Petty computer annoyances thread

Just had to get this off my chest.

WTF, Chrome? I'm used to using Firefox + UnMHT (it's an extension that lets one save multiple tabs in the MHT format [all graphics and stuff like that is packed into one file, instead of spread out in a separate, dedicated subdirectory] for offline reading) + DownloadHelper for videos -- music or lectures or whatever.

In this way I can read occasional threads from some verbose boards and stupid stuff like cracked.com multipage jokes at my leisure.

So, I'm used to having Chrome open, because it's much better at keeping track of google accounts and stuff, in addition to Firefox for any kind of browsing. Chrome does have some inferior-to-crippleware versions of the two basic browsing extensions needed for offline reading/viewing, but nothing remotely close to an UnMHT-type thing.

So, like WTF? I'm pretty sure extension-writing are incentivized profit-centers for groups or individuals who are target-oriented and synergistic with a view to positive outcomes, so like why so lazy, codemonkeys?

COMPUTERS WASTE TOO MUCH OF MY TIME!!!

Yes, I agree, gadgets are fucking r...differently-abled. I can't understand the fetish people have for technology. Good tools, for crunching numbers, opening doors automatically, and stuff. Indispensable, I would say.

But some people *really* like that shit. It is fucking beyond lame. Dude, go outside and look at plants or something, and leave your dipshit fancy nerd camera phone utility belt behind, dinkstain.

Not "you," but you know, those people.

Testifah, bruvvah!

NERRRRDDDDDD!1111111111111111111!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!

What is a good browser that supports: complete ad-blocking, bulk saving of multiple tabs/windows, flash/all other major format embedded video/sound downloading, and allows selective per-site enabling of flash/javascript "content"

AND

saves in a disk cache all web pages in a user's browsing history, up to a space limit that the user can specify? this would remain saved until manually cleared by the user or until the limit of the disk cache has been reached.

This cache is to be accessible via the browser's native "view History" feature, or a third-party browser extension which provides a similar interface. Unlike Firefox, this disk cache would not be cleared upon system restarts or aborting the browser instance(s).

So, basically, Firefox, with a disk cache of recently viewed web pages. Or a Chrome with a "Work offline" option. I'm pretty sure Firefox used to have a functional "Work offline" option, but it is something else, now -- not sure what it is supposed to be, but it is not "Work offline," since the disk cache is volatile and not customizable by the user.

Also, can some nerd just port Valgrind already to Cygwin? It's probably not that hard, you shiturds. I'd do it, but don't rinse my mouth with dick every morning, so probably not.

Also, are people so guillible that they think the super-secret "algorithm" of Yelp is anything but some douche calculating what prompts repeat visits to Yelp?

Personally, I think that's a good idea -- start a fake review site and let the reviews most likely to encourage site traffic through. I don't if Yelp does this or not, but it would be good, to get the foot in the door, to not have many ads, and when they are hooked, ad the shit out of the place, and maybe get "businesses" to pay to have their little food trucks or whatever be listed. Also, sell private information.

See, some pantywaist white hat types would probably say, "Oh my, but that goes agains the whole ethos of the new digital millenium!" But everybody who isn't a total turd already knows that the only people who would (a) visit (b) trust (c) pay any place like that deserves whatever they get, within the bounds of the law.

Also, ORCAD and the two big Verilog providers of student "suites" are, I already knew, major pains in my ass, but it's tolerable when it's for some class to wait for a manual e-mail registration for their free burn-ware, but when, as I assume everyone does, you go through a bunch of disposable netbooks, because they wear out, you just want quickly to simulate a circuit, do they really think people are going to wait for some Steinberg-quality (not a Jew joke -- a joke about Steinberg's horrible crippleware enveloping their quality SW masquerading as C/P) e-mail from Megan Hilty to get a stupid code for some free dumbware designed to inspect some simple circuits?

Who the fuck is in charge of like the real stuff at these places? Michael Scott? I put up with it when I had to submit testbenches and Verilog shit for projects, but for when I just want to double-check some AC data or quick-and-dirty try-drive a bit of logic, it's a bit much.

You all suck. And by you, I mean them, and by all I mean my balls.

Oh yeah, so apparently I need to do more C++ crap, instead of using a real language like Haskell or C, and I need some industry hack instructor to sign off on me.

First of all, engineering disciplines are littered with anti-intellectual know-nothing types who seem to think the goal of producing academic work is to integrate properly into some piece of shit job.

Whatever, that's not really a computer thing, and I just find it amusing that supposedly creative, intelligent people have nothing to say or do with the life of the mind.

But I know vaguely this person who has to sign off on me, and she is not only ridiculously anti-research, she holds the absurd, ridiculous view that the best way to learn (or refresh, or whatever) things is NOT by inspecting lots of examples, but just sitting around some fucking computer all day making diagrams and implementing something that works.

The correct way to learnrelearnrefreshwhatever memory on how to traverse linked lists in idiomatic C++ code is to look at multiple solutions, copy them, and worry about the big ideas. IIRC she thinks that's like plagiarism, as though some codefreak software engineer is writing something unique.

Whatever is unique to a program lies not in the code, but in the intention, the non-trivial execution, and whatever else autistic freaks are incapable of.

She can suck my hose. Stupid bitch. Not only is she wrong, she thinks she might be right. Inexcusable.

I think your problems would be solved if you use IE (an old version) and learn Python. And change your pants. Why? When it happens, you'll know.

But my comment! It was righteous!

Yeah, I don't have a problem with Python -- it's just I'm more all about translating lambda calculus expressions straight into a language, and finding out things about provability in logic.

I don't think that's so crazy. I, on the other hand, am probably batshit crazy, but at least I'm not nerd!

I don't know or care about IE -- I just "need" to download embedded media, and efficiently catalogue for offline use html-type pages. And block all ads, or whatever. I don't give a shit about all that stuff, just that it enriches my experience of the great pageantry of life.

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Originally posted by spitz

I think your problems would be solved if you use IE (an old version) and learn Python. And change your pants. Why? When it happens, you'll know.

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Don't you ever mouth off to me about shitting my pants.

You skateboarder punks don't even know what you're talking about.

And I wasn't suggesting copying code verbatim for any purpose -- even some little project for some class. At least I didn't mean that. What I meant is that pedagogy IMO for little things like basic core math or mastering data structures or OOP should be based on the "learn by rote" method.

Maybe I'm a moron (well...a functional moron...I guess) but if I had to do something like prove the well-ordering theorem, I would basically use my memory of having learned the standard proof and use that as a template.

Of course, I would also want to shoot someone in the face if they made me write out the proof, but that's an example.

It's also IMO an artifact of the way hack adjunct "instructors" view their menial little accomplishments -- as the best and greatest and most creative!

And that is not meant to denigrate people who, you know, actually *do* things IRL, but to suggest that cultivating disrespect for higher, more abstract learning among dipshit skateboard undergraduates is not only not good, it's bad.

And also, it's not humble, and so it's a major personality flaw, which isn't my problem, but it's fun to pick at other people about.

In Windows, why can't you scale/resize an image just by right-clicking and selecting an option? Loading up jpegs etc in even MS Paint is a chore when you just wanna resize.

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Originally posted by The Original An Gadaí

In Windows, why can't you scale/resize an image just by right-clicking and selecting an option? Loading up jpegs etc in even MS Paint is a chore when you just wanna resize.

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Hi! What are u talking about?

I mean when you open a folder full of images, why do you have to use a program to change something as simple as the size of an image?

I don't know. Maybe there are some specialized operating systems written for use by a relative handful of people in a particular hardware-based industry that do this, but *should* there be an embedded program with tentacles deep in the windows registry (like....I don't know, a zip-file utility or a virus scanner)?

I don't know anything about anything, and less than that about pictures, but I think I'd rather take the extra step and pick some software myself.

Like, if you're writing some text, do you always load up some full word processor suite? Or just open a little text editor?

Well, that wasn't much of an answer. I just got out of the computer labs at school and found out it's bright and sunny outside, so maybe I'm deoxygenated.

Officially have had my assembly language cherry busted.

Still working on it, but that is fucking cool.

I think I might have to drop this C++ thing this term to concentrate on low-level stuff, and of course finish this physics sequence.

I want to murder this piece of shit administrator with her stupid crap. Maybe I can just finish that C++ crap at a community college and transfer it. I cannot stand some little administrator who happens to be a C++ wiz contaminating what could be good theoretical stuff with the ridiculous syntax.

Or I'll come back to it and, in addition to writing her zillion programs whose specs are described in shit language using not only exclusively functional programming conceits, but also many, many passages of embedded x86 assembly.

Boy oh boy, three whole courses per term, with zero new preps per term, and she has graders to grade everything. And she performs no research. And she complains about it nearly every lecture.

What a useless cunt. She should go back to devry. Useless idiot who shares none of the interests of computer scientists, and none of the culture of the academy.

I hate the ads being pushed on YouTube - you can't even skip some of them. And they intrude when you're listening to an entire album, between songs.

My AOL address book has been giving me a hard time lately, disappearing and then coming back.

My iPod won't always let me load songs I've already bought.

Plus I just know that SkyNet is planning the extinction of humanity. Grrr.

AOL??????????????

What the hell is that?

NO UR HAVING A SPOOF UR FUNNING ME!

How do I know? Because I've never seen an ad on Youtube, and because if ur complaining about streaming entire albums, u clearly, in your old age, accept it as a price for ZOMG PIRACY!!!!! YOU MONSTER!

And iPod problems? Dude, that's the Apple way!

And Skynet isn't real.

QEMFD motherfucker!

And get back to work you are servant to the people!

As an aside, pretty sure you don't work for the post office. In between UG and grad school I was a casual graveyard worker. Some of the union cats would just be absolutely toasted after their midnight lunch hour. Nobody said shit.

Well, I officially just withdrew from that class. I get a nice "W" on my transcript, and I still have to pay for that piece of shit asshole motherfucking class, but just the sheer emotional trauma this woman put me through has already fucked me in two classes I like -- low-level programming and physics. And I mean FUCKED. First physics midterm? (He gives us two) 0/76 (long answer portion) 9/24 (multiple choice -- and I literally just filled in bubbles randomly). Low-level midterm? Something like 34%.

And that fucking sucks ass, because those are like my favorite things to do (well, physics only with electromagnetism and stuff to do with waves -- mechanics was a hassle and I fucking hated it).

And no I don't blame that rotten apple administrator who happens to be an instructor with no official duties in school other than lecturing, having someone else grade everything, and making stupid assignments up, AND, word on the street is, nobody in the department with, you know, actual research interests, regardless of whether or not they are doctors or not, respects her.

I fucked it all up and was disorganized, but a lot of why I was so disorganized is that half the time I was just apoplectic about the waste of space and time this pervert of the academy was. I really do hope she dies.

That is also why I didn't answer "TNP has been or is married." Don't like to talk about it.

No, I don't work for the U.S. Postal Service... or any other postal service, for that matter.

Nothing wrong with that.

Here's something I puzzled at in Roubaud's "epsilon-like-set-inclusion-notlike-hilbert-curly-episilon" :

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Originally posted by Roubaud

1047 12-31-83 JCS

ny ilnb, 1p

xy il n x w, 1,

error in line above : Malformed

type 2 + 2

2 + 2 = +4.00000000

type sroj 70;/

type srol 7 p;/

error in line above : Malformed

1.1 set x = x + 1.

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yeah it goes on it. it is a sonnet, part of a book composed of sonnets, by an amateur of the sonnet form.

But I guess what it gets to.

Oh yeah another annoyance some fucking nerd is going to be like durrr.....use an alt-code!

I can see for some weird-ass character like set membership epsilon, but if someone suggests memorizing the numeric shortcuts for e-[insert one of three accents] etc down the line, and suggesting that is somehow reasonable, I'd suggest they go back to regular-person school. Those are parts of various languages, not some winky-dink little special characters. So, obviously, one is retarded to memorize some inportable numeric codes.

Those people also should go suck some dick. Stupid motherfuckers. No idea of how people can use "foreign" languages." Go watch some more whatever kid cartoons.

camelCase >> fucker_case

I just learned people are still having nurd slap fights about this. It's obvious.

Probably the same people who like fucko_case are those maggots who complain about using ctrl-keys in emacs or whatever neckbeards complain about.

Here's a refreshing change of tune. A petty compuscienerd awesome happy.

Is there anyone who does not think that lasers and holograms make people cream their shorts just as much as watching *The Crow* makes goth chicks leaky?

Fucking cool. Like a private science show in physics lecture today. I was smiling at seeing the ruby laser hologram up close, and when I backed away to let others check it out made it back to my usual seat, I saw other much younger skateboarder punks just grinning too, solitary, returning to contemplate interference patterns. eta sc. glad that they at least saw the hologram.

I bet you anything the good doctor had something like some naches going on, having no doubt observed as I did the look of radiant sensual pleasure on his students, most of whom have been in his lecture all year like me.

He might have been most glad that his mood of perturbation at those in the back didn't come fill in the front seats to observe the maxima for various slit experiments.

I'm more middle-of-the-room sitter myself -- that way I can sip some whiskey occasionally and the slackers in the back dont give a shit, and I can also laugh to myself whenever he says something funny about filling in slits and stuff. I'm not the only one laughing, trust me.

Hey so for some reason I have a major hard-on for annoying the "industry C++" types in my future coursework, so does any of you gaywads have any advice for helping me embed as much x86 32 assembly, #include a bunch of C libraries, including using "low"-level exception-handling like SIG* in C++, and I will take the high road and not try to deliberately subvert stuff by using Haskell code, mostly because it can't be compiled on this shit motherfuckers.

One of you fuckers must know the rules. I just hate these people. They are see signature. Obviously, use printf and avoid using try and throw. Just for fun.

Here's one: anytime some...body uses OOPfile streams insteadof..just use cstdio...whatever they can only get more pissedoff...BUT if they get pissed off just use a bunch of embedded asm for like a switch statement where I could ARGUE it's good for performance, even if it's not in many cases, and then go on to write MORE good "C++ code..."

Also, I don't see why I need to use reference variables. Why can't I just use pointers to structs, providing that I give some optimization for the alignments from the start, or at least understand the way padding works, or at least ... I don't see why reference variables rather than just using good old pointers is better.

Anyone have any experience with a Chromebook? I may need a new computer, and those are about the ones in my budget -- or, as I call it, "budget." The only way I can use one is to install Linux of some variety -- I'm not really supposed to be using Windows, anyway, because of peer pressure (or, as I call it, "peer" annoyances), and since I spend time using Cygwin anyway for most non-JO stuff on the computer, it's fine.

Just wondering. I don't have internet at home, but have access most days through various random places.

I guess one thing that bothers me is when the disc space gets exceeded then I have to delete a ton of things. I tend to be a packrat so it is a matter of picking and choosing. I will have to be more proactive in the future in order to prevent this. Sometimes, it's tempting to save things onto the desktop because they are so accessible there but too much stuff crammed in one place can add tot he problem.

Still no problems with Skynet, so that's good.

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Originally posted by Froody Blue Gem

I guess one thing that bothers me is when the disc space gets exceeded then I have to delete a ton of things. I tend to be a packrat so it is a matter of picking and choosing. I will have to be more proactive in the future in order to prevent this. Sometimes, it's tempting to save things onto the desktop because they are so accessible there but too much stuff crammed in one place can add tot he problem.

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Yeah, the only thing to do is acquire some external hard drives.

Hint: you don't actually need to buy a fancy external hard drive, if you can get one for cheaper that's labelled "internal." You just need a USD 0.50 USB-->SATA or whatever adapter. Oh, I should add, while that works fine, you really shouldn't be carrying around a spinning HD, especially one without a case. So, it works, but be careful. I don't even think Macs now use USB anymore, unless you call the Lightning or USB C some kind of relevant thing.

HOWEVER, that only goes for data, config files, and all that.

If, IIRC, you use a Mac, and somehow your software can't be executed from an external drive, then, I don't know what you can do.

OR, if you don't need, say 1 TB of storage, just grab one or several 32 GB microSD cards (those seem to be the cheapest sizes, and pretty much any phone or tablet will handle those, no matter how old) and if needed, an adapter to SD format (should be included with the cards).

I don't know a lot about Macs, just that they use funny fancy connectors that nobody else does.

So, you're probably SOL about USB 2/3.0, and maybe about the SD card port.

I think a hub to restore what all other computers use to connect physical devices is pretty cheap -- then you'd be able to use the regular, standard, cheap devices to fix the storage problem.

Instead of like Lightning Bug Mountain Gorilla Fast Plane 14.5 Hyperplane, or whatever their new fetish is.

Ergh. Well, my main workhorse Chromebook+Linux box finally taught me that, indeed, USB ports and SD card ports are rated for a certain number of insertions.

That, or I should blow compressed air into the two faulty ports.

Oh well, it still has one working USB 3.0 port. Sort of a PITA, but not a surprise that the specifications engineers use are actually pretty accurate. I don't know what the ports are specified for — probably well under 10,000 insertions.

Still got a backup Chromebook fully replaced with Linux, but the speakers are shot and, like my other non-desktop computers, the keyboards start to fail with my Oscar-from-The-Odd-Couple aggressive smashing typing "technique."

Shut up, touch-typing is gay.

I know where the keys are, without looking, and I type goddamned fast, when I want to.

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Originally posted by Elendil's Heir

Still no problems with Skynet, so that's good.

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Are you sure?

Elon Musk is definitely a Dr. Tyrell, without the title, and he's evil enough to try to make the people he hires to do his technical work create a simulacrum of Skynet.

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Originally posted by Jizzelbin

OR, if you don't need, say 1 TB of storage, just grab one or several 32 GB microSD cards (those seem to be the cheapest sizes, and pretty much any phone or tablet will handle those, no matter how old) and if needed, an adapter to SD format (should be included with the cards).

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Oh, yeah. If you go that route, which I think is the simplest and cheapest next to a spare hard drive, do yourself a favor and format the SD-card or flash drive with either VFAT or NTFS — you will eventually probably need to use the data on the drive on a Windows machine, so you want to use one of those options.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Jizzelbin

...Elon Musk is definitely a Dr. Tyrell, without the title, and he's evil enough to try to make the people he hires to do his technical work create a simulacrum of Skynet.

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He's got enough problems of his own right now: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...interview.html

Quote:

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Originally posted by Jizzelbin

I don't see why reference variables rather than just using good old pointers is better.

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Oh, just ignore everything I said about this and other things about C++.

It may be surprising, but Google's in-house style guide for writing C++ is very sensible. To my credit, they disallow use of throwing and catching exceptions, but I don't believe there's a person on the planet who would have a problem with using the C++ shortcut for references, rather than a pointer-to-a-pointer.

I just stick with what Milewski has written in print, and, although it's of interest, not go nuts with template metaprogramming.

My own rule is don't fucking use multiple inherit....

Eh, that's not really relevant to this thread.

Just wanted to emend some of my earlier comments.

And use the STL whenever possible.

I suspect that's why Python typists are somewhat productive: the temptation to write your own red-black tree class is probably much less if you don't come from old-school DIY K&R C.

I don't know about any other stuff, just theoretical data structures, algorithms, and C, C++, Python, and Java. And a continuing search for good ways to work in LISP, and J (aka APL without the funny keyboard glyphs), and Haskell. And Assembly, of whatever stripe needed — can't do anything without assembly.

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Originally posted by Elendil's Heir

Quote:

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Originally posted by Jizzelbin

...Elon Musk is definitely a Dr. Tyrell, without the title, and he's evil enough to try to make the people he hires to do his technical work create a simulacrum of Skynet.

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He's got enough problems of his own right now: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...interview.html

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Yeah, I heard about his little "issues."

TBH, I think he's a nutjob.

While he has a modicum of expertise in certain scientific fields, as a hobbyist — then again, so did Ted Kaczynski, who practiced in his field — I do not think it reflects well upon the American people that "our" heroes are businessmen selling product.

I think most here will remember the Panama scandal in France in the early 1890s, and many much more recent debacles.

I recommend taking a print newspaper, cutting it in half vertically with pinking shears, discarding half, and looking at the other half according to taste.

Not with the WSJ — that actually has useful stuff in it.

iMHO Musk and Bezos are both nutters. Each in very different ways. But still, they're both not correct. Not completely correct.

NB: I do not advocate punishment. It's pretty much a free country.

Ambien, indeed.

As I often do a few times a week (because dual-running ChromeOS + a chroot of Linux, while takes advantage of some power-management from the ChromeOS, still can stall the computer and require to temporarily remove the battery for a hard restart) I removed the back cover to my current workhorse Chromebook/Linux machine (no, I don't put the tiny little screws back in for a long time — whoever designed the Acer C720 housing did a good job making things "wax on, wax off" — there's no need to have to fiddle around with the million tiny little screws to secure the housing: just take all the screws off once, put them in a little jar, and let durable plastics be your friend).

I'm pretty sure a bacon bit fell out of somewhere inside. And the fan is riddled with sticky dust.

And YET: I still have no neckbeard!

Really.

A small piece of cooked bacon fell out of the inside of this machine, the one I dropped not a week ago under my car and had to go reassemble.

All right, add to shopping list: can of compressed air.

EETA And, no, I did not eat the bit of cooked bacon. I think I threw it on the floor somewhere.

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ETA Oh, if anyone is having troubles with the Firefox extension/add-on/whatever-they-call-it "Video Downloadhelper" (they're having this whole "companion app" bullshit which sucks), but I'm having good luck using a separate application called "youtube-dl."

I'm running it from the terminal in Linux, and it seems to prefer to download to whatever your current directory is. There's a bunch of command-line options, but for just regular use it's easy enough. AFAIK, it'll work on BSD/Apple as well as Windows.

For some reason, I find applications needing web access, like wget or curl, or this one, seem to get priority on bandwidth when run from the command line. That would be seem to be the default, since I haven't messed with that ever.

So, not as nice as a browser extension, but it seems to be working.

And, no, saving a static copy of a youtube file is not a concern, even morally. That's between YouTube and the copyright holders, AFAIC, so I don't get involved.

This goes WAY BEYOND "petty annoyances."

If I ever hear a single sound from my Android phone when I've expressly put it in "silent mode," I would have no moral trouble personally taking a kitchen knife and cutting the heads off the people responsible.

It would take days of severing ligaments and tendons, but I'd consider it time well spent.

It is the most offensive mistake I have ever witnessed that was clearly done on purpose to an OS.

When my arm gets tired of severing esophaguses, I'm happy to commit the relatively minor crime of "rape" by instrumentation, by inserting sharp, unpleasant items in the anuses of the criminals.

Obviously, it's not rape, because the anus is not a sexual organ. Sodomy, or aggravated assault or something.

Goddamned cow shit motherfuckers.

It'll take me an entire day to break the enclosure of this supposedly "durable" hard drive enclosure, take some pliers and get to the SATA/PATA port, plug in an adapter.

Fucking shit-heels.

LESSON LEARNED. Yes, indeed spinning hard drives fail, and in unpredictable ways,

And it's also a PITA.


ETA and USB, while a versatile and clever design, is a piece of shit when it comes to hardware. They should have been spec'ed at 20K inserts at a minimum.

Lazy fucking bean counters.

Cow-shit sucking motherfucking California bullshit.

There's not supposed to be a fucking "dirty bit" indicating improper removal.

They should also have used a trapezoidal geometry for the hardware interface.

Fucking Californians and Chinamen.

Fucking goddamned bastards. Now I gotta buy a fucking multi-port hub?

Fuck that shit.

Oh, for future reference. When your external drives start making clicking noises like retarded cicadas, it's time to replace.

On a more amusing topic, some douchenozzle on some other board claimed that the programming language C++ was "essentially" obsolete.

And that one should instead favor Java or C# (two other programming languages that are garbage).

Horseshit.

Clearly, one should not be messing with throwing exceptions or template metaprogramming in C++, as Google's in-house manual suggests, but I've never even heard of a C++ programmer who can't read and write Java, while Java-only people would probably shit themselves if they had to use pointers (don't worry about it) or the STL. Of course, I'm angered when I have to look something up from some Java library documentation, but that's just because the STL in C++ is so damned good.

Assembly+C+C+++Python+Haskell/J/LISP is the only thing anyone ever needs to know in computing. And get dragged through the Java mud once in a while.

//ETA Yes, it appears faulty USB ports can be fixed if you have a nice soldering pencil and aren't a complete numbnuts. Unfortunately, I am a numbnuts doing that kind of tiny, detailed work. Wouldn't hold out much hope for the Creedence, however.

And stop calling it "assembler." That's differently-abled. Obviously there's different assembly languages for whatever architecture of various computers, although I care more about compiler design than hardware architecture (Verilog can suck my ass).

Just calling "it" "assembler" seems so stupid.

Well, I guess the names don't matter so much, but if you're going to put in the effort to reverse-engineer, create hacks, it doesn't seem so much to ask.

Mozilla Firefox Quantum.

Suck the peanuts out of my shit.

It's been months, and because some lazy shithead hasn't ported over MHTML capability (as in the UnMHT extension), I'm still using Firefox 52.2 ESR.

So, that plus a few "legacy" extensions (as in, everything that worked prior to the "Quantum" shitshow of a version), means everyone is stuck using some other turd of a browser, like Chrome/Chromium, or an extremely outdated version of FireFox solely intended to placate enterprise users who don't want their dick broken off while interfacing with this "new" version.

Seriously, it's been months. And months. And months.

What, am I going to write my own UnMHT, in Python, have it hacked by a third-party tool to translate into JS?

Where is the outrage!

Are you not satisfied?

No!!!!!!!!!

I suppose this is computer-related.

How many movies were about that guy Steve Jobs?

I somewhat doubt there are going to be any about Paul Allen.

Yeah, most people in the US Pacific NW know about him because of his somewhat quiet but powerful private investments in more-or-less "public" entities.

I guess there isn't much love in the media world for actual computer people, instead of marketing and sales people.

I don't think there's any better testament than, if someone says they have a problem using the terminal in some kind of *nix, or on a Mac, you can often just say, "well, it's like the command line in Windows, same idea."

ETA Oh, "If, IIRC, you use a Mac, and somehow your software can't be executed from an external drive, then, I don't know what you can do."

It just occurred to me that maybe the "execute" permission hasn't been set, @Froody Blue Gem. I don't know Macs at all, but I think you do need to go to the terminal and do a "chmod +x <executable>" or do for the whole directory where the program is located.

Only thing I can think of, but I don't have a Mac.

It really should be possible to execute even a complicated bit of software from an external drive. That doesn't mean it is possible, but I'd be shocked if it weren't possible if the base OS would refuse if the right permissions were set.

Plus, you get to use base-8 for the chmod command, if you want. Always good mental exercise. Everyone could use a little mod-8 arithmetic. (No, you don't need to -- the "r" "w" "x" flags just can be encoded in octal, if you feel like it).

I'm very annoyed.

So, I buy a 120GB (128 GiB) SSD hard drive, and pop it into an old Chromebook. The drive seems good.

This is one that I got rid of all the ChromeOS guff, so it's just a blank computer.

The ONLY linux I can get to boot live from + install is this weird distro called "Bodhi" Linux. Yeah, it's stupid, but it's basically Debian-minus.

Nothing else.

I want CentOS 7 on it....nope.

I'd settle for Kali Linux....nope.

I'd settle for a full Xubuntu....nope.

The idea is to just have something to make a bunch of virtual machines.

Unfortunately the wifi driver is having troubles, and it's hard to side-load some .deb files, especially with all the associated packages for a VM — I'd like KVM-Quem, but any of virtbox or vmware's user-level stuff is fine.

Very frustrating.

I guess I can try to find my old Win10 install disk and dd it onto a flash drive (even with 2GB of RAM, it will complain, but I think it would still work), but you have no idea how much crap is in my home office, and the effort to even just grab stuff off a DVD.

Well, fortunately I have a handful of new flash drives coming in the "mail," so maybe I can blame the fault on my using old media that's been abused.

Absolutely no reason CentOS 7 shouldn't boot from a flash drive, even with 2GB RAM.

Nor a full-on-loaded Xubuntu, with (I hope) VM packages included.

Bah, humbug.

Well, that above post was just a result of me not exploring enough options.

For those about to rock, I strongly suggest flashing the firmware of a Chromebook to something more up-to-date than some of the older firmware flashes that are getting a bit stale.

And use the GalliumOS distribution, perhaps as your main daily driver: it's Xubuntu rolled up with support for Chromebook-specific features, like the odd keyboard and basic components, and is supported by a talkative and friendly group of enthusiasts who can trade some jokes or commiserate, even if you don't need step-by-step instruction.

Its only flaw is they include Chromium browser, but that's not so bad: just get rid of it and replace it with a better browser. Or keep it for special uses if you have the drive space. Minimal utilities included, so, obviously, grab whatever you need using dpkg/apt-get. And they chose a pretty obnoxious setting for the XFCE desktop environment, so change that to taste, of course.

Very good distro, about as easy to get going as any I've seen, and while some things you may like to change, it's certainly usable out of the box with no configuration needed.

And pre-partition the drive into little 10-GB (either gigabytes or gibibytes, doesn't matter), then install your various other OSes, like CentOS 7, Kali, straight Debian, Win10, or whatever. Or just setup qemu-kvm and run virtual machines from within GalliumOS as your hypervisor.

And then prepare to have something go horribly wrong with your GRUBootloader and redo the whole thing, because manually fixing GRUB is a pain in the ass.

Here's a genuine annoyance. Yet again I accidentally DD'ed a 2TB drive. However, I had not been drinking, and I'd rsync'ed the drive to another 2TB volume six weeks ago, so no big loss.

("DD" is a small utility program that I think stands for "disk define," officially — it's a way to bitwise copy data, like if you want to make a bootable flash drive, or zero out a hard drive, aka "delete" it. I've heard it called "disk destroy" or "disk delete," because...I blame my USB hub, but once it's done, it's pretty much done....in my case, maybe not, but we'll see what I can recover. "Rsync" is just "remote synchronize," it's a small program that allows you to synchronize the content between disk volumes, and do such things as only replace/remove files that have been changed, and so forth.).

HERE's a genuine conundrum. So I have this notebook which runs Windows 10, upgraded from Windows 7. I believe I found the original Win7 and the new Win10 "product keys" deep in the bowels of the registry, and, assuming I want to bother spending a little bit near a higher-speed connection, I can get a legitimate ISO (it's just an image file of, in this case, the operating system).

Legitimate as in, legally, from Microsoft. I'd have to download it, though, and it's a rather large file.

It's a bit of a hassle, but I had a friend who found a copy of Win10 exclusively in FR language, which somehow doesn't need a product key.

ANYWAY, so now I have a big conundrum.

I can't have the computer booting into Windows everytime I want to use it. Too annoying, too sluggish, too much crap with updates, and it's just plain ugly to me.

However, I do need to use some tools on the Windows platform.

Dual boot, you say? No. I'm sorry, nerds who can get it to work, but I always end up screwing up the boot partition/UEFI in this case and fouling shit up.

Ideally, I'd just wipe the internal drive, create some sensible partitions by hand, and dual-boot into Debian (with XFCE desktop) and CentOS Linux, then pop the Windows 10 media which no doubt will have taken me forever to find, download from MS and create into what's called a "Virtual Machine."

I thought I had a question there, but, no, that has to be the only way: bare-metal have two very good linux flavors, and push Windows into a virtual machine, along with any other distros I use.

I have severe doubts that any kind of "product key" activation is going to be easy or fun from within the VM for Windows, and if it's sluggish now, on bare metal, it will be much more so inside the VM.

Perhaps not: I only use XFCE as a desktop environment, except for in CentOS/Red Hat, and it's very bare-bones. No funny graphics, none of that: the way I like it is pretty much looks and acts like Windows XP, but without the fancy little colored icons, except those I put there myself by choice.

Plus, I'll get back all that disk space the manufacturer reserved for "recovery storage," and I'll have the pleasure of nuking it from orbit.

Plus, if anyone needs to borrow the computer, they can boot into Xubuntu or something that I'll have set up just like my regular stuff, which wouldn't take any instruction at all.

Worst case? I get frustrated with doing the MS official means of getting the free ISO, to which I'm entitled, as owner of the machine, and just use the French language version, which is adequate because computer nerds don't even speak English anyway.

Which VM, you ask? Why, Quem+KVM, of course! Don't be ridiculous! Not that it matters, but that's just the way it's going to be.

What is a VM? It's sort of like having a separate computer, running within another computer, using the amount of memory and storage space you allow it to. It's a popular product that Amazon Web Services sells to its consumers, more or less: they have so-called "server farms," and one option is to let them give you a juiced-up VM and let you go nuts on it.

My disappointment? I really wanted to give Win10 (with Classic Shell!) a shot running on bare-metal and do anything else through VMs from within.

I just don't think this box has the juice for it, and it's just so ... disappointing ... to boot up into Windows each time.

Nothing against MS at all: I just think Windows is ugly and stupid and has a bunch of crap in it I don't even want to look at. It should go to college and wear makeup.

Also, with Win10 in a VM, I can experiment and try my best to completely cripple the update functions, and I generally don't need the Win10/VM-version to connect to the wider internet, so I don't give a fuck about security or whatever. Not that I do anyway, but, you know, once I get a more complicated system like this running, even if it's just one little notebook, I'd really not like to have to do major surgery on it because of all the bestiality-related malware I regularly receive.

Fucking shit.

I cannot believe how much storage space (i.e., disk space) Windows 10 takes up.

I guess that's fine for even a system with a small hard drive, but if I'm having five or six Linux distributions set up, either in the UEFI/BIOS, or in Virtual Machines, it really chaps my hide.

On the good news, I finally got the official Win10 image file to reinstall, erasing all of the previous partitions and data, including especially all the pre-installed crapware from HP (the OEM). Although I may need to grab a few HP drivers if I want the trackpad to work correctly, but that's no big deal.

Oh for fucking Christ's sake, I cannot believe what a PITA this is turning out to be dealing with Windows computers.

Shit.

I wipe one motherfucking hard drive, even do the last dummy resort and do a Knoppix repartition.

Shit.

I can't believe I have to actually take this HD out and just format it by hand using another system.

Oh, and, thanks very much HP Stream 14, for telling me your HD is only about 30GB and is a fucked up cheap-ass SSD soldered to the mobo. It took me fucking forever to crack the housing, and, as usual, it's not going to be quite as pretty ever again. Fine, whatever: it's a shit computer in the first place, and I don't care if there are a few unsightly bulges.

OH, and fucking great. Red Hat/CentOS. Your version of "STFU and don't interface with my network" differs from mine. Bunch of fucking poofs.

Really. I should not have to drop down to a stupid Linux like Knoppix to fix shit. It's ridiculous.

ETA I swear to fucking christ CentOS/RHEL is shit on anything that crawls.

My solution for this blank notebook?

Debian 10.2, then KVM into CentOS.

Fucking assholes, retard pricks. Shithead motherfuckers.

EETA Oh, and the HP Stream 14 notebook stays Win10, with as many VM's as it can handle.

Better solution: spend probably way to much time reauthoring a customized version of Windows, which supposedly can reduce the storage space (disk) requirements to a somewhere between 10GB and 15GB. This after compressing the system files, turning off hibernation and deleting it, having no pagefile (swap) area, and all that.

And straight Xubuntu can suck it: it is extremely bloated, just like straight Debian.. I don't trust Windows to get online, especially after junking all the malware detection components. So, a minimal distro like ArchBang or some of the others with the ability to run KVM-Quem or VirtualBox, and run the cut-to-the-bone Virtual Machine to host Win10+MS Office, in addition to other distros.

Missa ita est. Go in peace.

All right, so the way to do it is to reauthor a Windows installation using some tools: get rid of all internet packages, all security, all multimedia applications, all Cortana and search functions, all anything.

Still testing, but this is going to be a tiny Windows 10 which can run Excel, Word, Photoshop, Packet Tracer, and a few other things.

Yeah, I'd say it's the worth the time: no updates, ever. No Windows Defender, ever. No pre-installed Windows applications like...well, any and all of them. No login screen, no remote desktop, no nothing, pretty much.

And burn into the build things like languages, hardware drivers, etc., but that's not for space, just simplicity.

I suppose I could make a little script, either Powershell or just Cmd, that would repeat the above steps with no guidance, but the process is not too bad.

Oh. Come on. Enough is enough. Every single "media enhancement" to a webpage is bullshit. If you want extra, click on it. Every single goddamned thread anywhere has embedded previews of youtube links or fetched images.

It's going to break the internet, kids.

Yeah, it's mostly a joke, but, you know, the internet is composed of a number of physical tubes, and that is not a joke.

///////////

Oh, about the Win10 thing: yeah, you abolutely can get Win10 down to 10GB of storage space. I just fired up that machine a few hours ago, and Excel works fine, which is all I care about. On the same machine (limited storage: eMMC, so can't really swap the drive out), CentOS 8 works fine as well, except for the godawful default desktop environment RedHat shares with Debian: that is one fugly environment.

But, aside from cutting Win10 free of Defender, Updates, Cortana, all HW-specific drivers, and, I couldn't resist, adding ClassicShell, it's a good box for having the two main corporate players in one machine (Red Hat and Windows) in their "out of the box" appearance. And enough room (barely) to run VMs from within each.

ETA/*Yeah, so, you actually can get Win10 down to the 3 - 5 GB range. If not much more. I've heard tales of 1GB builds. I'm not going to bother with it now, but about 10GB of storage space is OK for me now. You just keep trimming and trimming and suddenly you're face to face with the guts. It's kind of neat, but it's a lot of hand labor.*/

Just reread a bit of the above:

for future observers.

The solution is to repackage the Win10 image file. It's not especially easy, and the information is not that easy to find, and it needs some specialized tools, which are all built into the Windows package. You can make these tools yourself, and execute them by hand, or just create a script (or, even better, a PWshell or whatever script) to perform them sequentially.

It requires quite a bit of fiddling around and just seeing what the limits are.

And, you'll probably never be happy: I'm still kicking myself that I didn't get rid of the login screen and any and all of the wallpapers, but for a quick fix for any UAC, Update, Defender, Cortana, whatever, it's fine. I'm not sure I can even ssh into it on my home network, but that doesn't matter to me.

And, yes, HP hardware is shit. But before you crack the case to see what components are in there, you should look up online what the model number is and thereby save yourself the trouble of dealing with PITA housings.

NEXT TIME: Investigate the machine, and think about rack-mounting it, while finding out the minimal requirements to turn Win10 into a functional server appliance with added (i) display (ii) hardware input. I think that's the only way people are getting 1GB storage space needed for Win10: you can ssh into it, it can do stuff, and you can see what the results are.

Is that different than my use?

Not really, except that there are some package dependencies needed for use of the Office Suite, notably.

And, no, nobody has some exact recipe for what those are: you just have to sit there and figure it out. Not difficult, but time-consuming and tedious.

On a similarly positive note, I found a couple of neat things.

First, a browser extension called FoxReplace allows one to excise whole swaths of content from websites. This was more a curiosity, since somebody was complaining that a given forum lacked an "ignore" feature: this isn't exactly what this tool is built for, but it is able to parse what are called "regular expressions," developed by theoretical computer scientists and linguistics. So if one is careful about composing the right sequence of patterns, one could, for example, replace the space between, say, a username and his or her signature or whatever with whatever one wishes.

Second, I'm very pleased that there is a ready-built tool called "Session Alive" that keeps one logged on to various websites with automatic "timeouts." I'm still testing it to see if it works reliably, but it would likely be worth the added electrical costs to keep a computer on overnight so that my employee page is always "up" (my mobile connection is often too slow or unreliable to pounce on various things that I'd like to respond to immediately), or even just a banking account website.

So, with the exception of "writing" some regular expressions, I didn't have to write any browser extensions at all, which is fine with me.

Not too exciting, nor really annoying, but as tasks they are annoying.

Yeah, I don't think I can reauthor Windows 10 down any more than about 4 GB installed (at least in 64-bit version).

BUT, notice anything unusual about these sentences?

That's right, my daily driver computer seems to have permanently lost the following keys: { 2 @ w W s S } as well as the "speaker" button I was using as a "compose" key for creating accents/diacritics on letters.

I don't think they're coming back, but at least I had a spare second to find where I put my xmodmap file (which I'd conveniently named ".x," so it took a few minutes to find it) and remap the Chrome "search" key + the adjacent letters and numbers to recreate them.

It was becoming very annoying to try to type without those letters, especially the "s" and the numeral "2" and the symbol "@."

It's a little odd typing this way, however.

I could always just clean the keyboard, but I'm not going to do that.

Or I could just use the identical model with 16 times the size hard drive (SSD), but I have all my stuff configured the way I like it and don't want to copy my .config files over and stuff, even though it would be a minor hassle at most.

TL;DR.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Yes, obviously I screwed up the Windows on this one shitty HP POS box, but that was to be expected, operating on a Live system using the durr software NTLite.

Oh, see how nicely I'm adapting to the new keyboard pattern? Different chords, indeed. Whatever stank cornholer talks about "touch-typing" and ZOMG is an uncoordinated boob.

Yeah, whatever.

BUT, how stupid is this? So, trying to fix the broken Win10 on this machine, I go back to CentOS8 on another partition, and thinking I'd already installed GParted. No. Whole nother library.

BUT, at least I can wean myself off using GParted and just use regular parted to fix stuff.

Yes, I know how, but it's just easier for this task to go GUI than wait to download 100MB of dependencies.

This is low-stakes consumer stuff, so it doesn't matter, but it's good to be less of a pussy about it.

Oh, and fuck it: I'm wiping that whole fucking machine, give CentOS the whole whopping 30 GB, and just run all my Windows shit from quem-KVM.

And, yes, I'm happy to let NTLite do the stripping of the Windows builds: if I never have to write another dism instruction by hand, I'll be happy with that. Fucking A, that's what GUIs are for, especially when it maps pretty neatly to instructions one understands.

ETA and no, I'm not going to apologize for using GParted over the TUI: hell, that's what it's for. OTOH, this present case requires me to either use parted TUI or DL a bunch of shit from the...I forgot E-something library/repo. So, I remove the MBR and all Win data, reformat all to ... why the fuck not, just all ext4, and resize my partitions the old fashioned way.

EETA Oh, and now for this other machine: there I can actually do a micro Win 1809 and, by using only a 32-bit ... no, that machine has ample storage... No, I think I'm going to ... No, I can get Win10 to behave on this machine, I'll just restrict its stranglehold on resources (RAM and low-end cache).

EEETA Oh, just replace where I say "TUI" and put in "command line" or "instruction plus args." I think TUI means that fancy text thing like you see, where it's a whole interface. My mistake in terminology.

I don't think this machine can do a VM of basic 1809 Win10, and from within there, create another VM, and run yet another Win10 for editing the wim files.

Well, it might. It will have to.

EEEETA Oh, I'll explain the MS numbering scheme: by "1809" it means, 2018 in the month of 09, i.e., September.

Oh.

Fucking A.

I've got Win10 1809 64-bit down to about 7 GB. That's compressed using CompactOS (or whatever!), to be sure, but I don't like it. CentOS8, then KVM into Win10. Or vice versa. I don't care anymore about reauthoring LTSB/C MS machines. I love MS, they got some of the best people there, but as a consumer, it's just not worth it. I don't think it can go any lower and still be able to run a VM with whatever.

Meh. I'm happy to run Win101809, my current build, on about eight-nine gIbs of storage, installed, no pagefile, compressed, but it's not worth more effort for me.

I feel sorry for people who use 30GB of storage on one of these shite eMMC "machines," and have it all taken up with Windows mechanics, but. hey, that's everyone's lot in life.
Ergh.

7:30 AM? Weekday mass at the seat of the whatever "archdiocese"?

Fuck.

You.

Weekday at St Patrick? 1800?

Fuck.

You.

Goddamned motherfucking inbred hillbillies, I'll just go in and do one...no...three motherfucking rosaries and not in no English and whatever.

Fucking asshole liberal Protestants.

Yeah, whatever.

Oh.

Well, just like shut up and stuff. At least I'm not denying Einstein like some dumbass Karen. I still wear a coat and tie and do my best. I'm really trying to be a better person.


ETA

Oh! Motherfuck!

Goddamned Ste. Cécie's got weekday at 0800! Son of a bitch!

Yeah, it' s in Spanish, but it's the exact same fucking thing, and I do all the responses in Latin under my breath anyway, and just fake it when they do the whole "congregational singing" thing (although I do like to sight-sing).

Motherfuckers. Well, I haven't read much up recently on who Ste. Cecilia was, but this is not too far out of my way and I don't care if the weekday mass is in Spanish, I can't receive the eucharist until I've confessed three years of missed Sunday masses anyway.

EETA Oh, I've got a shit ton of venial sins. Language is a problem for me. Yeah, the serious blasphemy and general heretical (atheistic and abuse of venerated names — well, that's a problem). Those are ongoing problems. More serious, to me, are missing the chance to commune in good disposition every festal Sunday.

I'm sure lots of "cultural Catholcs" go chow some host whenever they want, but I couldn't do that.