Things That Are Just Annoying

[The Old Hack 2,448]

4 hours ago, mlooney said:

People who put zip files inside a zip file, forcing me to run my bulk unzip script twice.

That... does not even make sense. You do not save any room by zipping a file twice.

[Don Edwards 548]

11 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

That... does not even make sense. You do not save any room by zipping a file twice.

But you (potentially) DO convert a group of files, even whole directory structures, into a single file.

Did you know that every .epub or .mobi ebook (and possibly other formats as well) is a zip file? It is. Contains several files, some of which are HTML. The zip format is now a defined industry standard for clumping separate-but-closely-related files, such as the components of an ebook, into a single file.

There were also a few instances of using zip-in-zip as an email bomb. It's based on two facts: (1) early antivirus software couldn't scan inside a zip file; it had to expand the zip file into temporary space and then scan that; (2) it's possible to create a zip file WITHOUT compression. The bomb technique is to create a huge file that should compress very well - a gigabyte of spaces works nicely - and put it into a non-compressed zip file. Then put that into a compressed zip file. Rename the non-compressed zip file and add it again to the same zip file; repeat many times. Email the result to your target (preferably to multiple people at the target company, listed in the BCC field so each recipient is a separate email) and watch their email server run out of disk space and crash.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Isn't that the kind of post that gets the attention of certain agencies?

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Isn't that the kind of post that gets the attention of certain agencies?

Not really. That's a well known attack vector that is trivial to block. Scanning programs can and do look inside zip files. Let me rephrase that. Email server software I helped write did. I also know that it is trivial to block by file type.

[HarJIT 97]

For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb

But yes, EPUB, LibreOffice ODF (odt, odg, odp, ods), MSOffice OOXML (docx, pptx, xlsx), Java JARs, etc are all zips (some care about file order though).  Mobi I believe isn't, and AZW3 integrates EPUB information into a mobi.

[mlooney 3,417]

Eve Online, has in theory, an OS X client.  This is a lie.  They have a broken version of WINE that they use.  If I'm going to use WINE I'll freaking do it on Linux where it more or less works.  I am less than gruntled about this.

[mlooney 3,417]

13 hours ago, mlooney said:

Eve Online, has in theory, an OS X client.  This is a lie.  They have a broken version of WINE that they use.  If I'm going to use WINE I'll freaking do it on Linux where it more or less works.  I am less than gruntled about this.

Well, I tried the method given in the Ubuntu forum.  Fail
Tried PlayOnLinux.  Major Fail
Found the "unofficial" client made by the guy that wrote the OS X "client".  Major win.  Running it on my Ubuntu laptop is about 200% faster and way more stable than on the iMac.

[Scotty 1,061]

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

Well, I tried the method given in the Ubuntu forum.  Fail
Tried PlayOnLinux.  Major Fail
Found the "unofficial" client made by the guy that wrote the OS X "client".  Major win.  Running it on my Ubuntu laptop is about 200% faster and way more stable than on the iMac.

Now you can play Internet Spreadsheets...er... Spaceships!

 

 

[mlooney 3,417]

I thought the Direct Express web site was slow as a slow thing in cold molasses when I accessed it at midnight when my disablity payment was made.  Silly me.  Try accessing it in the morning of the day that payments are made.  The molasses is frozen now.
But then again it's government web site, I should be glad it works as well as it does.

[mlooney 3,417]

This is more of nitpicky thing than really annoying, but the only thing I have left on my "make my laptop prefect" list is getting the Plasma gear+K menu to show icons for all programs.  It does for some, not for others, with no rhyme or reason as to which ones get them.  It also doesn't seem to let me change them either. 

[mlooney 3,417]

Securing software that's not made to be secure, like for example MediaWiki, is way more fun that it should be,  And by fun, I of course mean a pain in the area right above the pillow on my chair¹.  Plus I get to learn Yet Another Markup Language (and not just YAML).  That brings the number being used in the Edge project to 7.

1. Tex
2. Latex
3. HTML
4. Wiki
5. SVG
6. XML
7. YAML²

And each one of these is just different enough from the other to make life tricky and just enough like each other to confuse you as to what you are doing.

¹Or the center of the bed if I'm using my laptop in bed.

²Yes YAML stands for Yet Another Markup Language, it's a perl thing,

[Don Edwards 548]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

²Yes YAML stands for Yet Another Markup Language, it's a perl thing,

It predates PERL by a huge margin. For example, YACC¹.

For something even worse, XINU².

 

 

¹ Yet Another Compiler Compiler. And it was following an already-established trend in naming.

² Xinu Is Not Unix

[mlooney 3,417]

3 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

It predates PERL by a huge margin. For example, YACC¹.

Yes I know the YAXX thing is older than perl.  What I meant was literally YAML is a perl thing,  It's the markup language of choice for internal use by perl scripts.

From yaml.org

Quote

What It Is: YAML is a human friendly data serialization standard for all programming languages.

The great wiki article is pretty good.

[HarJIT 97]

Or Nethack.  YASD anyone?

RE: XINU, we then have LAME (LAME Aint an MP3 Encoder ­– they only supply it as source code) followed by TwoLAME (an MP2^‡ encoder).

‡ MP2 is the other main pre-AAC MPEG audio format.  The audio for a .mpg file is usually MP2.

[mlooney 3,417]

I stubbed my toe going into the kitchen.  So, yeah, right now I hurt from head to toe.  Off to take some analgesics, which is why I was going to the kitchen, to get some milk to take them with, for the mild not a migraine head ache.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

I stubbed my toe going into the kitchen.  So, yeah, right now I hurt from head to toe.  Off to take some analgesics, which is why I was going to the kitchen, to get some milk to take them with, for the mild not a migraine head ache.

Pain from stem to stern. Not fun. How many times have you broken your toes?

[mlooney 3,417]

24 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Pain from stem to stern. Not fun. How many times have you broken your toes?

If you count the stress fractures I got in basic training, four.  Falling down stairs is a problem I have.

[mlooney 3,417]

I have upgraded all of my mice to wireless smart mice. This means I can't use them as a short ranged flashlight as the LED is  dry low power and shuts off  after just seconds of none use.  This results in it being trickier than it should be to plug the power cord in on the tablet.

#1stworldproblem

 

[PSadlon 88]

Dried Mud is installing McAfee products w/o even a by you leave.

[mlooney 3,417]

21 minutes ago, PSadlon said:

Dried Mud is installing McAfee products w/o even a by you leave.

On OS X it at least asks before installing anything other than what you wanted.  But you can't uninstall Creative Cloud if you have any Dried Mud programs installed, so there is that.

[ijuin 572]

53 minutes ago, mlooney said:

I have upgraded all of my mice to wireless smart mice. This means I can't use them as a short ranged flashlight as the LED is  dry low power and shuts off  after just seconds of none use.  This results in it being trickier than it should be to plug the power cord in on the tablet.

#1stworldproblem

 

I avoid wireless anything because without being physically tethered to the computer, my peripherals invariably get lost within hours, never to be seen again.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

4 minutes ago, ijuin said:

I avoid wireless anything because without being physically tethered to the computer, my peripherals invariably get lost within hours, never to be seen again.

You'd think that I'd have the same problem, given my history (as Mrs. Prof would tell you), but 'tis not the case. I have a Microsoft Bluetooth Arc Touch mouse linked to my laptop. Works quite well, and I have yet to misplace the mouse.

[Scotty 1,061]

1 minute ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

You'd think that I'd have the same problem, given my history (as Mrs. Prof would tell you), but 'tis not the case. I have a Microsoft Bluetooth Arc Touch mouse linked to my laptop. Works quite well, and I have yet to misplace the mouse.

I'm more worried about forgetting (or my parents forgetting) to charge them or having to replace batteries in general.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

3 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I'm more worried about forgetting (or my parents forgetting) to charge them or having to replace batteries in general.

Battery replacement is rather bulletproof with this particular device. You get a flashing red light on top of the mouse when the power is low, and there's no Bluetooth re-linking required after a battery swap.

[PSadlon 88]

Found the option to turn the McAfee crap off on Dried Mud's Windows versions, on the website when you download, not in the bloody installer like normal.