It's 2014, this IT problem should be solved by now...



  • This thread would probably be dear to Blakey's heart if he hadn't ragequit and before it gets derailed (3 posts max, this is not a challenge to do it in two).

    What thing does you PC still do which should be a solved problem in 2014?

    My biggest bugbear is the PC moving focus when I'm part way through typing a password. What's the use case for doing this?


  • Banned

    My Windows 8 wonderful computer reboots itself once a month without even giving me a chance to give it permission.

    Also

    METRO


  • Considered Harmful

    User authentication.



  • Compiling from any language to any other language.



  • Focus stealing on Windows, and Visual Studio seems to be the worst offender.

    Counting down 3, 2, 1, before somebody mentions forum pagination...


  • Considered Harmful

    @ufmace said:

    Counting down 3, 2, 1, before somebody mentions forum pagination...

    No, pagination was a solved problem in the 90s.


  • Banned

    My favorite was when Windows 8.1 rebooted for updates literally in the middle of a Skype call I was on.

    Filed under: No it's ok, go ahead, I wasn't doing anything important with my computer anyway I guess



  • Honestly, this isn't that much of a WTF, especially given that x86-64 assembly is a language. As a language developer, it's really convenient to reuse someone else's backend, and the easiest way to do that is use their language. While there are a range of target languages in terms of level of abstraction (ranging from x86 assembly to LLVM IL to Haskell (yes, there are languages that compile to Haskell)), more or less every language will be converted into another language at some point. In fact, you could argue that the AST that the parser produces is an language in and of itself, though not a human-readable one.


  • Considered Harmful

    I think he's saying it's a WTF that there's no universal transpiler.

    Given that the topic is, "this problem should be solved by now."


    Filed under: Maybe he just thought this was "The bad ideas thread", (Which he — I mean I — started.)



  • Why can't I take some code I wrote in Go and translate it to BIT?



  • The focus stealing thing, obviously. If I type in a window, the system should be smart enough to load any new windows in the background.

    This is particularly nasty on Windows with alert boxes, e.g. the "Update finished, do you want to reboot now?" box. I was typing, that box appeared while typing came to an end, I hit return and accidentally triggered the reboot.



  • Or when you're typing something and a box comes up and you push n because there's an n in the text you're typing at that point and then it dismisses the dialogue and you don't know what you said no to but you hope it wasn't drugs.


    Filed under: stay in kids, don't do school



  • Windows installing and configuring updates when I just want to shut down.



  • @sam said:

    My Windows 8 wonderful computer reboots itself once a month without even giving me a chance to give it permission.

    It warns you for 2 days before the reboot on the lock/login screen. If you don't want the automatic reboot, simply set WU to only warn you about the updates, then update when it's convenient to you (or, if you turn off the computer every day, just disable Fast startup in Control Panel -> Power options -> Choose what the power buttons do (which is stupid - if there's a pending reboot, Windows should do a normal shutdown and finish updating instead of doing the logout-hybernate).


  • BINNED

    File sharing. Seriously, it works perfectly most of the time, but it should be a no-brainer and work in 100% of the cases.

    Instead, the best we have is Samba. On Linux, it's usually misconfigured or not even installed by default. On Windows, you have a 50%[1] chance it will work properly without going into advanced options and just checking freaking everything because otherwise it just doesn't work.

    $DEITY help you if you have a user account without a password, because it will ask you for it. Can you turn it off? Yeah, you can, buried 3 dialog levels deep, but why in hell would I need to turn off password protected sharing if I have an account without a password? Maybe I want a password protected share for files on my account, but I want complete unrestricted access to files on the account I have set up for any guests and I don't want to leave sticky notes with a password on it stuck to the monitor just to appease the gods of Samba.

    And why in the fucking hell do I need to give write permissions to everyone on Windows just to copy a file from it? The hell are you trying to write? See this bits here? Yeah, the ones you let me read anyway? I'd like a copy of that. No, I don't want you to modify a damned thing, since when does copying involve scribbling on the original?
    This one might be a problem only when mixing operating systems, but it shouldn't happen anyway. I don't know if it's Windows' or Linux' fault, I want it fucking fixed!

    Excuse the rage, but I'm trying to copy a file over the network atm...

    [1] asspull


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Because you have not written the code to make it do so yet. Get going. What's keeping you?

    General translation of an arbitrary programming language into another is astonishingly hard, even if we just restrict to the Turing-complete ones, but until you've tried to do it for real, you won't really believe just how hard it is…


  • Banned



  • @ufmace said:

    Focus stealing on Windows, and Visual Studio seems to be the worst offender.

    I had almost managed to forget about Visual Studio. It's especially annoying if you have sloppy focus enabled - in that case Visual Studio will bring itself to the front of the window stack whenever you mouse over certain elements (IIRC the source editor is one of them).


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @sam said:

    My Windows 8 wonderful computer reboots itself once a month without even giving me a chance to give it permission.

    You're clearly doing something wrong - we've discussed this previously, and I've been told that me expecting the "stop fucking rebooting after an update" option to stop fucking rebooting after an update is expecting too much.


  • 🚽 Regular

    Always-on-top windows.

    In particular the Flash updater. My pet theory is that they want reading the EULA to be as difficult as possible.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Zecc said:

    Flash updater

    That's all you needed to say.



  • @RTapeLoadingError said:

    What thing does you PC still do which should be a solved problem in 2014?

    "Unable to delete/rename file xxxyyyzzz because it is in use by another program. Please stop the other program and try again."

    With no indication of any kind what program is "using" my file.


  • BINNED

    @Zecc said:

    Always-on-top windows that I didn't ask to be always-on-top.

    FTFY.

    I miss always on top on Windows so much.
    Also, being able to scroll without focusing the window. But I didn't harp on this since it actually is solved, just not on every OS.



  • @Zecc said:

    Always-on-top windows.

    In particular the Flash updater.

    Solved in 2014.



  • @ender said:

    It warns you for 2 days before the reboot on the lock/login screen. If you don't want the automatic reboot, simply set WU to only warn you about the updates, then update when it's convenient to you

    Why is automatic reboot even a thing? As annoying as it is, a nag window at least won't lose the changes in whatever document: might be editing...

    Linux may have a ton of its own issues, but updating is the one place I feel it is worlds ahead


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @DrakeSmith said:

    Why is automatic reboot even a thing?

    Discussed else-board, but ostensibly to replace in-use files that are updated. And Microsoft are better at judging when your computer can be rebooted than you are.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Onyx said:

    I miss always on top on Windows so much.
    You're right. I accept your fix. I don't use Always on Top much on my Linux window managers, but it happens now and then.

    More importantly: is it so much to ask for Microsoft to let me drag taskbar buttons at will? Grouping by application doesn't make any sense. (I don't know if this has been fixed in Windows > 7 as I haven't had much contact with those)
    @Onyx said:

    Also, being able to scroll without focusing the window. But I didn't harp on this since it actually is solved, just not on every OS.
    It varies from application to application too. Can't think of any examples right now though.



  • @PJH said:

    Discussed else-board, but ostensibly to replace in-use files that are updated. And Microsoft are better at judging when your computer can be rebooted than you are.

    I'm aware of that, but Linux handles it fine... although I am aware of the idiosyncrasies of programs running with old versions memory versus what's on disk. It still should never reboot without my ok. And the fact that other software is left on its own for updating, resulting in a myriad of icons in my notification center for apps that want to stay current and updated. Windows update never results in anything to me but frustration after the ease of Linux updating



  • @ender said:

    If you don't want the automatic reboot, simply set WU to only warn you about the updates

    If you do that on Windows 8, Windows Defender will no longer automatically install definition updates but will instead cause Windows itself to constantly warn you that new updates are available and that you should manually install them. Mind you, this wasn't a problem on Windows 7 or earlier because, while Security Essentials definitions are available on Windows Update, it also downloads them automatically regardless of your general Windows Update settings.



  • @Onyx said:

    being able to scroll without focusing the window.

    X-mouse Button Control lets you do that, and is usually one of the first things I download on any new Windows install.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @DrakeSmith said:

    Why is automatic reboot even a thing?

    It's usually because corporate system administration are asses who think that keeping the system perfectly up to date is far more important than anything you might possibly want to be doing with the computer. And who think that mid-morning is a great time to apply patches because it's the end of the Indian work-day. (Thankfully, our SA staff are on-site — two floors down from here, in fact — but I know someone who works for GE Research and he despises the way they work. Particularly their inclination to botch the updates.)

    MS quite like it because otherwise users don't install updates. (I'm guilty of that too.) But at least you can set it to usually only happen at sane times.


  • :belt_onion:

    Yes, I have a broken update from Microsoft sitting in the queue that fails to install, but every time I reboot now it tries to install it anyway, then fails on the next start up. And then takes 20 minutes to rollback the failure. So my uber-machine that could take under 10 seconds to boot took 20+ minutes to reboot.

    It took me a while but I finally jammed enough "STOP THE EFFING UPDATES" buttons on the update control center to stop the stupid thing from doing it every time I reboot.

    But I'm sure the next patch Tuesday will trigger it again.


  • :belt_onion:

    @da_Doctah said:

    With no indication of any kind what program is "using" my file.

    GD that is annoying. I think it's because that 98% of the time it's Windows Explorer "using" my file, and they don't want to have to admit that Windows can't delete your file because Windows is using it. How the hell hard would it be for Windows to figure out its own shit and let go of the file to allow you to delete it?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @darkmatter said:

    GD that is annoying. I think it's because that 98% of the time it's Windows Explorer "using" my file, and they don't want to have to admit that Windows can't delete your file because Windows is using it. How the hell hard would it be for Windows to figure out its own shit and let go of the file to allow you to delete it?

    Hmm, it's more likely the search indexer, at least in XP and Win7. Because.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @darkmatter said:

    So my uber-machine that could take under 10 seconds to boot took 20+ minutes to reboot.

    Running windows updates reminds me of the ending of the movie version of Return of the King. There's always one more, "Configuring Updates" or whatever screen.



  • @Keith said:

    Windows installing and configuring updates when I just want to shut down.

    I don't get this one. What's wrong with letting Windows do updates during shutdown? You're not using your computer anyway. Plus, You can always change your Windows Update settings.


  • Considered Harmful

    @abarker said:

    @Keith said:
    Windows installing and configuring updates when I just want to shut down.

    I don't get this one. What's wrong with letting Windows do updates during shutdown? You're not using your computer anyway. Plus, You can always change your Windows Update settings.

    So one time the CPU fan died on my PC, and I got an alert for CPU temperature. I initiated a shutdown so I could power it off, open the case, and rejigger the fan (a wire had come loose). Windows starts installing updates. Over 200 of them. The system overheated at 98% done installing updates.
    I fixed the fan, and started back up, and had to wait while it rolled back the updates.



  • @error said:

    @abarker said:
    I don't get this one. What's wrong with letting Windows do updates during shutdown? You're not using your computer anyway. Plus, You can always change your Windows Update settings.

    So one time the CPU fan died on my PC, and I got an alert for CPU temperature. I initiated a shutdown so I could power it off, open the case, and rejigger the fan (a wire had come loose). Windows starts installing updates. Over 200 of them. The system overheated at 98% done installing updates.
    I fixed the fan, and started back up, and had to wait while it rolled back the updates.

    Ok, I buy that. I could have sworn that there's an option to shutdown without installing updates, but I'm in WIndows 7. Maybe that's gone/non-existant in earlier/later versions.



  • @abarker said:

    I could have sworn that there's an option to shutdown without installing updates, but I'm in WIndows 7.

    My Windows 7 system has separate options for "Shut down" and "Install updates and shut down", so it's definitely possible. However, if you've configured Windows to automatically install updates, then the second option will probably be redundant (if it even shows up) because those updates will have already been partially installed, and I'm not aware of a way to skip the "finalize update installations" step that happens during shutdown.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    I don't get this one. What's wrong with letting Windows do updates during shutdown?

    It's hometime and you want to take your laptop with you... (ok, maybe hibernate would probably suffice, but still.)



  • @Quietust said:

    However, if you've configured Windows to automatically install updates

    Like I said, you can always change your update settings.

    @PJH said:

    It's hometime and you want to take your laptop with you... (ok, maybe hibernate would probably suffice, but still.)

    Yeah, with hibernate as an option, this is a situation where selecting Shut Down is on you. You see that Windows wants to install updates, you think "But I'm in a hurry," and select hibernate. Problem solved.


  • BINNED

    @dkf said:

    MS quite like it because otherwise users don't install updates. (I'm guilty of that too.)

    I guess my "Fucking hell, why isn't it looking the way I told it to?" obsession is helping me here.

    "Hey. HEY! What's this blue ℹ icon in my tray? Go away! How do I make you go away? Oh, install updates, fine, just go away!"

    I also use this so I can't ignore stuff I need to do. I keep my desktop completely clean at all times, icons not allowed. So if I need to write and send a document to someone later, I leave an empty document on my desktop. I usually do what I have to do with it before I move it or delete it.


    Filed under: pedantic dickweedery to the rescue



  • @Onyx said:

    Also, being able to scroll without focusing the window.

    You can use this if you're on Windows.



  • @DrakeSmith said:

    Why is automatic reboot even a thing?

    Because people don't reboot otherwise and just dismiss/ignore the nag dialog forever. I've personally witnessed computers that had a few months of uptime and the WU reboot dialog moved as far off-screen as possible.



  • I am thinking of DATA DE-DUPLICATION. This is one problem that will never be solved.



  • @Quietust said:

    If you do that on Windows 8, Windows Defender will no longer automatically install definition updates but will instead cause Windows itself to constantly warn you that new updates are available and that you should manually install them.

    This is probably the only thing I hate about Windows 8*.

    * Yes I like Metro, but I've owned only touch screen computers since 8 came out. When I played with 8 RC on a non-touch laptop it did suck big hairy monkey balls.


    Filed Under Big Hairy Monkey Balls, FUCKING HELL WHY CAN'T WE JUST BE ABLE TO EDIT WHITESPACE


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @PJH said:

    It's hometime and you want to take your laptop with you... (ok, maybe hibernate would probably suffice, but still.)

    That's something I never really understood. Why do Windows users act so keen on shutting down their laptops when they're going to pop the machine in a bag for a while? The manufacturers have (finally!) been reasonably consistent in getting the BIOS right so sleeping and hibernation work sanely.

    It's not as mysterious as when a Mac user does the same thing. Apple got this stuff working many many years ago.


  • Banned

    @da_Doctah said:

    With no indication of any kind what program is "using" my file.

    They did improve this in Vista and later, it tries to tell you which program has the file open. At least I have seen it reported a few times in the dialog these days.



  • @error said:

    User authentication.

    Every work day I have to do this before I'm into all the stuff I need:

    1. Log into laptop with work username and password
    2. Connect to client using VMware with client admin username and RSA token
    3. RDP to our management server with client admin username and admin password
    4. Connect to production CITRIX SSMS with client admin username and admin password
    5. Connect to test CITRIX SSMS with client test username and test password
    6. Log into Remedy with work username but wholly different, not sync'd password

    On top of this everything except the management server is configured with ~2 hour timeout so if I go to lunch and a meeting (or a proper coffee break) then I have to log into half of it again.



  • Keyboard/mouse combos where the keyboard is wired, but the mouse is wireless. The mouse moves a lot. The keyboard doesn't do much but drain batteries.


Log in to reply