06-15-2020, 07:20 PM | #706 | |
null operator (he/him)
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I wish they'd stop making trivial UI changes that don't add any significant value and instead reinstate features they lost in the Quiantbum renderer - like full function keyboard shorcut customisation that actually works. BR |
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06-15-2020, 09:09 PM | #707 | |
Bibliophagist
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BTW, was the mispelling of Quantum intended to be QuaintBum or just a random error? |
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06-15-2020, 09:22 PM | #708 |
Bibliophagist
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I can't resist the tempation to vent over a program that I haven't touched in decades. Way back when, I used a DOS program called Telix with a scripting language called SALT. Worked very nicely but almost every update broke some my scripts which were used for programming some of the machines used in a photofinishing lab. One heck of a lot cheaper than the manufacturer's control device, easier to program and flexible but I finally stopped updating it unless there was a change that I really needed.
That was where I joined the "If it ain't broken, don't fixpack it" crowd. |
06-16-2020, 02:39 AM | #709 |
null operator (he/him)
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06-16-2020, 01:58 PM | #710 |
Illiterate newbie
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Oh how I hate single-page applications... Namely Grafana... Which is very lovely user experience with bit unstable VPN connection. You edit stuff it looks good it even changes things. And then it simply fails to save your changes so up to hours of work is lost... And it doesn't even have decency to show big warning message that something is potentially wrong, which might allow you to copy paste the local changes to safety...
And don't even get me started with trying to use X-tunneling over SSH over VPN... Which just doesn't work, and this is with okay internet connections... I expect bit more from over 30 year old tech... |
06-16-2020, 03:28 PM | #711 |
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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I am STILL fighting with Chrome. I've pretty much given up and moved all my work and productivity SAAS stuff to Chromium Edge. It's abominable how slooooow it gets and no, unreasonable me, I don't wish to have to clear my cache 5x daily!
And when I say slow, I don't mean some barely-noticeable slowdown. I mean, you click a dropdown and WAIT for it to show up. Text buffering that makes you wait to see an entire line appear on the screen, not 1 second but many seconds. It's absurd.I've got nearly every extension turned off, uninstalled, you name it. GRRRRRR. When you're already doing as much work as you can, in a given day, working full-out, you simply can't sit there and wait for your damned browser to catch up with you. Hitch |
06-17-2020, 09:00 PM | #712 | |
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BBSes had aggregated into networks, and I was once a Conference Host for nine conferences on the second largest BBS network in the world, with just under 1,000 nodes. The largest was Fidonet, with I forget how many thousands of nodes across the world. Fido was an attempt to replicate Usenet in a form usable in single-user, single tasking machines. You ran a front end like BinkleyTerm when were a Fido node. Binkley answered incoming calls, and figured out what it was talking to. If it was another Fido BBS, it initiated a mail transfer, accepting and posting new mail in the message areas your BBS carried, and sending any replies your users had posted to prior mail. If it was a user calling, it called the BBS program to handle the call and allow the user to access the BBS. Fidonet was standards driven, and if your BBS software implemented the standards, you could be a node on Fidonet, regardless of what machine or BBS software you used. I was on Relaynet International Message Exchange. Whether your BBS could become a RIME node depended on whether a client existed to handle the communications. Things like RBBS and PCBoard were supported "out of th4ee box". Other things got more complex. For example, RIME required that people use real names when posting. BBS software like MajorBBS used aliases. So when MajorBBS message were sent to RIME, the client had to dig the user's real name put of the BBS member database to post to RIME under it, and replies to MajorBBS system posters had to do the reverse, and translate the real name being responded to the the alias the user had on the MajorBBS system. The nice thing about RIME was that their network software supported a form of private messaging. You could route main to a specific node, and make it readable only by the recipient (and the sysop of the BBS they used.) It meant I could do moderation in private. Most of my moderation was public and posted to all, and took the form of explanations of how to use the features RIME supported, and what the rules were and why they existed. There was a private conference Hosts had to read where people who were unhappy with moderation could complain to the network Steering Committee and moderators complained about would the to respond. I never got a complaint, but did get some private messages praising my efforts, and saying "We're in good hands." I enjoyed it, but looking back have no idea how I managed it. ______ Dennis |
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06-17-2020, 09:09 PM | #713 | |
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Drop me email or a PM with the specs in the PC you use and details about extensions you use and your workflow. Given that both browsers are based on the same underlying code, that one should be a problem and the other not is very odd. I have Chrome, Chromium based Edge, and Firefox hee, and *don't* see this. (A friend complained about Chrome and Firefox being snail slow and non-Chromium original Edge working fine after a recent Windows Update, but things had returned to normalcy in a few hours. We decided to call it another of life's unsolved little mysteries and move on. It's not like we wouldn't encounter other tech WTF moments soon enough. ) ______ Dennis |
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06-17-2020, 10:31 PM | #714 | |
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Do you run a lot of SAAS? Hitch |
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06-29-2020, 11:11 AM | #715 |
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So, this is embarrassing.
Some of you will recall that I ranted about a piece of software (Phrase Express) a while back, like...8 weeks or so? (Recap: the developers are German; they do sell an English language version; I'd been trying to do an if-then-else scenario, which the software says it does and I'd hit a wall. With zero viewable documentation about what went where, right?) I was sitting here on Sunday, staring at it and saying a few not-so-genteel things to it, when I accidentally clicked someplace...and lo, the answer was staring me right in the face. What had happened, in reviewing it, is that I took a single word, that they said, LITERALLY. I simply read a sentence and thought that they meant X. They didn't mean X (X was something I had no idea how to do, or where to start); by X they meant varied functionality within the program. Once I realized that X wasn't "X," but all this other s**t, it was EASY. GRRRRRRRR. Two wasted months. I wanted to scream, but at least it's moving forward now. Note to self: stop being so literal. (I knew that if-then-else just couldn't be so damned complicated. I mean...it's basic fundamental logic, the basis for pretty much all DBMS manipulation. It was driving me crazy!) Hitch |
06-29-2020, 12:23 PM | #716 | |
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But X in that context is a generic - it's a variable, where what X actually means is context dependent. Once you realize that, confusion magically abates. And it's part of what makes it fun for me when I'm trying to provide answers. "What does the person asking the question already know? How much background must I provide so they will understand my answer? Too little and they are still lost at sea. Too much and they get annoyed at suggestions they are ignorant. (And they often are ignorant, and don't know as much as they think they do.) But documentation, or lack of it, is a constant issue. I find myself hip deep now in virtual conferencing. One of my hobbies for decades has been helping to plan and run literary SF conventions. (These days, mostly as the chap that deals with the venue where the con is held.) COVID-19 means many such events (including two I work on) have been cancelled. Others have gone virtual, as things that can be accessed online. That's nice. How? An example is CoNZealand, the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention that was to take place in New Zealand. New Zealand locked down hard. The organizers faced the choice of cancelling the con or going virtual, and chose the latter. The Tech Director for CoNZealand is in Australian TV for $DAYJOB and well versed in broadcasting remote events. But that's "one to many", where the many are passive viewers. When you have audience interaction, all bets are off. (I know CNZ's Tech Director electronically, and we've interacted in other contexts.) CoNZealand has chosen to use Zoom for programming (and Zoom has Webinar and Meeting modes, so which personality it will assume will depend on what you're doing and must be set in advance.) Because of COVID-19 and Work From Home, most folks will at least be aware Zoom exists, and may have used it They are using Discord for social stuff. Discord is an originally voice only chatroom app developed for gamers, which has added text and video support. If you are a gamer or anime fan, you may be familiar with it because it is popular in those communities. If you aren't Discord may be terra incognita. There are a few other pieces of the puzzle as well, but Zoom and Discord are the main ones. I find myself a Problem Solver in Mission Control. My job will be monitoring usage on various parts of the platform and taking appropriate action. For instance, Zoom instances have license based capacity limits on how many may participate. What happens if a Zoom room overflows? (And in in-person cons where events take place in hotel spaces, programming is always a crap shoot. Guaranteed, something you thought was a Main Tent item is lightly attended, but an obscure item in a small meeting room has a line down the hall.) I'm looking at the Zoom API and the dashboard used to monitor things. But the Zoom docs are devoid of actual examples. Without a running Zoom instance to connect to and use the dashboard, it's a bit hard to learn stuff. (The assistant Tech Director is US based and someone I know personally. He's willing to spin up a Zoom instance we can play in together. It's just a matter of when a convenient time might be where we could work together, especially since he's in CA.) (And I managed to get confused by time zone differences and miss a CNZ Discord training session over the weekend. <Grrrr> ) Fun, for suitable values of the term. ______ Dennis |
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06-29-2020, 07:39 PM | #717 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Facebook has a new group called Concellation2020 -- for all the con-goers whose con got cancelled, or will yet be cancelled. It's been going to 2-3 months so far, and is mildly fun. Fan-run SF cons, comic book cons .... I don't know who all is there, but there's a lot of us.
FWIW, I have a basic (cheapest) level Zoom so I can so >40 minutes family chats once a week. If you need another guinea pig, I might be reachable. However, as a noon-8 Chicago timezone worker, I'm probably no better than your CA friend. |
06-29-2020, 07:51 PM | #718 | ||
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Quote:
(The other hindrance is that I'm posting from a newish desktop. Being desktop, it did not come with webcam, headphones and mic, etc. Headphones and mic I have. Headphones, post-COVID-19, are proverbial hen's teeth. I waited to long to order, and the ones I was interested in are out of stock at the manufacturer. Let's see what equivalents Newegg might have...) ______ Dennis |
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07-04-2020, 07:59 PM | #719 | ||
null operator (he/him)
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Not really a rant, but seems a good enough place
On the 2nd inst I posted this Quote:
Not in a calibre.msi, in the latest 7TT update install. The author already knew about it and his response to the reporter was: Quote:
Main Point: is there a phrase for that? That is, when you say 'something' has never happened, implying and it probably never will, the 'something' happens soon after. Self-defeating prophecy came to mind, but i was looking for something catchier - IMO it's not Sod's, Finagle's, or Murphy's Law, they all imply something went awry. BR Last edited by BetterRed; 07-04-2020 at 08:05 PM. |
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07-04-2020, 08:53 PM | #720 | ||
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(MS delivers virus signature updates for Microsoft Defender as part of Windows Updates. The latest one happened today. If you have diddled Windows auto update settings, that might be an issue.) Quote:
But Sod's, Finagle's or Murphy's Law might apply, because something did go awry. It was your understanding that did so, but same difference. I actually gave up on third-party A/V in the WinXP days. I was running Symantec Corporate, courtesy of a site license from an employer. (I would not touch the consumer Norton A/V with a stick, but Symantec installed with no problems, ran like a top, and consumed few resources.) The version I was running reached EOL, and would no longer get signature updates. I would need a new version. And I no longer worked for that employer, and it would be on my dime. The only thing Symantec ever "caught" had been "false positives". I asked myself if I needed third-party A/V and concluded I didn't. Viruses and malware are infections. Infections have vectors by which they enter the host body. Ward the vector, and block the infection. The main vector for viruses was email. I used Gmail. My mail store lived online, and I read and replied in my browser. And Gmail had viewers for common attachment types, so possibly infected attachments never reached my machine. I didn't worry about viruses because I'd warded the vector. The main vector for malware was the browser. I'd used Mozilla code since Mozilla was the name for a Netscape Communications effort to develop the next generation browser suite to replace Netscape Communicator. Most malware attacked IE, and I hadn't used it in years. (And most malware required Admin access to do its dirty work and bounced it it couldn't get it. I created a restricted ID without Admin access to use in XP, and only used an Admin account to do administrative chores.) I didn't worry about malware. I'd warded the vector. So I dropped Symantec and never missed it. Win7 and later did what I wished MS had done in Win2K, and made a non-privileged ID the normal normal account. (What needed to be done required a file system with the embedded notion of different users with different permissions and levels of access. NTFS had it. FAT* did not.) My strategy won't work for everyone. A late friend ran all up A/V on his laptop, But he sway in the Usenet pool, downloading binaries of things like British Dr. Who episodes that hadn't or wouldn't reach the US. Usenet "binary" groups are cesspools, and if I went there, I'd run all up[ A/V too. For most mere mortals, practicing Safe Hex and being aware of what you're doing makes MS built-in protection entirely adequate. ______ Dennis |
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