reason. If it is the case, they need to make one cookie to rule them all!

[Jaded]

Chuffing cookies!

Several sites I go to ask me to state what cookies I’ll allow. I say none, and the next time I visit I have to tell them again. Surely they aren’t so stupid that they don’t keep a record of what users want?

Oh, and BBC,

CAN YOU STOP RESETTING PREFERENCES FOR AUTOPLAY ON YOUR CHUFFING VIDEO SECTIONS. IF I WANTED AUTOPLAY I WOULDN”T HAVE TURNED IT OFF, WOULD I!!!

I don't keep cookies I have the same problem, its annoying to keep being asked.

The bbc is one of the sites I do allow cookies from, which makes it doubly annoying!

[Afasoas]

Dear Developers,

I know you like to cache lots of data because it makes your applications nice and responsive, but please spare a thought when blindly parallel.foreaching over the queries you use to load said data. DOSing the data tier isn't quite the way to go. Maybe instead you could use the native asynchronicity of the datastore driver and only invoke subsequent reads when the first spate of mutli-threaded reads is finished? After all, the responses to your applications are backing up in the data tier as your application can't process the responses as fast as the data tier is returning them. Ergo, this optimisation won't hurt.

Thanks
Grumpy Sysadmin

[Tim Hall]

The most recent OSMC update seems to have b0rked something , so the sound goes all Norman Collier. I expect they'll jibble an update to the update.

[Pingu]

And the other day it dropped its wifi connection and not amount of bad language could persuade it to reconnect.  Reboot; connection restored.  Not long after, it did it again.  After another reboot, the Internets told me that this was probably because some genius at Microsith had, during an update, enabled the option for Windholes to switch off the wifi adapter "to save power".  Even when the fucking thing is plugged into the mains.

Who the actual fuck thought this was a good idea?

Ah - that may explain what happened to this lapdancer a couple of times.

[Morat]

BIOS update from Dell? Ok - may as well.
Reboot
Damnit, it tripped Bitlocker.
Now where's the password to the database of bitlocker keys?
Ahah, on my super safe USB key of useful stuff.
Which I had to empty onto my C drive in a hurry so I could copy some CCTV evidence last week
oh.. carp...

[SoreTween]

Dear Microsoft, for Christmas I want just one thing - disable saving of excel files in Page Layout or Page Break Preview views.  If you could arrange for computers to punch firmly upon the nose anyone who thinks these views are a good idea that would be great too.

[ian]

Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install. Download Skype Meeting App. Install.

Yes. Microsoft, I know I need to install the plug in. I've installed it multiple times. It's running there in my dock now.

The rather genius irony is that it's the Skype Meeting App that's asking me to install the Skype Meeting App. WTAF?

[Jaded]

 

[Mr Larrington]

Oho, Microsith!  Now I have turned off the option that allows this Babbage-Engine to switch off the wifi adapter "to save power" - twice - I find the wifi adapter to be switching itself off anyway.  "Try updating the driver", says the internets.  "Can't," says Windows, "because you're already using v3.0.something from 2016, wot is the latest version!"

So how is it that I found, within five seconds of entering the details into a FWSE, a Win10 64-bit driver with a version number of 10.something dated April 2018?

Clicky, download, clicky, install, clicky, reconnect, cross fingers.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

Ahah, on my super safe USB key of useful stuff.
Which I had to empty onto my C drive in a hurry so I could copy some CCTV evidence last week
oh.. carp...

Do NOT do anything more. Do NOT pass go.
We might be able to rescue this.  I am assuming you ave access to another system. There are recovery utilities available which will find deleted files.
The first tutility I would try is Sysrescue CD   http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/
To be honest I dont know if there is a lost files utility on there, but I do know you can use it to scan for deleted partitions.
So take a fresh USB stick, burn the sysrescue CD to the USB stick and boot up your PC with the USB.

This is the utility for recovering deleted partitions
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Actually - I make an assumption here. You did NOT reformat the USB stick or did you?
In the case of not reformatting the file may well be recoverable.

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/13706/recover-deleted-files-on-an-ntfs-hard-drive-from-a-ubuntu-live-cd/

This uses the utility ntfsundelete  with Ubuntu.  I woul imagine sysrescuecd has the same utility.

[Jaded]

Chuffing cookies!

Several sites I go to ask me to state what cookies I’ll allow. I say none, and the next time I visit I have to tell them again. Surely they aren’t so stupid that they don’t keep a record of what users want?

Oh, and BBC,

CAN YOU STOP RESETTING PREFERENCES FOR AUTOPLAY ON YOUR CHUFFING VIDEO SECTIONS. IF I WANTED AUTOPLAY I WOULDN”T HAVE TURNED IT OFF, WOULD I!!!

I don't keep cookies I have the same problem, its annoying to keep being asked.

The bbc is one of the sites I do allow cookies from, which makes it doubly annoying!

It must be how they have set up the process, because when I go to these sites that re-ask me for my cookie choices, they have kept me logged in with my identity for that site...

[Kim]

Chromium's just updated and the inactive tabs have gone blue and I don't like it.   

[woollypigs]

Chrome has too but the square boxes are now round.

[Kim]

That too.  The roundness doesn't bother me particularly.  The blueness is just bad UI.  You should be able to tell the difference between the window chrome and, well, Chrome.

[hulver]

They also don't show the "www." any more either. Or "m."

So go to

www.example.com

and the address bar will show.

example.com

Go to

www.m.www.m.www.m.example.com

and the address bar will show.

example.com

Great.

[Feanor]

Another annoyance is the way browser address boxes have morphed into address / search boxes.

When I type "192.168.1.1" I don't want to search the internet for that term!

I need to type explicitly: "http://192.168.1.1" which irritates me.

[Kim]

I'm in two minds about this.  Obviously I want an address bar that doesn't hide things from me, because I'm doing enough of ^ that sort of thing that anything else is a major irritation.

On the other hand, it's been readily apparent since the 90s that people in general don't understand URLs.  They barely grok the difference between the browser chrome^[1] and the web page, so intelligent interpretation of DNS names isn't going to happen.  Brower authors have tried to solve this by making a search engine text box and the address bar interchangeable, which does at least mean that when they type a URL into a search box, they don't get thwarted when whatever search engine has colonised the start page hasn't indexed the thing they want to go to.

Google know that people don't understand URLs and basically just search for things (I'm guilty of that myself - I barely even use bookmarks any more), so it makes sense for them to try to eliminate the address bar from the browsing experience.  No good can come of it.

_{[1] Not to be confused with the browser, Chrome.  Thanks Google.  Clear as mud.}

[TheLurker]

Microsoft.  Stop being so effing clever, clever.  If the incoming JSON can't be mapped [FromBody] into the designated type then throw a sodding exception don't just shrug your bloody shoulders and hand on a null instance of the type.  That's no bloody use at all. Pillocks. 

All you sad-sacks condemned like me to work in the M$ salt mines may wish to make all your value type properties on types used in controller methods nullable.  Why?  Because if your incoming JSON containing "fred" : null and your type's Fred property is not nullable the binding shrugs its shoulders as above. Yes, yes you may get null exceptions in your code, but at least you'll know WTF is going and where it's going wrong.

Very nearly a whole morning (approx 0.002% of my remaining life span*) pissed up against a wall working out that one.

*Based on generally accepted actuarial values for a man of my generation.

[Ham]

Microsoft.  Stop being so effing clever, clever.  If the incoming JSON can't be mapped [FromBody] into the designated type then throw a sodding exception don't just shrug your bloody shoulders and hand on a null instance of the type.  That's no bloody use at all. Pillocks. 

All you sad-sacks condemned like me to work in the M$ salt mines may wish to make all your value type properties on types used in controller methods nullable.  Why?  Because if your incoming JSON containing "fred" : null and your type's Fred property is not nullable the binding shrugs its shoulders as above. Yes, yes you may get null exceptions in your code, but at least you'll know WTF is going and where it's going wrong.

Very nearly a whole morning (approx 0.002% of my remaining life span*) pissed up against a wall working out that one.

*Based on generally accepted actuarial values for a man of my generation.

I don't suppose Microsoft are any better with their decimal placing either, Methuselah

[jsabine]

Very nearly a whole morning (approx 0.002% of my remaining life span*) pissed up against a wall working out that one.

*Based on generally accepted actuarial values for a man of my generation.

I don't suppose Microsoft are any better with their decimal placing either, Methuselah

Even assuming 6 hours for the lost morning, that still gives something over 34 years of lurking to come. That doesn't seem excessive to me.