Great Moments in Computer Programming

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Great Moments in Computer Programming

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

A change from Wordpress 2.7 to 2.8 had the function "is_site_admin()" removed and replaced with one called "is_admin()".

The result of this change is that any plugin a user has will still, obviously, look for the first function, and not allow an admin to login if it can't find it.
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Installed a new copy of XP a few days ago on a PC and it started blathering about the search indexing thing, which I turned off. I don't need it constantly trying to grab cycles in an attempt to index my system, I don't search that often.

Well, today I went to perform a search in a specific directory, and got the following:
Microsoft Windows Search isn't running

If Microsoft Windows Search isn't running, you won't be able to find files and e-mail items on your computer.
When you install Windows Search, a shortcut is automatically added to your Startup folder, so that it automatically starts every time you restart your computer. If you've removed this shortcut from your Startup folder, or if you've closed Windows Search by using Task Manager or right-clicking the indexing icon , and then clicking Exit, you must restart Windows Search before you can use Toolbar to search your computer.

To restart Windows Search, on the Start menu, point to All Programs or Programs, and then click Windows Search.
That's right. Somebody made the decision to PREVENT fucking searching if you happen to turn indexing off. Hey stupid shits! You can still just start searching the motherfucking directory and I'll be okay if it goes a little slowly, you dumb, miserable cretins.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

And now I can't do any searches until it's caught up on indexing. This is fucking laughable. Amateur and laughable.

"You're fucking amateur, man!" -- Christian Bale
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

This isn't really computer programming, but what the heck.

One figure of cryptozoology that I totally missed in making my current text game was the chupacabra. I had no plans for it, and wasn't going to use it, but in fleshing out a scene tonight, I realized I needed a "new" cryptid for a second, and the chupacabra would be perfect for it.

It occurred to me, in writing the scene, that while I knew what it does (sucks blood from goats! it could be YOUR goat!) I had no idea what it was supposed to look like. Fortunately there's an on-line encyclopedia that anyone can edit and surely there would be a treated photo or artist's rendition.

Haha, of course not, I went to the Wikipedia, after all. I dove into the "Discussion" tab for a second to figure out which sperging asshole deleted the image (assuming the article had one at one point - and it did) but then I realized that yeah, I could figure out who deleted the article's image (the reason given was because it was drawn... we'd hate to have an example of cryptozoology with a made-up representative image) but I decided to not pursue it. I hate people who edit the Wikipedia in that manner, don't consider them human and don't want the life I have left spent in their stinking filth in any way, shape or form. I'll get by through making shit up about la Chupacabra (that's Spanish for the Chupacabra, I think).
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Post by AArdvark »

Well, since there's no direct photographic evidence of this beast aren't you free to make it look anyway you want based on second hand reports? It's not like anyone can say...'Oh, it doesn't look like that at all!'


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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

This isn't really computer programming, but whatever.

Yesterday, the Milker brought over his Xbox 360 so we could play Left 4 Dead 2 together. He has an early rev of the 360. He didn't bring his power cord, so as to save on lugging that around, too.

The old version of the 360 takes A DIFFERENT-STYLE POWER CORD.

Jesus fucking Christ! How the fuck do they fuck this up, along with everything else? They really thought it was ok to split the market on power cords? I'm stunned.
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Post by AArdvark »

This is similar to the Sears (not Craftsman) policy of tool production. Simply make everything different enough so as to HAVE to replace broken / worn parts with only sears parts. Thankfully, Sears has stopped most of their tool production in favor of Craftsman so this issue has largely gone away. Microsoft hardware on the other hand.... I was surprised when I found out that the original Xbox controllers were simply standard USB with a unique Xbox jack. I was making a simple patch cord so I could use the controller on my PC.

I don't understand why they'd need to make the power cord unique to the 360 tho. Power is power, Just another example of the engineers justifying their jobs..

(Side note: My son's 360 died again. Interestingly enough while playing the same game. I think it was Call of Duty, the new one that just came out. The first time it died he was playing an earlier version.)

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Post by CO »

AArdvark wrote:(Side note: My son's 360 died again. Interestingly enough while playing the same game. I think it was Call of Duty, the new one that just came out. The first time it died he was playing an earlier version.)
Did he get his fixed and it broke again? I'm still considering options re repair/rebuy and flash.

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Post by AArdvark »

He did have it repaired about two years ago. Dunno if it can be repaired again for free. Should have lifetime repairs, like Zippo lighters. I spent three worthless hours trying to hookup my nephew's 360 thru a PC and out to the internet. Finally turned the problem on it's head and moved the router and modem so I'd have enough hookups.


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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

AArdvark wrote:I don't understand why they'd need to make the power cord unique to the 360 tho. Power is power, Just another example of the engineers justifying their jobs..
Right. Even if there was a good reason (and I could probably find it with a few minutes' worth of searching, but fuck them) there isn't a good reason.

Console development used to seem intimidating because shit was *frozen*. You ship a game, that's it. You release a console, LIVE WITH IT. Now if I want to tote this pig anywhere, I'd better bring everything with it.
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der strawsenheimen

Post by der strawsenheimen »

CO wrote:
AArdvark wrote:(Side note: My son's 360 died again. Interestingly enough while playing the same game. I think it was Call of Duty, the new one that just came out. The first time it died he was playing an earlier version.)
Did he get his fixed and it broke again? I'm still considering options re repair/rebuy and flash.
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

This isn't... none of this is about computer programming.

I went into a Best Buy near work earlier this week to get some DDR3 RAM. Some kid asked me what I was looking for. After I told him, he said, "Mac or PC"? I flinched at that, because I knew what was coming next. I said, "PC."

"We only carry RAM for Macs," he said.

Anyway, the part that got me was that RAM's the fucking same for computers everywhere. I felt bad for the guy being too stupid to know anything about computers while working at Best Buy, because a lot of nerds and dorks can't let that go, and they poor fucker will eventually be humiliated at work for being so stupid. Christ, read a website before making an declarative sentence like that.

At any rate, the joke's on me, because in attempting to backfill the BBS, it now looks like I can't let this incident go.
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Post by AArdvark »

He must be a geek-in-training or something.


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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Hey hey now! It's what's bundled on Windows 7. You have to use it to get other things.

Windows 7 will sort of encourage you to choose a new browser and way to search the internet by default. But they cram Google at the bottom of the list. Desperate, desperate, desperate.

Anyway, I quickly switched over to Chrome. I don't like Firefox that much, but not for any decent reason.

One thing they added was the ability to search for basic administrative tasks. For instance, I wanted to make a change to the resolution of my system. You can type in "resolution" in a search window, and it searches Control Panel for that. So far, it has worked fairly well for me.

But then I found myself thinking, "nah, I've got to figure out how to get there by clicking." Which is strange. I *don't* have to figure that out. For what purpose, really?

I'm reminded of a story from a few years ago. My dad got a new PC and Microsoft made their terrible, terrible "Ergonomic" keyboards: the ones that split the keys across two sections, so there was this big empty spot in the middle of the keyboard.

Like this:

Image

Well, my dad didn't care, but when I came home for Christmas I complained about how stupid they were. He was amused. He thought he saw me turning into a crotchety old man before his very eyes. (I can get into why I thought the concept was dumb if anyone wants.)

I disagreed I was doing so with the keyboard bit, but searching for how to do basic tasks in W7 using a search mechanism seemed like "cheating." But then, to figure out how to do anything in W7 otherwise... I'd have a browser window up typing, you got it, search terms.

So in a way, I like it. They've sort of admitted that they make the worst graphical user interfaces in the world, that they will continue to do so, and that they are proud to do so. So they will let you search the OS directly. It's like finding a program that says that two times two is five, and then writing code to say, if 5 is ever the product, return four, instead of fixing the real problem. But whatever. My hatred of their UIs isn't going to suddenly be a non-factor because they got it right, so this method keeps everyone happy.

I never used Vista (well, I used it for five minutes, so my upgrade key for W7 would work). So I can't compare or tell if any of this stuff is new for W7 or what. I should mention that, too.
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Post by Flack »

I'm also a Vista-skipper. I knew I was out of touch when my dad asked me to come over and get his printer working in Vista and I simply couldn't find how to do it. I've got so used to XP that it's second nature, I just "know" where things will be. I used Windows 3.1 for a couple of years, NT for a couple of years, 2000 for a couple of years, and XP for NINE YEARS now.

One of my resolutions this year (same as last year) is to convert one of my primary computers to Linux. I've run virtual Linux machines but it's just not the same. When I hit something I can't do, I go crying home to mommy (Microsoft). I actually like Windows 7, but I like the concept of Linux more.
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Post by AArdvark »

You mean the open-source thing? Or the seriously powerful user commands that must be used wisely for the good of mankind or terrible destruction can result? I never could get the hang of Linux, quite possibly because there are too many choices and commands. It'd be like starting all over. No! It would be EXACTLY starting all over. It would be nice to run it on my netbook and see how small an OS footprint I could get.


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Post by Flack »

One of the forums I'm on has a timer. Users are not allowed to make responses more than once per minute. That doesn't sound like a long time, but it kind of is. Sometimes you read a post and just have something quick to say, and then you have something quick to say in the next one. It happens.

Assuming I didn't sleep for a day, that forum limits me to saying 1,440 brilliant things a day. I dunno. Knowing me, that sounds low.
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I don't get it much either

Post by Tdarcos »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:brought over his Xbox 360 ... has an early rev of the 360. He didn't bring his power cord, so as to save on lugging that around, too.

The old version of the 360 takes A DIFFERENT-STYLE POWER CORD.

Jesus fucking Christ! How the fuck do they fuck this up, along with everything else? They really thought it was ok to split the market on power cords? I'm stunned.
I have a power wheelchair, and the charger stopped working, so I have to replace it. The wheelchair uses a three-phase plug which uses a steel connector with three pins to charge the truck batteries (which is the biggest part of the reason the chair, empty, weighs 375 pounds; my manual wheelchair weighs 54 pounds). It also means it just needs 12-volt, 5-amp DC power, which you could get from a typical laptop or two-wire plug charger. Retail price for this is under $20.

Well, the wheelchair uses an "XJZ" or whatever the supposed standard 3-prong connector for wheelchairs is, which means a replacement charger is about $65.

At least the ubiquity of compters and USB connectors has caused the cellphone industry to do something different, to "reverse fractionalize" and standardize on the sub-mini USB connector for cellphone power connectors, as well as using the connector for accessing the data storage on the phone for things like storing MP3s to listen to or other purposes.
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

I wanted to check if anyone had left any comments for my games at the Interactive Fiction Database. So I typed in "ifdb sherwin".

Google shows me the results for imdb sherwin. The movie database.

It - and if I still had the power to get worked up about things, would be seething for this - said, "Showing results for imdb sherwin. Did you mean ifdb sherwin?" (And it has a link for the last thing.)

In other words, "Did you mean what you actually typed in?"

I ... can't believe this is desired behavior at Google. You type something in, they ignore it and ask you if you meant what you originally typed.

I guess this means it's time to try Bing or something.
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Post by AArdvark »

Actually, that's a good feature for people with ridiculously small netbook keyboards that promote three typos per sentence, since I don't have to re-type what I really meant to search. They might put an option to disable that function when I use the desktop and he full size keyboard, however.

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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Sure, I can see where it would be useful: if there were no results for the thing you're searching for, it might be cool for them to try to find a match.

But for Google to ignore actual matches for what it thinks you want??! At the very least that should be an option. A toggle. A "[X] Act like shitty bloatware?"

I'd also like to state that the Word Processor for Google Docs is making its first foray into being shitware, too. Eventually, ALL Word Processors turn into bloatware crud and the users finds themselves in the following situation:

"... I just... pasted some text and now suddenly... everything is in bold? Now I'll unbold it and - um, why is the formatting all messed up? Good God, I ... argh, I just wanted to .... oh, Hell's Bell's, UNDO! UNDO!"

If you've been in that situation, you know what I mean. Microsoft Word was definitely there by Word 97. Open Office was there by version 2.0. I started to see the same things out of the Good Docs Word Processor over the weekend.
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