From: Simon Wilcox Date: 11:57 on 09 Feb 2008 Subject: Windows & Thunderbird to the headmaster's office immediately please Right then you two. Stand there. Stop fidgeting. Get your hands out of your pockets Thunderbird ! I don't care which of you two are responsible for this, it's just not acceptable behaviour in this computer and I won't tolerate it. Now Windows, what is it with this FTP extension in Windows Explorer ? It's all very flashy and "convenient" for your user but it would appear that Mr Thunderbird over here doesn't know what to do with it. Why is it that when I drag and drop a file from any normal drive onto a new email message Thunderbird attaches it but when I drag and drop from an ftp location it doesn't ? I wouldn't mind if that were all but it's not all is it ? Stop shuffling your feet and look at me you two ! Would either of you be able to tell me which of you is responsible for DELETING the file from the ftp location instead of COPYING it from the location as you two manage to do everywhere else ? AND can you explain WHY IT IS that that file IS NOT attached to the email message is JUST LOST ????? Anyone ? Anyone ? I thought not. I will not tolerate my programmes behaving in such a disagreeable way. Detention every day until one of you owns up. Dismissed.
From: Simon Wilcox Date: 19:42 on 07 Apr 2005 Subject: Microsoft suck Well, OK, film at 11 but listen to this particular piece of shit: We have a website, all shiny and new which we want to run under ssl. No problem, set that up, firefox happy, every darn browser happy except IE which complains about secure and insecure content on the same page. So we fix that hardcoded error (whoops :) but the error still remains. Nowhere in the html does it reference http://. So I dig out ethereal and there is definitely NO http call being made. What the fuck ? Much googling later, I get a clue here http://www.softcomplex.com/forum/viewthread_1868/page1/#pid5140 Yes indeedy people, in working around one IE bug, we tickle another ! For some reason <iframe src=""></iframe> is insecure. What crack were the programmers smoking the day they thought of that one ? So to get around it, I have to call a real html page from my webserver so that IE can believe it is secure. <iframe src="/brokenbrowser.html"></iframe> Useless, useless, fuckers. That's 3 hours wasted that I really don't have time to waste. Simon.
From: Simon Wilcox Date: 23:57 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Windows 2003 & PHP - How I do hate thee First up - can someone explain to me why every fucking edition of Windows has to move all the configuration about ? What is the goddamn point you fuckers - unless it's to make more money for your trainers ? I mean, it's not as if your OS is a supermarket and you need to keep moving your displays around in the vain hope that people won't notice that you're peddling the same old shit as everyone else. Or maybe it is, but I digress. No, today's rant is directly squarely at Windows 2003 (and PHP but more of that pile of phlemagtic yaks bile later). Why, oh why, do I have to reboot the whole damn server just to change a path ? That's right folks, if you change the system environment path variable and you want your "services" to see the new path then you have to restart the machine. Very fucking state of the art Bill, you twat. And how did I discover this little gem ? Because php FUCKING LIES TO YOU ! If a bloke down the pub lied to me as much as php did, I'd probably thump him. Or at the very least curse at him most strongly, under my breath. Anyway, the point is this: You install php. You set up the php.ini and tell it where your extensions are installed. You uncomment one of the standard extensions. You add the registry key that tells php where to find it's it's ini file. You add the php directory to the system path (note that I've not restarted the server at this point). You start php. All is good, except that you get an error message saying "unable to load dll c:\php\extensions\php_ldap.dll - file not found". You think to yourself, "I can find you sill ymachine", coming over all Eddie Izzard for while, and eventually trying all combinations of absolute and relative paths that you can think of. Much googling later you find two very important pieces fo information: 1. You need to restart Windows for the system path to take effect. 2. PHP actually completely ignores th extensions path and looks only in the system path. But it's error message includes the path you specified. It's telling me that it can't find a file at point A but it never even fucking looked there. How fantastically lame is that ?! 4 hours this took. 4 hours when I could have been training the users and invoicing the job instead of battling with stupid operating systems and applications that have less right to live on Gods clean earth than a weasel. Thank you for your attention. I feel better now. Which is, I believe, the entire point of this list :-) S.
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