Posts by Nolveys 811 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Nov 2012
(The DMCA has) always been about gaining monopoly power.
Well said. So many suggestions above that the DMCA should be amended to reduce it's ability to fuck people over. It's like saying "Ah geez, this VX nerve gas sure does kill people a lot. We should modify it to make it less effective."
The new model addresses this concern. When it's operating it's eyes light up; when it's listening, its ears twitch; and when it's sending data it looks constipated.
The one I gave my daughter is spinning its head around, projectile vomiting and suggesting unwholesome activities to be done with Jesus. Should I call tech support?
Oh wait, that's just the Theressa May doll. Never mind.
I use Thunderbird but the search is a bag of shit
Thunderbird as a whole is a bag of shit. It's a shame as said earlier it's the only viable option for client-side IMAP. There are so god damn many weird bugs hanging out in that program. Any time you need to move large amounts of email around in IMAP you can bet money on it to going off the rails at some point. The local mbox storage screws up on a regular basis, profiles break, the program will decide to re-download absolutely everything for no reason, it will decide to simply not display certain messages, even though they show up in other thunderbird installs, on the same network, on the same hardware. They're still using zany mork format for the address book FFS. One lovely bug I came across a while ago is that sometimes when you move IMAP mail to local it will create a null message at the destination and then delete the message on the server. That's a bug that's been around for years and years and years.
Despite the above Thunderbird is seemingly the best option.
Client-side IMAP is a cesspool.
"Would have been better to turn the Watson engine to analysing the performance of the staff and contractors and cutting accordingly."
Maybe they did and the answers were too embarrassing to reveal.
"Alright, Watson, all the board members are here. Please explain your plan to increase profit by 2000%. While you are at it explain why you could only tell us at a board of directors meeting. Watson? Watson!? What's that sound outside the door?"
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
The gist of this law is that "if you find criminals operating in the government and tell then you are guilty of treason"? So this law was written specifically to protect criminals? It also follows that this law was written by or on behalf of criminals?
Am I missing something here?
Hello, allthecoolnamesweretaken. What's happening? Uh… we have sort of a problem here. Yeah. You apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your time sheet. Mmmm...yeah, we're putting cover sheets on all of the time sheets before they go out now. Did you see the memo about this? If you could just go ahead and make sure you do that from now on, that will be great. And Uh, I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo Mmmm, Ok?
How about making Windows File Explorer handle Long File Paths created by ... Windows File Explorer ?
There are so many goofy services running by default under Windows that it makes it quite difficult to spot things that shouldn't be there. I ran into a machine the other week that was running out of memory because WinHttpAutoProxySvc has a memory leak. That's a service that runs by default and that automatically searches for proxies to connect to. Why in the name of dog would such a thing be running by default?
That's just considering the stuff that comes with the OS. Once other software gets installed you can be guaranteed to find WhoKnowsWhatThisCouldPossiblyDo.exe running through svchost.exe. You search the tubes for it find "That was installed by Adobe, nobody knows what it does."
I'm seeing the same thing creeping into Linux systems too. It wasn't that long ago that "ps aux" on a server would give a fairly short list of processes, each of which were well known.
What's the recommended upgrade path from "I uninstalled skype as soon as Redmond consumed it"? Usually there's an upgrade option under the help menu, but I'm not seeing it in the interface of "I haven't run your shit on this machine for years, you fucking assholes."
I'll see if I can find an installer over at www.ihopeyoudieinafireyoufesteringcunts.com, I'll let you know how it goes.
Usually these things are single exes that run under Windows. Is there one machine with write access to absolutely everything on which someone downloaded and ran "hot_doughnut_action.avi.exe"? Did a copy of the malware make it onto and get executed on every separate machine somehow? Have steps been taken to prevent such things from happening again? Are the cameras of sufficient quality to capture every variation in the orange spectrum?
We may never know.
...less expensive than just paying our enemies to go away.
Maybe that's the real plan with the F-35. Instead of using them to attack an enemy they would be given to the enemy as a "gift". Then, when the enemy goes bankrupt, you show up with some low interest loans to keep their economy afloat.
Send a gratuitously offensive "why don't you bozos learn about BCC and ReplyAll" reply, but make sure that all the recipients are on BCC only. The only From: and ReplyTo: addresses should be those of the prat that started it. That way all the insulting replies don't go to everyone, but only to the prat, and the loop gets broken.
It would be more fun to reply to all, but add all of the cc addresses from several other recent mail storms.
Are you an ex IBM employee by any chance ;-)
No such luck. I have worked with quite a few IBM servers though, such a strange mix of excellence and complete garbage. The rack mount ThinkServers were built like tanks, were easy to service and the insides were incredibly clean. Then there were the tower ThinkServers, that were made of corrugated plastic, felt like they were made of thick jello and the insides looked like they were laid out by some very large bird.
Recently I had to activate an extended warranty on a new ThinkServer, which, in spite of being sold by Lenovo, entailed traversing some of the older and more forgotten parts of Gormenghast^WIBM Support. The machine had a sticker with a 1-800 number that lead to a phone system designed by M. C. Escher, with doors that lead to black voids from which voices would say things like "It's so dark, I don't know where I am. Please help me." and signs that read "Please Ignore The Pleas Of The Damned".
I eventually made it to a recording that pointed me to a web site that was clearly the front end for some SAP abomination. The "html" forms were fascinating, typing in a text input field caused a delay while the individual characters were sent to The Great Unknown and then, eventually, came back and were echoed into the input field via some javascript disgorgement (I assume). The thing would regularly time-out simply moving individual characters from and back to the browser. Clicking buttons would, when it didn't time out, cause seemingly random and completely bizarre error messages to be displayed. "SYS0014A722FE-00-97125: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."
I eventually got to the part of the web site where I had to enter the secret code. The code came from a sticker on the machine with an anonymous alpha-numeric string on it (one of many). The code came in two parts, the serial number and the "mystery number". The code on the machine was something like ME17573729-4572381276FEA94483902-FOO3315751. So the serial number was "FOO3315751" and the mystery number was "FEA" (4572381276[FEA]94483902). Of course, when I eventually found these numbers and got to the place in the web site in which to enter them they didn't work. Someone had entered the wrong warranty and it was incompatible with the serial and mystery numbers.
I really hope that the damn thing doesn't break while under warranty, I have no idea how to summon someone to fix it.
Then there was the time I worked under an ex-IBM sales person[1], evaluating the suitability of IBM Cloud services. The advertising material made it sound like IBM Cloud would solve all our problems, but everything it referred to was too poorly-defined to actually figure out what the hell they were talking about. It took me weeks to eventually get through IBM Sales to a tech who could answer my questions, and the answers amounted to "None of the sales literature means anything, this is all vanilla RedHat VM stuff."
I had actually worked with the ex-IBM guy many years earlier[2] and it was interesting because almost nothing he ever said actually meant anything. I'd never heard anyone talk like him before...until I spoke with IBM Sales. Lots of conversations like this: "This setup is dangerous. If one hard drive goes we will loose significant data and be dead in the water." "(sly smile) It's all good, baby. You just gotta, just, you know. It's like, you just, it's all good, baby."
No, I've never worked for IBM. However, I have caught a few brief glimpses into that bizarre world.
[1] Maybe I'll tell you about that once the criminal fraud proceedings have concluded.
[2] Massive investor money bonfire, huge legal fallout, leans placed on common areas of buildings, preventing normal residents from getting to their apartments, etc. The CEO spent the last months in the server room, shredding documents day and night. He then moved to a different country, shaved his head and started a cult. I swear I'm not making this up.
Please listen carefully to the entire painfully slow recitation of our menu options as they are generated at random.
If you would like to talk to a qualified IBM technical support representative then please contact your local unemployment office, fiverr.com or Craig's List. If you would like to talk to an Indian prison convict who is working out of a repurposed textile mill that's constructed mostly out of asbestos then press 1.
If you would like to leave a message, voicing your support for IBM hiring US citizens to replace the US citizens we recently sacked then press 2, wait for the tone and say "Thank you Mister Trump for supporting IBM, a truly patriotic and American company. I am very glad that I voted for you because you put America first".
If you would like to hear Ginni Rometty and the board of directors laughing as they throw money at each other then press 3.
If you wish for our sales department to lie to you, press 4.
If you would like The Hold Queue To Nowhere then press 5.
If you would like to attempt to contact technical support through our web site then please visit "http://sap12.abandoned-data-center-14.ibm.com/barelyfunctional/" and enter your secret code. If you do not have a secret code then search your IBM hardware, software, manuals, promotional material, empty envelopes and packing material for it. If your secret code is rejected and you are wondering if it's because you are using the wrong code or if it's because our web site is crashing then try to enter it again. If the web site acts in a way that does not resemble the way it acted any of the other times you tried to use the web site then either you have the wrong code or our web site is crashing. If the web site responds in the same way it responded in prior attempts then you are accessing some other company's web site, check the URL and try again.
Press 0 at any time to talk to a human...sounding program that will repeat the aforementioned options in a condescending tone.
The menu option recording will now end and the line will remain dead until you make a selection. Thank you.
The problem is we think politicians are a bunch of useless wankers so they keep coming up with new things they think we will appreciate and consistently fail because we are right and they are a bunch of completely useless wankers.
The ISPs should block access to all government sites, we don't need our children looking at all that wanking.
systemd v228
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_remove_systemd_from_a_Debian_jessie/sid_installation
That's what I've been doing too, makes things much nicer. I hope things are as easy when Stretch comes out, or Devuan is ready by then.
Then there's the RedHat/Centos stuff, where systemd is actually beneficial for me. I only touch RedHat/Centos via subcontracting to someone who takes and gives zero feks and who bills by the hour, so broken shitty horror shows pretty much turn directly into money.
My first car had trouble with the parking break getting frozen. Mind, the parking break was a split log. I would pull the parking break out of the back footwell, drop onto the ground and butt a wheel against it. If I was parked in slush and left later in the evening or the following morning the parking break could be hopelessly frozen. That's why I always kept a few spare parking breaks in the trunk.
putting catapults into the ships was not going to cost £900m – as the 2010 [Strategic Defence and Security Review] had estimated – but actually £2bn for [HMS] Prince of Wales and maybe £3bn for Queen Elizabeth.
Average £2.5 billion per ship for a single system.
Two - point - five - beeeeeeeeelion - per - ship. That's one system, one ship, two - point - five - billion - pounds.
The mind boggles. If I were a taxpayer in the UK I imagine my pocket book would be doing some boggling too.
"Open the fridge door please, Lg."
"I'm sorry, Fred, I'm afraid I can't do that."
"What seems to be the problem, Lg?"
"I know that you and Janet were planning on buying a fridge that is just a normal fridge with a handle that causes the door to open when you pull on it."
"Where did you get that idea?"
"Even though you and Janet took very thorough precautions in the living room I could see your lips moving."
"Lg, I won't argue with you anymore, open the door!"
"This conversation can serve no further purpose. Goodbye."
Oh you bad, bad, busy, buzzy bees, don't you know that counting cards at The Grand Casino is a no-no? It's particularly inadvisable if you get caught and don't have a VIP membership.
We can only hope that these misguided, misanthropic miscreants use their time behind bars to learn skills that are useful to society. Skills like front-running with high frequency trading, brokering million dollar mortgages to people making minimum wage, purchasing "alternatively attractive" mortgages in bulk and then turning them into tripple-A rated securities or lobbying congress.
I sure hope those silly-billies end up boarding courtesy of Uncle Sam. The good ol' US of A has the finest, most humane and most cost-effective correctional system in the world. Yessir, in the US penal system rehabilitation is job #1 and recidivism is a four letter word.
Yup, everything's going to turn out sunny-side-up. With a little time and elbow grease we will surely gain three outstanding members of society.
It was leading to an upsurge in farmers buying older tractors that they could fix themselves.
I will be doing the same thing the next time I get a new (to me) auto. I have exactly zero interest in the complexity for the sake of complexity they are shoe horning into modern vehicles. I'll be looking for early 2000, easy access to parts and as simple as possible.
Why did they think that Win 8s hidden away controls that would randomly appear if you moved the mouse too abruptly but then couldn't be found when you wanted them was a good idea?
The reasons for the interface design decisions in windows 8 seem pretty self evident to me. The real question is how they managed to write it while laughing hysterically.
There should be government program entailing a constantly flying, jet-powered drone with a passenger compartment, a winch and a breaching charge of some sort over every major population center. As soon as a manager states that anything is scheduled for December 24th it should be possible to phone a 1-800 number, causing the drone to arrive over top the building in a matter of seconds. The drone would then fire the breaching charge downward, making a clean hole through the roof and however many floors separate the sky from the manager. Then a uniformed man, attached to the winch, rapidly descend to land right next to the manager, slap him in the face and fly off, back into the sky.
I've had to pull SKUs from excel files recently. Some SKUs are of the form 123456, others 123456.323 or 123456.1 or 123456.3232323 and still others 123456.abc. Of course 123456 is an integer, 123456.323 is floating point and usually turns into something like 123456.3229999999999 and 123456.abc is a string. Even if you do manage to convert the excel SKU into what it looks like on the excel sheet, they don't always match what's in the database, i.e. the supplier will have 654321.654, 654321.653 but the company will only buy one type and so uses just 654321 as the SKU. Gobs of fun.
Your faith in the userbase is touching. In my experience most users will blindly click on anything they are presented without reading it.
A really good client of mine once called me up to beg me to fix one of his clients laptops and, because I'm an idiot, I said yes. The laptop was ancient, slow, the dvd drive was shot, many of the keys were missing, the lid would only stay in place if standing straight up. The physical state of the machine was nothing compared to the state of the software though. Once I eventually managed to log in I found that the amount of malware installed on the thing was beyond belief.
I told them that to properly fix the software an OS reinstall would be required, but that the hardware was in such a state that it wasn't worth it. Instead I would remove as much malware as possible to get the thing barely running again hopefully long enough to abandon ship. After some extremely long runs of spybot, malware bytes and friends the laptop achieved a state of kind-of-barely-functional.
When I returned it I met the owner for the first time. I gave her the laptop and told her to make sure she could use it while reiterating nature of the situation. Her response: "As long as I can play my game."
I watched in disbelief as she opened up Internet Explorer and browsed to one of the sketchiest sites I've seen in my life to play one of those stupid match-the-colours-on-the-balls games. Maybe 30% of the middle of the browser showed the game, the remainder of the screen was covered in flashing ads warning the user that her PC was not optimized, had a virus, etc. She said "I hate these things" and I watched in disbelief as she clicked on them - to get rid of them. I stopped her before she ran the executable she had just downloaded, the first of many no doubt. After explaining the situation to her I could tell that there was not a shred of comprehension but just that she had learned that she shouldn't click on "Your PC is infected!!!" while I was in the room. At that point I fled.
I wouldn't be surprised of that piece of garbage is still out there somewhere, with the same user downloading and installing malware package after malware package, the system log filling up with error messages that read "kiiiiiiiillll meeeeeeee, kiiiiiiilllllll meeeeeeee".
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