Great Moments in Computer Programming

[Tdarcos]

I confused Spamhaus with SPEWS, so please ignore my post.

Do you think we need a reason to do that? I've never really paid much attention to anything you said. And I keep forgetting Control-S only saves in applications, not on web forms.

[Casual Observer]

SPEWS will not replace us

[Flack]

I've never really paid much attention to anything you said.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I've never really paid much attention to anything you said. And I keep forgetting Control-S only saves in applications, not on web forms.

[AArdvark]

I've been fighting the battle of the mobile browsers on my tablet for a couple weeks now. Firefox and Chrome lost out to Opera because they reduced the available add-ons and removed the image disable feature. Or if they didn't, it's in such an arcane location that I can't find it, which is the same as removing it. I mean, these things were working fine, JUST FINE and they go screw around with them until a bad case of pointlessness sets in.

Apparently Firefox has an about:configure option now that lets you make all sorts of adjustments. All I want to do is have the webpages open in the same tab. Unfortunately every time I type it in to the address bar it simply does a search instead of taking me to the options page. And Chrome...well, Chrome claims to have an adblocker but it doesn't block squat. I need ads blocked, all ads, every one of 'em and Chrome is just not up to the task.

Remember when browsing the internet was fun?

THE
BLOATED
AARDVARK

[RealNC]

Remember when browsing the internet was fun?

On a mobile? It was never fun.

[AArdvark]

So I rooted my Barnes & noble nook HD+ and installed a non-locked down version of Android. This is in response to the Amazon Fire tablet I bought last year. Thinks I, hey this is a great price on a tablet. But what happens is that the OS is locked down even more than the Nook. I've been using a workaround but it's a one up game with that. Amazon keeps updating their stuff and you have to wait a month for the Automate and Launcher Hijacker to catch up. So I fooled around with my Nook and finally got a full featured tablet without ads. Yay for me. Let's see if I like it.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

My wife got me a new computer desk. We turned everything off to reorganize the room.

Turned my Win10 PC on. It was stuck on 100 percent for an hour.

Ok.

Turned it off, trying to Uninstall the latest quality update. It's been 20 minutes.

I dont take many days off. This one is now shot. I am so fucking furious. The fact that any update goes out without my say so makes me furious and for them to pull this shit on a holiday makes me furious.

[RealNC]

A quality update for a quality day off.

[AArdvark]

Windows10 is a shitshow. For every improvement over the last Windows version there's always a bigger downside that raises the national homicide tally.

[pinback]

WORKS ON MY SYSTEM

[AArdvark]

In Windows7 you can turn off the windows update service. I assume 10 is that way also. In my case I dont want the WGA to see my version is non genuine. In 10 it would be to be the ability to use the machine right away instead of tomorrow.

THE
WAIT FOR IT
AARDVARK

[Tdarcos]

I downloaded an icon pack that instead of putting the icons in a standard Zip file, he put them in an Icon Package (file extension .ip) this requires a program called Iconmanager, from Stardock Software. It's a commercial program, but does offer a 30-day free trial. I decide to go ahead, but, in the past I've had problems whenever I got Icons, cursors, or bitmaps ("Icons, cursors, and bitmaps, oh my!") in a package, it's always a proprietary format, not an open standard, and I eventually have trouble because inevitably I find there's something I want to do with the collection that I could do with an ordinary archive like a .zip, .xz, .7z or .tar.gz file but that their program does not perform or does not allow me to do.

But I never really found out if the package of icons would have been useful. Here's why:

1. Excessive registration requirement - download, program refuses to run unless you provide an e-mail address, must then respond to link in e-mail.
2. This program - Stardock Iconmanager - goes full screen, without my permission.
3. The full-screen covers everything, including the taskbar, with a tranlucent blurry image. I'd have to pray - an option denied to me as an atheist - that the program does not fail here, leaving me unable to access anything except by shutting off the machine. In my case that would mean calling for an aide to do it for me (as the off button is too far away) and waiting as much as 45 minutes.
4. The program wants my e-mail address. For security reasons I used a throwaway public e-mail server with disposable e-mail addresses.
5. The program then connects to a server and sends an e-mail verification request.
6. When you click on the link, Stardock's website tells you it has accepted your request for a 30-day trial.
7. The full-screen blocker, which apparently is internet connected, knows you authenticated, saysso and allows me to proceed.
8. When Stardock Iconmanager came back, all my icons were gone from the taskbar.
9. Then somehow the view switched to "Task view" then a small window for each running app showed up. I eventually cleared this.
10. Stardock Icon,anager proceeds to lockup the first time I try to use it.
11. Then this Zombie Application aggressively fights being euthanized by Task Manager.
12. I finally get Stardock IconManager killed and go to uninstall it. The uninstaller does not work.
13. Uninstaller also locks up, but at least it was easy to kill.
14. Stardock IconManager thinks my request to uninstall it is a command to restart the program, bringing up the full-screen blur and a new request to either provide registration key, buy registration key, or try 30-day free trial.
15. Looks like I will have to rip the program out and hope it didn't leave shell hooks or registry entries behind that will bite me in the ass if I remove this piece of garbage.

Stardock IconManager presented the kind of behavior I'd expect from a piece of Malware, not an actual legitimate application.

[AArdvark]

That does sound pretty sketchy. There's lots of free .png and .ico places to try instead

[AArdvark]

That Don Rogers promo is now my new ringtone!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I bought a model of a bazooka and a nunchuck from a 3d model site that lets regular people sell their models to scum like me. The website wanted me to confirm my email address.

It then wanted me to do at least two captchas - one was an "I am human" captcha and then it started with the "find the bicycles" shit. I don't get anything out of "confirming" my email address and I am certainly not going to do work for them to prove it. I guess I'm just unconfirmed? I mean, I spent $10 there. Maybe that should work as an alternate confirmation? Or maybe I don't give a shit at all?

[AArdvark]

what 's the bazooka for?

THE
NO MORE BEARS
IN THE TRASH
AARDVARK

[Tdarcos]

what 's the bazooka for?

It's a brand of chewing gum!

Seriously (or perhaps not, again), maybe a Super Soaker isn't good enough and he wants something that fires massive amounts of water, in the multi-gallon capacity.

[Casual Observer]

So, I was going to inline that image. For fuck's sake, has the internet really fucked up inlining images. Way to make the entire experience crappier, god.

This needed a response in the proper base. As far as I can tell Google has made it impossible to inline images in chrome on Android as well as it's native image search engine in windows chrome browser. On the phone I pretty much have to download the image and create a meme or gif on imgflip, which is the only reason most of my images these days have stupid meme captions. On the laptop my go-to is Bing image search (of course it's the only game in town for porn but also they still let you open the image in a new tab or copy image link on most images.

I have to think that Google's thought is they want to make sure their search is driving traffic right to the sites rather than just pulling up deep linked images but maybe it's more of the same shit with engineers having to keep themselves busy without any new ideas.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Ah, hadn't considered Bing! Lemme see...

This is the first image url from Bing:

https://th.bing.com/th/id/R6bba4bdf250d ... pid=ImgRaw

Jesus Christ.

Bing at least got me this, which Google wouldn't do:



It sucks. We had a nice thing. I don't know if you all remember this or not - but for a while there was this HUUUUUUUUUGE bitchiness to the internet about inlining images. You could get banned on the Something Awful forums if you inlined images. If you go to oldmanmurray.com and look at the articles, you will see the world's tiniest images. That's because at one point they re-sampled them so they wouldn't take up as much room.

Then we all sort of grew out of that. You'd use Google, find an image and grab the URL and inline it. People made sites like imgur. These sites always fail, but there's always a new one around. Photobucket was one.

Now, though, Christ. Google and others managed to ruin it. I don't know what "webp" is, but it's all you see any more. Yaaaaaaaay they stopped people from using the images on their sites! Something that was costing them nothing! They made the web less usable!