Thursday, September 11, 2008
Fantastic Microsoft Idiocy
Some time yesterday, there was a power outage at my place of sufficient length to cause my UPS software to hibernate the machine. That apparently went OK, but when the machine tried to restore from the hibernate file, it instead bluescreened and rebooted.
This resulted in a familiar screen to frequent hibernate users to appear upon rebooting. It's the page of text that tells you that the last attempt to restore from hibernation failed, and asks if you want to continue with system restarting or delete the hibernate file and then start the system.
That's all fine and good. In cases like this, I usually want to try one more time to restore from hibernation (which works about 20% of the time), and when that fails, I just cut my losses, delete the hibernate file and continue.
The problem? This menu does not work, at all, if you have a USB keyboard. At first I thought it might be a problem with my KVM switch, so I took that out of the loop and connected my USB keyboard directly to the PC. No luck. Then I thought maybe there was a problem with my new USB keyboard, so I tried accessing the BIOS with it. That worked fine.
Fortunately I still had my old PS2 keyboard laying around, and I could plug it in to respond to that prompt. But anyone without a PS2 keyboard handy would be unable to boot into windows until they got one.
Somehow, Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, with its thousands of engineers working on Windows XP, can't manage to make a simple menu work with standard USB keyboards. Idiots.
Postscript: It seems a number of others have gotten into this particular failure mode. A Google search for windows hibernate "restoration data" "usb keyboard" turns up a number of people experiencing the same problem, and mostly solving it the same way: by plugging in a PS/2 keyboard to respond to the menu.
This resulted in a familiar screen to frequent hibernate users to appear upon rebooting. It's the page of text that tells you that the last attempt to restore from hibernation failed, and asks if you want to continue with system restarting or delete the hibernate file and then start the system.
That's all fine and good. In cases like this, I usually want to try one more time to restore from hibernation (which works about 20% of the time), and when that fails, I just cut my losses, delete the hibernate file and continue.
The problem? This menu does not work, at all, if you have a USB keyboard. At first I thought it might be a problem with my KVM switch, so I took that out of the loop and connected my USB keyboard directly to the PC. No luck. Then I thought maybe there was a problem with my new USB keyboard, so I tried accessing the BIOS with it. That worked fine.
Fortunately I still had my old PS2 keyboard laying around, and I could plug it in to respond to that prompt. But anyone without a PS2 keyboard handy would be unable to boot into windows until they got one.
Somehow, Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, with its thousands of engineers working on Windows XP, can't manage to make a simple menu work with standard USB keyboards. Idiots.
Postscript: It seems a number of others have gotten into this particular failure mode. A Google search for windows hibernate "restoration data" "usb keyboard" turns up a number of people experiencing the same problem, and mostly solving it the same way: by plugging in a PS/2 keyboard to respond to the menu.
Labels: microsoft, shitware, stupid, windows
Monday, April 28, 2008
Fixing that Annoying Windows XP Taskbar Resizing Problem
Windows XP can be an annoying POS sometimes. Especially when it thinks it knows better than I do how many lines my taskbar should be. I like it to be 2 rows high. For reasons unknown, Windows wants it to be one row less than whatever I set it to. Every time I reboot, Windows reduces the height of the taskbar by one row of buttons.
Or it did. I made it stop. It seems like this is related in some way to Windows' theme support. One way to make it stop is to disable that. In the Control Panel, open Administrative Tools | Services. Look in the list for "Themes". Right-click it and choose "Properties." Change the Startup Type to "Disabled" and click "Stop."
Now Windows XP doesn't change my taskbar anymore. And before you ask, yes I tried locking the taskbar first. It had no effect, other than making it take one more step for me to resize the taskbar back to where I set it.
Or it did. I made it stop. It seems like this is related in some way to Windows' theme support. One way to make it stop is to disable that. In the Control Panel, open Administrative Tools | Services. Look in the list for "Themes". Right-click it and choose "Properties." Change the Startup Type to "Disabled" and click "Stop."
Now Windows XP doesn't change my taskbar anymore. And before you ask, yes I tried locking the taskbar first. It had no effect, other than making it take one more step for me to resize the taskbar back to where I set it.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Why is Maven Still Such a Horrific Pile of Garbage?
Maven is, hands-down, the absolute worst piece of crapware I have had the misfortune of using in the last 4 years. This collection incidentally includes all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, including IE7, which only crashed every time I started it for a week due to an incompatibility with the Google Toolbar. It's worse than Norton Antivirus. It's worse than Microsoft Outlook. It is a complete waste of bits.
The terrible, tragic thing about Maven is that there's a kernel of a really good idea behind it. Building stuff, handling dependencies, running tests, producing reports. Great! Fantastic! If only it weren't to software development what Mr Garrison's "It" was to transit.
First, those who get excited about XML configuration need to die in a fire. A sewage fire. You know what? XML blows. The XML fad is over. Stop using XML for all kinds of garbage that it was never intended for. What the hell is wrong with you? People do not like writing this crap, and they like reading it even less. I don't give a damn that it makes your crapware XML/Object mapping tool spit out nice little objects that are easy for YOU to deal with when handling configuration. It's not about YOU if you want people to use your diarrhea soup.
Next, why does everything in this obtuse XML configuration HELL have to be
Seriously, if I need to get a file included in my output, why does it have to be in a structure 4 levels deep? And why do some of the bottom-layer elements allow file globbing? Don't you realize that if you can handle file globbing, you could just one ONE DAMN TAG ONE LAYER DEEP and be done with it? Die!
Want to see the results of your unit tests? Go look in a bunch of individual files! Because the build can only scream FAILURE!!! at you (just like that) and doesn't bother to tell you which assertion failed at which line in which class and method.
What a horrible pile of dung. Maven has been around for well over 4 years and in that time the only thing that appears to have improved is its startup time.
I don't know why anyone puts up with this crap.
The terrible, tragic thing about Maven is that there's a kernel of a really good idea behind it. Building stuff, handling dependencies, running tests, producing reports. Great! Fantastic! If only it weren't to software development what Mr Garrison's "It" was to transit.
First, those who get excited about XML configuration need to die in a fire. A sewage fire. You know what? XML blows. The XML fad is over. Stop using XML for all kinds of garbage that it was never intended for. What the hell is wrong with you? People do not like writing this crap, and they like reading it even less. I don't give a damn that it makes your crapware XML/Object mapping tool spit out nice little objects that are easy for YOU to deal with when handling configuration. It's not about YOU if you want people to use your diarrhea soup.
Next, why does everything in this obtuse XML configuration HELL have to be
nested
and nested
and nested
and nested
and nested?
Seriously, if I need to get a file included in my output, why does it have to be in a structure 4 levels deep? And why do some of the bottom-layer elements allow file globbing? Don't you realize that if you can handle file globbing, you could just one ONE DAMN TAG ONE LAYER DEEP and be done with it? Die!
Want to see the results of your unit tests? Go look in a bunch of individual files! Because the build can only scream FAILURE!!! at you (just like that) and doesn't bother to tell you which assertion failed at which line in which class and method.
What a horrible pile of dung. Maven has been around for well over 4 years and in that time the only thing that appears to have improved is its startup time.
I don't know why anyone puts up with this crap.
Labels: crapware, dumbassware, maven, maven 2.0.6, shitware, software, turdware
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Open JPA Can't @OrderBy a Related Object's @Id
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OPENJPA-162
I just can't win tonight.
UPDATE: it turns out that @OrderBy with no options means to order by the identity value of the related object, and this does work correctly in OpenJPA.
I just can't win tonight.
UPDATE: it turns out that @OrderBy with no options means to order by the identity value of the related object, and this does work correctly in OpenJPA.
Labels: open JPA, shitware, software
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