Ranty McRant Thread 2

[korio]

So a couple days ago, my boss told me to update our Vcenter infrastructure with a new dedicated server and removing two old servers.

Taking advantage of the parcial shutdown for the change of servers, decided to upgrade the VCenter to the latest release, A.K.A 6.5

And, for goods shake, what in the name of hell is vmware thinking to develop the release to work embedded on a internet browser WITH FLASH.

Really, it's 2018, FLASH IS DEAD, why they keep developing such things?

[mrbadger]

It has full socket fuctionality too, so a flash game or advert can open a network connection wthout even telling you.

I won't let anything with Flash run on any of my machines.

[Oldman]

Hi folks

Litter....everywhere I go in my area I see piles of litter everywhere. It's starting to get on my nerves.
While on a walk I decided to count the amount of litter...there was various bits of litter about every ten yards in some places!
Going down to Cambridge on the A14 I noticed that there was various types of litter by the side of the road from old lorry tires to polythene/plastic bottles tin cans and just about every type of junk you could imagine.
Years ago our local shopkeepers used to sweep/clear up litter from outside their shops. They don't seem do that anymore, In the river and on the river bank in my immediate area there are plastic bottles/litter strewn about, washed down by floods I presume from the local supermarkets/shopping areas. I even saw an old mattress (bed) floating by one day. Near to the Tesco's supermarket (the river flows through the shopping area which has other big stores/eating places and cinema etc) I counted eleven shopping trolleys dumped in the river. There's also regular fly tipping in some of the entrances/gates to local farmland.
It's just so sad and infuriating to me, as I remember in these places there were once lovely fields and countryside that had virtually no litter at all.

It's as if people don't seem to bother anymore about their environment. Some do, but they usually say there's nothing they can do so why worry about it.

Oldman

[mrbadger]

The why worry about it thing is just another way of saying I don't want to be the person who fixes this.

Litter is bigger problem in some parts of my town than others, but the ares where its more of a problem seem to take the attitude that someone else should be fixing it.

Around our area we, and our neighbors will go out and clean up mess in the street, because it only gets worse if you don't.

If you keep a base level of tidyness you also seem to have a reduced problem of littering. That's how it appears. Most of our problems come from bins blowing over. There's also no graffiti. That used to be endemic across most of our town. Now it mostly aflicts the area's that are happy to let their streets stay messy.

Not entirely, but mostly. It's helped that the council have legitimised the practice and sponsored the better taggers to produce works.

[Alan Phipps]

There's an elderly couple that occasionally walk our local area using pickers and a black bag to pick up minor litter on the grassed verges and pavements. I had considered that they probably acted as a bit of a role-model or even a source of shame to some of the largely teenage group of locals that have tended to drop the litter.

Talking to the couple recently, they told me that the other day a group of youngsters on bikes deliberately chucked fresh rubbish onto an area that the couple had just cleared and one of the youngsters gave the old couple the finger too.

I don't think the littering part is the actual root of the problem, but more that some people like to show off and 'act big' in front of their mates. This usually appears to involve behaving in some form of antisocial manner.

Now don't get me started on dog poo! Especially the dog walkers who feel forced by witnesses to pick up and then throw it, bag and all, into a garden or hedge at the first unobserved opportunity.

[mrbadger]

Talking to the couple recently, they told me that the other day a group of youngsters on bikes deliberately chucked fresh rubbish onto an area that the couple had just cleared and one of the youngsters gave the old couple the finger too.

An act they will likely regret when they grow up, but will have no way to aplogise for.

[Hank001]

Here after prisoners in the local jails were litigated off of highway litter cleanup duties there came the "adopt a highway" campain. Then that ground to a halt when people were getting pelted with trash from cars whizzing by so that duty went back to state highway workers. Which means the highway medians here are atrocious. I think here it's indicative of a general trend in America that says rude and vulgar are the new proper behaviors. The sign if the times? A McDonald's sack suffed with trash rotting on the side of the road.

[Alan Phipps]

A resurrection of an old gripe of mine in this thread; yesterday I had the Windows 10 Spring Feature Update forced upon me.

OK the lengthy download, installation and restarts were done in quiet hours overnight. Nevertheless on logging on today I was faced with a very slow boot and delayed application launches eventually leading up to new feature options that I just didn't want. Further, the set-ups of things that I had liked just as they were had been changed for new versions or display options that I don't like at all.

Please Microsoft save me from forced 'progress' in all aspects and at least let me decide how I want things to look and work! Is it too much to ask for a conservative dinosaur option?

[BugMeister]

- leave your machine on and idling for a couple of hours unattended..
- there's a heck of a lot in it..

[Alan Phipps]

This happened on first booting up for serious use after the whole install had completed overnight with the system left on for exactly that reason. There may be a lot of new features in it, but they are not ones that I might use much. The really annoying thing is that some of the stuff that I do use has been changed in ways that I really don't want or like - Skype for one.

[Morkonan]

...The sign if the times? A McDonald's sack suffed with trash rotting on the side of the road.

Used diapers on the side of the road, obviously just rolled up and tossed out the window... I mean, "I get that," as I wouldn't want to have to ride with a poopy diaper on the seat, but for cryin' out loud, keep a trashbag in the car and just stop at an exit and stick it in the trash or something. (I have no idea what the laws are regarding human waste disposal... I assume it's legal.)

...Please Microsoft save me from forced 'progress' in all aspects and at least let me decide how I want things to look and work! Is it too much to ask for a conservative dinosaur option?

It's Microsoft's operating system. It's installed on your computer. Therefore, your computer is now their computer.

And, I'm really getting sick of that attitude... Screw all those people who think they have a right to "own" some piece of something that I paid for. And, if they give it to me for free, then it's mine... Luring us into a trap where we can be exploited... is wrong. But, it has become the "standard model" because the amount of money that can be generated, based on volume and amount of data, is more than their consciences can handle.

IMO, one reason Microsoft is getting out of the operating system business as a focus is that the poop is going to hit the fan one day and they just don't want to have to be involved. (Their enterprise stuff is more valuable, anyway.)

[mrbadger]

IMO, one reason Microsoft is getting out of the operating system business as a focus is that the poop is going to hit the fan one day and they just don't want to have to be involved. (Their enterprise stuff is more valuable, anyway.)

Their Enterprise stuff is just as bad. I'm forced to use it, and I can't stand it.

It wouldn't be as bad possibly if the people who are using it were using it properly, but half of them aren't, so when they can't figure out one aspect you might, for example have to do that bit in an external document and attach it. Or something equally time consuming. It's like being back in the nineties again. So many features that no-one can understand how to use the darned thing.

I stick with my tested Org-mode/LaTeX based system that just works and create the minimum of MSOffice based cover sheets to integrate with the corporate system so my usage is kept to a minimum.

[Hank001]

As with Windows Product post XP, My Android smartphone was down yesterday for nearly 2 hours with a forced update. The longest I'd seen with half of it "optimizing" my apps. (Which means taking an inventory to send back to some place for reasons that they'd never tell the user). Recent "updates" in the last 3 months have left Google Cloud unable to link zip and archive files for download, you can only "view" files and they have to send you an email for you're permission. Which means I woke up one morning and 100 strangers had my email address! I've lost spellcheck and other functionality of the phone's native software... (Google said it had security flaws, but LG called them liars and says it's because Google wants you to use THEIR software.) And now EVERYBODY is asking you to sign new user agreements to comply with the EU's new privacy laws. Which now plainly state, if you use this software we're going to peddle your data to anyone who'll buy it.

[OmegaKnight]

As with Windows Product post XP

Vista didn't have forced updates.
and while it's end-of-life you can still install security updates using Windows Server 2008 patches

Anyhoo on to my post:

Twitter has had a wee 'glitch'
It's been storing your passwords in plain text for months...
Yeah a glitch...
that's what you call that.

[Chips]

Twitter has had a wee 'glitch'
It's been storing your passwords in plain text for months...
Yeah a glitch...
that's what you call that.

Sounds like a production environment was running a logging level intended only for a development environment; on the scale of ****-up it is incredibly bad.

[pjknibbs]

Sounds like a production environment was running a logging level intended only for a development environment; on the scale of ****-up it is incredibly bad.

Even in a development environment I can't think of a good reason why you'd want to store a cleartext password in a log file.

[Chips]

Even in a development environment I can't think of a good reason why you'd want to store a cleartext password in a log file.

Because it isn't about "storing".

[X2-Illuminatus]

The really annoying thing is that some of the stuff that I do use has been changed in ways that I really don't want or like - Skype for one.

Ever since Microsoft had the bright idea of making Skype's text chats look like a Windows Phone SMS conversation, I'm super careful before installing any of Skype's updates. Unfortunately, with account hacks still being a thing I don't think I have much of a choice for security reasons alone. I still usually wait a couple of days before installing an update Skype is pestering me about to see whether there's any huge public outcry about new interface changes.

Vista didn't have forced updates.
and while it's end-of-life you can still install security updates using Windows Server 2008 patches

Forced updates, as Alan described them, aren't a thing on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 either, the latter which I am currently using. You are still able to decide when to install which updates.


Edit: typo.

[Hank001]

Omega knight wrote:

Vista didn't have forced updates.

You can't really count Vista as post XP most dropped back to XP from Vista and MS worked the kinks out of XP 64. XP certainly was the product of choice over Vista until Win 7.

[felter]

This doesn't really effect me but I'll rant for my fellow Scots.

Last week I could go out to the shops and buy an 18 pack of Strongbow cider and it would cost me between £10 - £12. Now due to our great Scottish government deciding to introduce an alcohol tax that same pack of cider now costs me £19.80 it has all but doubled in price. Beer is in the same situation where the price of a can has nearly doubled in price over night. Now here's the thing a 75cl bottle of spirits Gin/Whisky/Vodka has not changed, the same for a decent bottle of wine the price has not changed. So the tax has only hut the pockets of the beer and cider drinkers. It's actually now cheaper to buy a bottle of spirits than the case of beer.

Now the reason why I don't say it effects me is that I don't drink that much nowadays but not just that, I have a friend that stays in the lake district that visits every other week, and I can always get him to buy my drink for me from there as they don't have the new tax. They are also talking about getting a van going down to England and stocking up with booze from there, as England is not that far away and a full van would make it worth doing, we now have a new black market opening up.