Computer Stupidities
Stupid computer users. We've all seen the lists, and I'm sure everybody on this list has more than one story. I'm sure that many folks have a better story than this one. However, dealing with this individual is just so frustrating that I had to share this particular stupid computer user story. A particular individual in a company I work for (not Code Energy) has semi recently been put in the position of being in charge of the marketing department. The downfall is that this person is one of the most technically inept people I've ever met. And even more unfortunate is that they are in the position of making far too many decisions involving technology. Today's story involves the fact that the company in question has created a (admittedly low budget) tv commercial to be aired soon. They emailed me the quicktime file (about 5.3MB) to check it out. They also asked if there was a way to make the file smaller so it could be more easily emailed. Then they got their hands on the graphic designer's Mac ... and started fiddling. The following conversation occurred over email. Keep in mind the starting size of the file is about 5.3MB. (cut and paste - all typo's are real) Marketing Person: ok.. i reduced it further on Jen's computer..got itdown to 80 bytes My reply: I have to admit to doubting that - this email is longer than 80 bytes. Marketing Person: yes..i meant 800 bytes..damn this keyboard! *sigh* -- "Ha ha - you may be right, but remember! You are also flammable..." -Donald, one of my psycho cousins Cole Tuininga Lead Developer Code Energy, Inc [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key ID: 0x43E5755D ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Computer Stupidities
You must give him some credit getting near the source of the problem. It *is* very close to his keyboard ;-) Cole Tuininga wrote: Marketing Person: yes..i meant 800 bytes..damn this keyboard! *sigh* ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Computer Stupidities
On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 11:50:01AM -0500, Cole Tuininga wrote:
> A particular individual in a company I work for (not Code Energy) has
> semi recently been put in the position of being in charge of the
> marketing department. The downfall is that this person is one of the
> most technically inept people I've ever met. And even more unfortunate
> is that they are in the position of making far too many decisions
> involving technology.
Hey, I think this person deserves a lot of credit! If a 5.3MB qt
movie was file was reduced to 800 bytes, that's quite an
accomplishment!
Hmm... OTOH, something like
...
fd = open("movie_file", O_WRONLY);
ftruncate(fd, 800);
...
would do the job. Though I can't say that the results would be all
that useful...
OTOOH, if your marketing user managed to do something like that, I'd
still be pretty impressed! =8^)
--
Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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Re: Annoying screen backspace problem
On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 09:39:06PM -0500, Paul Lussier wrote: > Derek Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > If you log in to remote machines frequently, you've problably used > > screen. If so, you've probably run into cases where backspace doesn't > > work properly sometimes, even though most of the time it does. I > > finally got annoyed enough that I tracked this down, and I thought I'd > > share my solution with you. > > shoving 'stty ek' into my .profile seems to have fixed this behavior > such that I haven't experienced it since. Yeah, certainly that should do it. An alternate I suggested in the bug report I wrote was this: tset -Q -e Which should do the same thing (except without initializing the kill character). Incidentally, stty ek on an HP-UX machine would (IIRC) set the kill character to @, making it a little tough to use terminal-based e-mail clients... Generally not very desirable. Er, anyway, when I tried to use the above tset command, I started experiencing a strange echo problem. I've also noticed that the reset command fails to properly reset the terminal on xterm, gnome-terminal, and konsole. I think the ncurses package on FC2 is just plain b0rk3n, but that's a whole other debug session. :-/ -- Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank the spammers. pgpRDHGUxnbHo.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Computer Stupidities [OT]
Cole Tuininga wrote: Then they got their hands on the graphic designer's Mac ... and started fiddling. The following conversation occurred over email. Keep in mind the starting size of the file is about 5.3MB. (cut and paste - all typo's are real) Marketing Person: ok.. i reduced it further on Jen's computer..got itdown to 80 bytes My reply: I have to admit to doubting that - this email is longer than 80 bytes. Marketing Person: yes..i meant 800 bytes..damn this keyboard! *sigh* You have my sympathy. At least they understand that files have sizes - even if they don't understand the difference between 5,300,000 and 800 and why that doesn't make sense. ;-) I had a client (attempt to) email a 125 MB file - over a shared dialup line. When it didn't arrive in a few minutes, she kept mailing copies of it - until the mail server (which was also their file server) ran out of disk space, with the usual consequences. When I asked her about it, she said she'd shrunk down the file to be small before sending it. I asked her how. She demonstrated using the Zoom option in her program to make the screen image thumbnail sized and then she emailed the document. -- Dan Jenkins ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-206-9951 *** Technical Support for over a Quarter Century ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Hosstraders Ho!
On Tuesday 29 March 2005 10:50 pm, Ben Scott wrote: > As many GNHLUGers know, it has become something of a tradition for > GNHLUG to have a table or two at the twice-yearly Hosstraders ... > So, if anyone is > interested in helping out, let me know. If there is interest I'll > see about getting the ball rolling again. My wife and I are planning to go and would be happy to join you. We will be selling some electronic equipment, so we will bring a 6 foot folding table and 2 chairs. If it would be helpful for demos, I can bring my Dell C400 laptop with SuSE 9.1, OO, Qcad, Firefox, etc. Do you set up for both days, Friday and Saturday? I have an old Pentium-class Packard Bell complete with monitor, CDROM drive, keyboard, mouse, etc. to donate. If someone could get Linux running on it, we could send some lucky person off with a complete Linux installation for $50. (Special "Multitasking" design. Also functions as a foot warmer and boat anchor.) The only uncertainty is with two business trips that are being scheduled beyond my control. Of course, such things would never fall on a day I want to take off. Never happens. Jim Kuzdrall > ___ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Custom live CD
Ted Roche wrote:
On Mar 28, 2005, at 1:45 PM, Donald Leslie {74279} wrote:
I need to create a bootable CD for a diskless laptop. Instead of
booting intothe desktop it needs to start with a menu of choices . One
of these will be the desktop.
Don:
I'm not sure what you're looking for. Are you looking for more
information or other alternatives?
Knoppix remastering is covered pretty well in "Knoppix Hacks" from
O'Reilly.
It took me awhile to answer. The O'Reilly book is pretty complex and the
steps are time consuming.
At first I only need to add two Icons for program startup on the
desktop. I tried the simple example of saving the desktop and rewriting
the CD. Regretably this was now too large to fit on a cd . I tried to do
the more detailed process of removing programs and rebuilding . I tried
to combine this with saving the desktop changes. When done the boot
fails with :
failed to execute /sbin/modprobe binfmt-, errno = 5
kernel panic: No Init found. try passing init= option to kernel
Can you do both the deletes and desktop update in one step. The O'Reilly
book does it in two.
I have also had hardware issues. My old laptop only works with external
not kernel pcmcia so I can not get networking with Knoppix. It also
hangs unless I boot KNOPPIX noscsi .
I have a amd64 laptop. KNOPPIX (3.7) only runs with the 2.6 kernel. If I
use this laptop X eventually hangs and locks up completely requiring a
reboot.
I need a vpn which requires kernel-source the 2,6 kernel is 2.6.9 . The
debian apt repositiory only has source through 2.6.8..
Of course several steps take a long time
Any suggestions
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Re: Annoying screen backspace problem
On Mar 29, 2005, at 22:02, Ben Scott wrote: One thing I've always admired about Unix is that it no other system has more trouble going backwards It's true - why is this so hard? Is there a design deficit or just a common programming mistake? I first remember having to put stty erase commands in my .tcshrc on an VAX running ULTRIX c. '91. It hasn't really improved since then (though my FC3 machines seem to behave better). -Bill - Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Pager: 603.442.1833 AIM: wpmcgonigleSkype: bill_mcgonigle ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Mount on top of / ??
Here's a strange question, something (I hope) you've never thought of doing. A student asked me about it, and I said it's illegal. But I was wrong... What should happen (or what does happen) if you, as root, # mount -t ext3 /dev/hda9 / assuming, of course, that the partition /dev/hda9 exists and is correctly formatted as an ext3 filesystem? I've tried it on FC1 and FC3. And on Debian (2.4.20 kernel) I tried # mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc / (where /dev/hdc is a valid CD-ROM). In all three cases the system executes the command and fails to complain. (I'm not saying that the system is still usable afterwards, only that the command doesn't cause an error message.) It's not easy to undo, either - trying "umount" generates "device is busy". I don't know how to explain what's happening, either to my student or to myself. I googled, but haven't found anything yet. What do you think? Is mounting on / illegal? Should it be? If it's legal is there a realistic use case? TIA - Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Mount on top of / ??
On Mar 30, 2005, at 22:01, Bill Sconce wrote: What do you think? Is mounting on / illegal? Should it be? If it's legal is there a realistic use case? Maybe for a boot-image? You boot the system on a tiny boot disk with the drivers you need to mount the real root then mount the real root over yourself? I'm not quite sure why that would be better than pivotroot though. I'd back a --really flag or a '-o clobberroot' in mount(8). There are plenty of unix tools that let you clobber your system without any warning so you might get some purists against it. -Bill - Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Pager: 603.442.1833 AIM: wpmcgonigleSkype: bill_mcgonigle ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
DLSLUG: Monthly Meeting - April 7th
*** Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Linux Users Group http://www.dlslug.org/ *** The next regular monthly meeting of the DLSLUG will be held: Thursday, April 7th, 7-9PM at: Dartmouth College, Carson Hall Room L02 All are welcome, free of charge. Agenda 5:30 Special Pre-Meeting PyCon 'Debrief' @ EBA's Anybody interested in hearing about the latest developments in the Python world is welcome to join the Python SIG for a report from some intrepid NH Pythoneers who just got back from D.C. where the PyCon 2005 Python convention was held. We'll be eating dinner in the back room at EBA's. 7:00 Sign-in, networking 7:15 Introductory remarks 7:20 Open Source E-Commerce with Interchange presented by Peter Nikolaidis Interchange is an open source alternative to commercial commerce servers and application server/component applications. Interchange is one of the most powerful tools available to automate and database-enable your web site or build online applications. The talk will cover the basics of installing and configuring the software, as well as some demonstrations of existing sites running on Interchange. 8:50 Roundtable Exchange - where the attendees can make announcements or ask a linux question. Please see the website for links to directions. If any area companies are interested in sponsoring refreshments, please let me know. Please RSVP so we can give a refreshment sponsor a headcount. - MAILING LISTS There are two primary mailman lists set up for DLSLUG, an Announce list and a Discuss list. Please sign up for the Announce list (moderated, low-volume) to stay apprised of the group's activities and the Discuss list (unmoderated) for group discussion. Links to the mailing lists are on the webpage. Please pass this announcement along to anyone else who may be interested. - Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cell: 603.252.2606 http://www.bfccomputing.com/Page: 603.442.1833 AIM: wpmcgonigleSkype: bill_mcgonigle ___ gnhlug-announce mailing list gnhlug-announce@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-announce ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Saving old systems - anyone with a dead Dell laptop?
Speaking of laptops (and starting an new topic), I've found I can easily mod my Latitude C600 to accept a miniPCI wireless care (specifically a Netgate 5004 a/b/g card). All I need is the connector cable to the built-in antenna, Dell Part #37THY. I've had no luck getting it from Dell (lots of "what's that, I don't show that"), but by doing some googling, found out it appears to be the standard connector for their laptops. Any ideas where to get one, or does anyone have a dead Dell laptop I can extract it from? Maybe help turn a dead laptop into parts for several laptops if a number of us need parts. thanks in advance, jeff ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Annoying screen backspace problem
On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 04:51:24PM -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote: > On Mar 29, 2005, at 22:02, Ben Scott wrote: > > >One thing I've always admired about Unix is that it no other system > >has more trouble going backwards > > It's true - why is this so hard? Is there a design deficit or just a > common programming mistake? I think it's not a design deficiency at all -- in fact I think the design is quite good. The design takes into account that historically people connected a wide array of (potentially) vastly different terminals to Unix machines, and still had get them all to generate more-or-less the same characters. The problem of handling input from terminals of various design is a surprisingly complicated one... On one level, you have the terminals themselves: what keys generate what key codes. Then at the system level, you have to interpret what those key codes are supposed to mean. In many cases (such as with the X Window System) you have a third layer of terminal emulation that gets stuck in the middle. It's amazing that any of this works at all! The idea is that different terminals have different feature sets, and also use different character sequences to represent any given feature. In order to make this all work, you need a layer of abstraction in between the signal generated by the keyboard or terminal (the key code generated by pressing a given key) and the terminal feature it is meant to activate. If you didn't have this layer of abstraction in between, only one brand of terminal would ever work on a given system at one time... Your keyboard generates some key code when you press the backspace key. This code can vary depending on the model of the keyboard you have. The Linux console, and also the X window system, have a key map which translates these hardware-generated key codes into logical characters. Above that layer, you have the terminal driver, and the termcap/terminfo libraries. These interpret which terminal features those logical characters are supposed to activate. So, if your keymap has the wrong key code mapped to the backspace key, it sends the wrong logical character sequence to the terminal driver. Or, if your termcap or terminfo databases list the wrong character sequence for a particular terminal feature (or capability, which is where "termcap" comes from -- TERMinal CAPability), then your I/O will be flummoxed. If both are wrong, well... So really, there are two problems which have lead to the sad state of affairs bollixing up the backspace key. One is bad coding practices -- programs which assume that ^H is supposed to be backspace, or that ^? is, instead of letting the terminal driver do the translation as intended. The second is lazy or ignorant system administrators who have misconfigured termcap/terminfo databases. NOTE: for those who might be inclined to be offended by the use of the word "ignorant" -- I've used the word in its literal sense, meaning "to be unknowing", rather than its popularly bastardized sense meaning roughly, "to be rude, or to be inept or inadequate". > I first remember having to put stty erase commands in my .tcshrc on an > VAX running ULTRIX c. '91. It hasn't really improved since then > (though my FC3 machines seem to behave better). I disagree... discounting the bug under current discussion, I think the situation with backspace has improved dramatically since when I first started using Unix 10 years ago... In recent memory, in homogenous environments, nary an occasion can I recall which the backspace problem has gotten in the way of me accomplishing whatever I was working on. [Again, save this bug in screen...] On the other hand, it does tend to happen when going between different Unix systems, because vendors can't seem to agree on which key sequences the backspace, erase, and/or rub keys should send, nor even what exactly should be done when they have been pressed. And that's assuming the given vendor hasn't decided to call those keys something entirely different... Sigh. Anyway, I think it's much better than it used to be. =8^) -- Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank the spammers. pgpA32ikbbZwu.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Computer Stupidities
On Wed, 2005-03-30 at 11:50 -0500, Cole Tuininga wrote: [snip] > (cut and paste - all typo's are real) > > Marketing Person: > ok.. i reduced it further on Jen's computer..got itdown to 80 bytes > > My reply: > I have to admit to doubting that - this email is longer than 80 bytes. > > Marketing Person: > yes..i meant 800 bytes..damn this keyboard! > > *sigh* Sounds like a job for lzip: http://lzip.sourceforge.net/ ;-) -- -Paul Iadonisi Senior System Administrator Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux. GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Annoying screen backspace problem
Derek Martin wrote: <... snipped a long, informative post ...> Thank you for that good explanation. It reminded me of so much I had forgotten. (Pushed from my mind might be the better phrase.) Anyway, I think it's much better than it used to be. =8^) Oh yeah. I haven't needed to write a termcap entry in many years. I haven't needed to decipher octal dumps to determine keycodes in a long time. I haven't even had to battle backspace issues in several years either. Generally "it just works" (tm). (Of course, except when it doesn't ;-). It is much better than it used to be, I agree. -- Dan Jenkins ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-206-9951 *** Technical Support for over a Quarter Century ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Annoying screen backspace problem
Derek Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > So really, there are two problems which have lead to the sad state > of affairs bollixing up the backspace key. One is bad coding > practices -- programs which assume that ^H is supposed to be > backspace, or that ^? is, instead of letting the terminal driver do > the translation as intended. The second is lazy or ignorant system > administrators who have misconfigured termcap/terminfo databases. And the second has largely been relegate to ignorant/lazy system *vendors*, as most sysadmins nowadays don't even know the termcap db even exists! In my 10+ years as a sysadmin, I've *never* had to touch the termcap db (unless I was completely replacing it). If it's been horked, it came that way from the vendor :) > Anyway, I think it's much better than it used to be. =8^) I agree. Years ago it wasn't uncommon to have the "fix" this problem by replacing the entire termcap. SunOS had it mucked pretty well, as did early Solaris and Ultrix (don't recall about True64). I vaguely recall having trouble on early RH systems when connecting to these other systems as well, but linux-to-linux was (obviously) okay. Where I notice the problem most now is, as Derek points out, in screen, which I use extensively. But since adding the stty ek line, I haven't noticed the problem. Actually, I didn't even notice it in screen shells, but when I invoke emacs. The stty ek works fine in that my backspace key is backspace, but that also maps to ^H, which in emacs is C-h, which is used for accessing emacs help. This gets to be a pain, since rather than using C-h f or C-h k to read the help for a function or keybinding, I now have to use M-x describe-function or M-x describe-key. -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
