When developers do support
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So, I've been having intermittent problems with VLC Media Player, some days I try to connect it to the Internet radio stream I listen to and it works fine, other days it basically just stutters like a skipping record all day - restarting VLC, Windows, etc doesn't make any difference. And on those days, I can fire up Chrome and listen through the online player at the same site 100% fine.
It's been enough of a problem I finally was like, "let's see if I can Google up a solution". So I search for "vlc intermittently will not play radio stream but online players work" and the first hit (admittedly several years old, but still worth the Sidebar...):
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=100286
So, I'm having this stuttering audio & video problem
Well, have you checked all these really technical settings
Hm, changing that first setting helped, but then it broke again, and I don't have control over two of the other settings you asked for.
NO HELP FOR YOU!
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Wow. What an absolute dick
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@Jaloopa Unfortunately, far too common.
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@Jaloopa said in When developers do support:
Wow. What an absolute dick
Somebody on the videolan forum:
blatantly rude and on some kind of power trip
French. Probably Parisian.
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And a bit below, we have the usual "don't complain if you don't help", with an added dose of sarcasm:
So, clearly you who isn't on a power trip will be fully willing to contribute your free time to the matter without any issue of needing that free time to work on other things when a user is not understanding what you request!
@HardwareGeek said in When developers do support:
French. Probably Parisian.
Looking at his website, French, yes, but not Parisian. But from a selective engineering school ("grande école"), which tends to breed the same disdain. Oh, his CV has got these nice gems at the end:
Honors and awards
VLC Developers Most Commits award 2009
École Polytechnique admissibility 2003
École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) admissibility and ranking 2003It's been updated at the end of 2014 latest so it's not like he was just out of school when he added that. The first one is self-explanatory (I guess) and ridiculous enough. The other two are basically "passed the first step, but failed the second, of the selection process for 2 engineering schools with a better reputation than the one I ended up in." Talk about frustrated ego... (plus, only someone well versed in the French education system can understand what this means, so totally useless...)
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@remi said in When developers do support:
plus, only someone well versed in the French education system can understand what this means, so totally useless...
I'd argue that it's more useful for ego inflation, actually. I mean, it has to be impressive, it says Supérieure, must mean this person is rather Super!
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@remi said in When developers do support:
Most Commits award
That's like awarding a marathon runner for taking the most strides during a race, or a racing driver for achieving the highest engine RPM.
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@remi said in When developers do support:
VLC Developers Most Commits award 2009
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@Onyx said in When developers do support:
I'd argue that it's more useful for ego inflation, actually. I mean, it has to be impressive, it says Supérieure, must mean this person is rather Super!
Look just before it: Normale Supérieure
Basically: just above normal
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@Onyx said in When developers do support:
I'd argue that it's more useful for ego inflation, actually. I mean, it has to be impressive, it says Supérieure, must mean this person is rather Super!
It is also Normale, what does it say about you if you have to mention that you failed to get into a "normal" school?
edit: 'ed...
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@remi said in When developers do support:
It is also Normale, what does it say about you if you have to mention that you failed to get into a "normal" school?
Pshaw...got into a special school.
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@boomzilla Yep, my point exactly...
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Totally not a sockpuppet from that mod.
I understand that sometimes the only response is "sorry, I don't know what's wrong with your VLC and I can't afford to spend 3 weeks trying to diagnose a bug that affects a single user", but you don't have to be a dick about it.
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@remi Funny you should comment on this topic seeing as the dev on the linked topic is also called R
eémi!
Is there something you are not telling us?Filed Under: Clones, evil twins, mutant aliens, etc.
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@Kuro Ha! It took longer than I thought until someone pointed that out! :-D
But no, I'm not the same. In fact I missed out the "most commits" award, so I'm jealous of him ;-)
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@izzion I have not been on there for a long time, but every post on the XBMC (now Kodi) forums used to be like that. It was always either a reply that was either the equivalent of "Fuck off" or "It is open-source, so you can fix that issue yourself".
For years they has users complain about constant buffering and the devs would always ask,
"How is it networked"
"Wifi"
"You need to run it on Gigabit ethernet wired connections, that will fix your issue."This would always end with the user pointing out that literally everything else works streaming media over wifi and that if they buffered the stream it would fix the issue, which it would.
"It is open source, you can add that functionality if you wish. PRs accepted."
This went on for fucking years. Finally, someone implemented the functionality and they refused the PR, because they are total cockholes. They did not like the way it was implemented. So it was reworked several times until the devs told them that it could only be implemented as an option and gave a list of demands. The final way it was accepted was that the functionality would only be enabled if you created an XML file in the installation directory and put in all of the relevant options in to it and then rebooted.
So...noob users were still just fucked.
I have not been on their support forums for years, but I would not at all be surprised to see some manner of that discussion still occurring there on a weekly basis.
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Somewhere in Washington state, @blakeyrat felt a shiver go up his spine that he could not explain.
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Ugh. I absolutely hate holier-than-thou open source devs. Not that I have anything against open source software -- heck, I love coding fun stuff, it's the boring stuff that I get paid to code -- but, especially on open source projects that have been around for a long time, devs within a project frequently think that they are somehow on a higher moral plane than other people because they use their spare time to code shit. I mean, it's not even like VLC is the only free media player available that's even good. I use MPC-HC and I think it's great. It even plays fucking .swfs without a plugin.
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@CrazyEyes said in When developers do support:
fucking .swfs
That explains why Flash just won't die: it's breeding, and cannot be stopped.
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@Polygeekery said in When developers do support:
I have not been on their support forums for years, but I would not at all be surprised to see some manner of that discussion still occurring there on a weekly basis.
Top thread in the first support category I clicked into
Seems like that after the Windows' 10 Anniversary Update my movies started to stutter a lot.
No debug, no issue..
Where are my manners. Here is the log file.
A little bit of reading: Forum Rules and Banned Add-ons and Repositories. No help from here as long as your Kodi is contaminated with this crap
Sorry about the mess. Here is a clean debug log file
Ok, I think I know what is causing that stuttering. It's the hardware acceleration. When I set the rendering to software movies play smoothly. Now it's in your hands devs to investigate why.
No help? What else do I need to provide?
: It makes me laugh when people come here asking for help when they are in fact the ones causing so many issues for the amazing application that is Kodi... Come on Kodi find a way to BAN these addons at allSo, it's the user's fault for using the ecosystem the developers built around the application? The even had some sort of troll as his avatar
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@Jaloopa I called it:
@Polygeekery said in When developers do support:
I have not been on their support forums for years, but I would not at all be surprised to see some manner of that discussion still occurring there on a weekly basis.
Same cockhole devs.
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@Polygeekery I used to use XBMC and remember it as being quite nice to use once you'd thrown out every default setting, navigated an awful configuration system and set it up to actually use some of the features it had but were hidden away.
Then you'd move to a new PC or reinstall the OS and have to go through all the pain again, after running a fresh installation and going "eww, this is horrible. Where's the library view?"
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@Jaloopa said in When developers do support:
I used to use XBMC and remember it as being quite nice to use once you'd thrown out every default setting, navigated an awful configuration system and set it up to actually use some of the features it had but were hidden away.
Yep. It works well, once you figure out all the hidden shit.
In our case we have always run it with a MySQL backend on a networked server here in our house. That really helps with the response time of the UI, while also synchronizing your place across all devices. But the setup for it is pretty archaic. Create an XML file, reboot, doesn't work, Google, edit XML file...lather, rinse, repeat.
Not very user friendly at all. And god help you if you have to ask for help on the forums.
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@Polygeekery See, this is the good thing about capitalism: it punishes companies that do things like that.
(bad things about capitalism: abusive EULAs, oligopolies, lobbying, vendor lock-in...)
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@CrazyEyes
Mostly I use VLC because it's what Ninite has so it's easy to install. But that forum thread does not provide me warm fuzzies about staying with them.
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@izzion Use https://mpv.srsfckn.biz/ and drop youtube-dl in the same folder. It Just Works because it's technically a command-line application. If you're not beardy enough for that MPC-HC works too I guess.
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We should hook the two up. Match made in heaven.
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@Maciejasjmj
To be fair to Jeff and Nameless VLC developer, their attitude is pretty prevalent among techies of all shapes and sizes, especially ones that are active at bug marshalling in Open Source projects. And I have definitely experienced the pain of getting a useful problem report out of a non-technical user, so I can understand the frustration that comes with dealing with that on a regular basis.But it's a little unfortunate for us as a community that so many OSS software projects don't have much pressure or incentive to actually run as a business. I would expect that capitalist pressure would make having a bug marshall / front person who was more civilized than Torvalds an absolute necessity fairly quickly. To some extent, you do even see that within the Linux project. End users don't deal with the kernel, they deal with the business entities that have sprung up to take the kernel, turn it into something useable, and then filter feedback on the way back to the kernel developers so that end user problem reports turn into something that Torvalds and crew can actually develop against (sometimes, anyway).
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@izzion said in When developers do support:
I would expect that capitalist pressure would make having a bug marshall / front person who was more civilized than Torvalds an absolute necessity fairly quickly. To some extent, you do even see that within the Linux project.
To be fair, Torvalds is only really a cunt towards other developers. Which as we can conjecture are themselves cunts anyway, so not much of value lost here.
Being a cunt towards the end user is tactical suicide, though.
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@izzion said in When developers do support:
I would expect that capitalist pressure would make having a bug marshall / front person who was more civilized than Torvalds an absolute necessity fairly quickly.
If they ever did that as support on a for-pay application, they would be canned after the first outburst.
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@remi said in When developers do support:
(plus, only someone well versed in the French education system can understand what this means, so totally useless...)
Yeah, anyone versed in the French education system IS totally useless. #FreedomFries
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@izzion said in When developers do support:
But it's a little unfortunate for us as a community that so many OSS software projects don't have much pressure or incentive to actually run as a business. I would expect that capitalist pressure would make having a bug marshall / front person who was more civilized than Torvalds an absolute necessity fairly quickly.
But Discourse is run as a business, and yet their bug report front person is Jeff.
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@izzion said in When developers do support:
I have definitely experienced the pain of getting a useful problem report out of a non-technical user, so I can understand the frustration that comes with dealing with that on a regular basis.
But is that a reason to get frustrated at a user who does know the technical bits (to a certain extent, anyway) and is making an effort to provide the necessary information to fix a problem?
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@Polygeekery said in When developers do support:
@izzion said in When developers do support:
I would expect that capitalist pressure would make having a bug marshall / front person who was more civilized than Torvalds an absolute necessity fairly quickly.
If they ever did that as support on a for-pay application, they would be canned after the first outburst.
This explains much.
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@NedFodder
Jeff is fairly active on the forum that they use as their open source support portal, though even there there are other developers and personalities active to assist with support and bug marshalling.Everything I've seen from the Discourse team suggests to me that they have a different support channel for paying customers, and I suspect that channel has a lot less discopocalypse worthy communications.
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@Polygeekery Also worth reposting the classic "turd cookies" post here:
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@anonymous234 said in When developers do support:
Also worth reposting the classic "turd cookies" post here:
YOU'RE POOING IT WRONG!
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@Polygeekery said in When developers do support:
Yep. It works well, once you figure out all the hidden shit.
In our case we have always run it with a MySQL backend on a networked server here in our house. That really helps with the response time of the UI, while also synchronizing your place across all devices. But the setup for it is pretty archaic. Create an XML file, reboot, doesn't work, Google, edit XML file...lather, rinse, repeat.
Not very user friendly at all. And god help you if you have to ask for help on the forums.That was the majority of my issues with XBMC. Using Plex fixed them all.
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@izzion said in When developers do support:
Everything I've seen from the Discourse team suggests to me that they have a different support channel for paying customers, and I suspect that channel has a lot less discopocalypse worthy communications.
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@Lorne-Kates said in When developers do support:
@remi said in When developers do support:
(plus, only someone well versed in the French education system can understand what this means, so totally useless...)
Yeah, anyone versed in the French education system IS totally useless. #FreedomFries
Oy! How do you think you're going to serve fries in a fast-food without a diploma?
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Well, gee, thanks VLC for help. You've banned me even before I was able to ask a question.
inb4 IP ban. Sure. Doesn't change the fact that they suck, they sick hard, they suck awfully for doing such a thing.
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@kt_ And that's why I say IP bans don't work.
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@Polygeekery said in When developers do support:
But the setup for it is pretty archaic.
I'd have gone with “arcane” instead, but then I'd call requiring the setup to be stored on Hollerith punched cards archaic.
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@RaceProUK said in When developers do support:
@CrazyEyes said in When developers do support:
fucking .swfs
That explains why Flash just won't die: it's breeding, and cannot be stopped.
@anonymous234 said in When developers do support:
@Polygeekery See, this is the good thing about capitalism: it punishes companies that do things like that.
(bad things about capitalism: abusive EULAs, oligopolies, lobbying, vendor lock-in...)Taking a loss (e.g., offering stuff up for free) to undermine your competitors is also capitalist. See, for example, Microsoft v. Netscape. And I notice they do advertise kodi-related merchandise and devices for sale:
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@izzion I'd guess this could be something related to storing settings in virtualized folder... Maybe try "Run as administrator" and do the first fix again can fix it.
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@RaceProUK said in When developers do support:
@Jaloopa Unfortunately, far too common.
Unfortunately, for customer systems you don't have direct access (remote desktop. VNC. etc.), for a lot of time when the problem cannot be reproduced, especially when you're not paid for fixing the issue, that's the default response.
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@izzion Downvoted for the topic title.
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@aliceif
Well, you know, I figured I wanted a shorter title than "When a pissy, anti-social developer joins an open source project, then tries to give support, but in a way that gives as little support as possible, so that he can look good in front of his friends without actually stooping to help the little people"That way I could have something catchier and easier to remember, so I could find my own topic in the topic list at a later date. Because I have way too much dumbs to remember a long topic title (or to become an OSS developer).
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@izzion said in When developers do support:
so I could find my own topic in the topic list at a later date
PROTIP: Go to your profile (click your avatar in the upper right and then click on your username). In the drop down menu (what did someone call the dots menu instead of a hamburger menu?) there's a "Topics" entry that shows the topics you've created.