Shit that you come across daily that pisses you off

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware / Software Crap > Shit that you come across daily that pisses you off

Lum: Aug 13, 2003

less than three posted:

I noticed recently Norton has a TV campaign running targeting MSSE, where everyone hates on some generic guy because he told them 'that free antivirus' was a good product.

Are you sure they aren't targeting AVG where this sort of criticism does actually have some validity these days.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 15:22

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# ? May 20, 2013 00:10

Drighton: Nov 30, 2005

Agrikk posted:

Now you need to make a case for migrating to Exchange 2010. Online Archiving is the cat's rear end. Since I've moved to 2010, I turned on Online Archives for everyone, let it suck out everyone's email over 6 months and plop it into a dedicated store for archives and forgot about it. And it's practically transparent to end users.

No more massive mailboxes. No more worries about quotas. No more pestering users to create massive offline archives that create 8GB PSTs that barf and corrupt all the time and are a hassle to manage.

Exchange 2010 is your friend.

We checked into 2010's Archive solution. We were okay with the increased storage requirements, and even that we had to buy both Standard and Enterprise CALs for each user, but we had to pass when we found we'd have to purchase Office 2010 Professional Plus licenses at $800 each for about 300 people.

We have no use for any of the other enterprise features, so all that expense was purely for online archiving. We went with Symantec instead.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 16:04

Docjowles: Apr 9, 2009

SiliconCow posted:

My boss probably gets paid more than 95% of the people in this thread and he can't read or write past about the fifth grade level. He is the Dilbert manager personified. He seems compentant until you ask pretty much any specific question about pretty much anything remotely technical. Sadly when he interviewed here apparently no one did that.

My company recently hired a manager for a very technical group, and literally only someone from corporate HR interviewed him. I doubt there was a more technical question than "have you heard of the facebooks?" involved; we do more comprehensive interviews for tier 1 CSR's. He was more of less exactly what you describe. On the bright side, it worked out so poorly that he was canned after only a couple months instead of living on forever like Rod.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 16:27

Serfer: Mar 10, 2003; ...I like the way they think

Drighton posted:

We checked into 2010's Archive solution. We were okay with the increased storage requirements, and even that we had to buy both Standard and Enterprise CALs for each user, but we had to pass when we found we'd have to purchase Office 2010 Professional Plus licenses at $800 each for about 300 people.

We have no use for any of the other enterprise features, so all that expense was purely for online archiving. We went with Symantec instead.

Pro Plus is just the volume license version of Pro, nothing special about it. Also, if they told you $800 per license, they're charging you nearly 3x what it costs.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 16:51

Scaramouche: Mar 26, 2001; SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

Lum posted:

Are you sure they aren't targeting AVG where this sort of criticism does actually have some validity these days.

AVG doesn't have nearly the penetration, nor the threat, that MSE does against for-pay antivirus vendors.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 17:23

Jadus: Sep 11, 2003

Drighton posted:

but we had to pass when we found we'd have to purchase Office 2010 Professional Plus licenses at $800 each for about 300 people.

We have no use for any of the other enterprise features, so all that expense was purely for online archiving. We went with Symantec instead.

Have you any documentation that Office Pro Plus is required for the online archiving?

The only requirement I've seen is the Enterprise CAL.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 19:18

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; I can do sex. It's just alien sex.

Fixing up a frankenbox to put on SA Mart and installing Linux, the computer is making this awful rattling sound fairly constantly. I'm thinking I just got a cable up against a fan, as it's a cramped mini-ITX box and it stops for a bit if I nudge the box, so I go through installing Ubuntu to do burn testing. As I'm starting to partition, I notice one of the hard drives can't be read or formatted, and it's not reporting SMART information or responding to ATA IDENTIFY commands. Oh well, drive must be dead. It was re-used and was once hooked up to a bad PSU, so there you go.

So I install to the other drive, and everything seems to go fine. I shut down and open the case to unblock the fans. While I'm at it, I unplug the dead drive. Well, that's odd... none of the fans seem to have cables against them. Maybe my improvised mount on the heatsink fan is vibrating too hard.

Then the remaining drive head parks, and right as it head parks, the rattling stops. And as the drive spins back up, the rattling comes back.

And then the power supply cuts out and I can't reboot the computer.

By the time this thing is ready to go, I'll never be able to sell it on SA Mart, because everyone who can see my post history will be able to see the horrors this thing has been through.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 20:01

wintermuteCF: Dec 9, 2006; LIEK HAI2U!

What goddamned assclown at Microsoft thought "You know what? Let's make it so people can't install Microsoft Security Essentials when they're in Safe Mode."

gently caress you, nameless dev.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 20:16

Sickening: Jul 15, 2007; Now... Let's go synthesize some LSD!

wintermuteCF posted:

What goddamned assclown at Microsoft thought "You know what? Let's make it so people can't install Microsoft Security Essentials when they're in Safe Mode."

gently caress you, nameless dev.

This a thousand times. I would not prefer to put spybot on a machine just to remove the infection in safe mode.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 20:25

Internet Explorer: Jun 1, 2005; OFFICIAL BITCH OF DANBO DAXTER

Jadus posted:

Have you any documentation that Office Pro Plus is required for the online archiving?

The only requirement I've seen is the Enterprise CAL.

Never heard of this either. Now I know MS only offers Office Pro Plus on an EA, so maybe that's it?

# ? Jun 14, 2011 21:03

vlack: Feb 7, 2004; Stay frosty, Sparky

wintermuteCF posted:

What goddamned assclown at Microsoft thought "You know what? Let's make it so people can't install Microsoft Security Essentials when they're in Safe Mode."

gently caress you, nameless dev.

This sucks, but I think the reason is that the Installer service doesn't run by default in Safe Mode, which impacts a lot more than just MSE and isn't exactly up to the nameless MSE dev in question.

It's also why, for example, you can't uninstall Symantec and other antivirus solutions in Safe Mode, either.

You can make the service start in Safe Mode by adding it to the list of Safe Mode services in the Registry.

For Safe Mode (without networking):

code:

REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"
net start msiserver

For Safe Mode with Networking:

code:

REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"
net start msiserver

(Via.)

It's best practice to undo this when you're done, because if there's something critically wrong with the Installer service, it can prevent you from booting even in Safe Mode.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 21:12

bbcisdabomb: Jan 14, 2008; SHEESH

You get that little "gently caress you" box even with the installer service running. It's horrible.

I usually just run SafeMSI when I need the service started, but that way is better if you can edit everyone's boot.ini.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 21:50

rolleyes: Nov 16, 2006; Sometimes you have to roll the hard... two?

loving Virgin Media tech support.

A week ago I mentioned that I'd helped a family friend set up his new Dell after the old one died. Well today he calls and tells me that his internet was slow, he rang Virgin Media, and their outsourced helpdesk informed him that the reason for this was because his PC was likely infected. Their logic? After making the poor guy look at scary things like "netstat -a" and the list of running processes in task manager they informed him that he had too many programs running and this meant he was infected.

I haven't yet seen this PC since the phone call but as I set it up myself including installing MSSE and Firefox with Adblock Plus and Flashblock I highly loving doubt it. If I was a richer man I'd be on a plane to Hyderabad right now just so I could kick that agent in the nuts.

I informed him that if the net was still slow in the morning to have his son come over with his laptop and if it's slow on that too (hint: it will be) then he should raise merry hell with Virgin Media again.

rolleyes fucked around with this message at Jun 14, 2011 around 21:52

# ? Jun 14, 2011 21:50

frozenphil: Mar 13, 2003; YOU CANNOT MAKE A MISTAKE SO BIG THAT 80 GRIT CAN'T FIX IT!

Dear Professors Emeritus: I don't give a single poo poo about the issues you're having with your home computer. I give even less of a poo poo that you used to bring in a lot of grant money to the college.
You no longer work here. You're a contemptible bastard who's first words ever spoken to me were, "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!". Stop loving calling me because you're too cheap to pay someone to fix your piece of poo poo computer.
However, please do keep me informed regarding the hate crime police case you opened because you received some spam with the word "Jew" in it.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 23:12

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

New Adobe Reader released, but the MSI download page is blank. The FTP site is transferring at 12.6kB/s.

# ? Jun 14, 2011 23:17

chutwig: May 28, 2001; BURLAP SATCHEL OF CRACKERJACKS

Megiddo posted:

New Adobe Reader released, but the MSI download page is blank. The FTP site is transferring at 12.6kB/s.

I think "All Adobe software" and "Adobe's inability to write software more securely than a first-year CS student could" are both prime candidates for poo poo I come across daily that pisses me off. Three Flash Player updates in like a month?

# ? Jun 14, 2011 23:22

Docjowles: Apr 9, 2009

poo poo that did not piss me off: "Hey boss, our 'office IT' is loving awful. We have no central management of anything, everyone's local admin, users are not backed up, managers go to Wal-Mart with a credit card when a PC breaks. Can I fix this?"

"Sure"

Ahahaha I just made so much work for myself...

# ? Jun 15, 2011 00:09

Suniikaa: Jul 4, 2004; Johnny Walker Wisdom

Docjowles posted:

poo poo that did not piss me off: "Hey boss, our 'office IT' is loving awful. We have no central management of anything, everyone's local admin, users are not backed up, managers go to Wal-Mart with a credit card when a PC breaks. Can I fix this?"

"Sure"

Ahahaha I just made so much work for myself...

Congratulations on the

# ? Jun 15, 2011 00:19

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007

Megiddo posted:

New Adobe Reader released, but the MSI download page is blank. The FTP site is transferring at 12.6kB/s.

FFFFFFF, I installed 10.0.1 on some laptops, ran mozilla.com/plugincheck to make sure I was fine, it said reader was out of date, I saw 10.1, read it as 10.0.1, and went on with my life.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 00:26

Docjowles: Apr 9, 2009

The flip side is that, at some point down the road, our parent company was going to make us do all this stuff. I'd rather head it up (and get the resume building experience

) than have someone with no understanding of our needs show up one morning and say "hey dillweeds, this is how it's gonna be".

And just as a professional, I am honestly embarrassed by the state of things. It's never really been anyone's job description to make office IT work, because it's only recently that we've gotten big enough for it to be an issue. I was hired to write tools and take some server-side Linux sysadmin duties off another guy. But our headcount has grown enough that I can't deal with all the dumbass "hey we hired a new guy, here's the $100 laptop from Wal-Mart I got, can you load all the apps he needs on it during your lunch break?" poo poo anymore and still do my actual job function. I'd rather bust my rear end for a few months making things right than work just as hard propping up a terrible system.

Famous last words

# ? Jun 15, 2011 00:33

Thel: Apr 28, 2010

Docjowles posted:

The flip side is that, at some point down the road, our parent company was going to make us do all this stuff. I'd rather head it up (and get the resume building experience ) than have someone with no understanding of our needs show up one morning and say "hey dillweeds, this is how it's gonna be".

And just as a professional, I am honestly embarrassed by the state of things. It's never really been anyone's job description to make office IT work, because it's only recently that we've gotten big enough for it to be an issue. I was hired to write tools and take some server-side Linux sysadmin duties off another guy. But our headcount has grown enough that I can't deal with all the dumbass "hey we hired a new guy, here's the $100 laptop from Wal-Mart I got, can you load all the apps he needs on it during your lunch break?" poo poo anymore and still do my actual job function. I'd rather bust my rear end for a few months making things right than work just as hard propping up a terrible system.

Famous last words

You're hosed. You are so so hosed.

Good luck.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 01:21

RadicalR: Jan 20, 2008; "Businessmen are the symbol of a free society
---
the symbol of America."

Can I join the "HP can go gently caress themselves on a long pole" club?
We deployed drivers for their 1522 All-in-one (a POS if I ever saw one).
We got calls that for some reason, the scanning feature was scanning really, really light.

Now, I just spent the whole day loving with the drivers, trying to figure out what's wrong. On a long shot, I grab one of their "full solution" for another region. I gave Windows 7 the drivers for "HP Scan" and presto, the loving thing starts working correctly. Really, HP? Is it too loving hard to put your drivers IN THE RIGHT PACKAGE? HOLY poo poo.

Sorry for the long post of swear words, but seriously, I'm kinda pissed at myself for not thinking of it sooner (who would've thought of it, to be honest?)

# ? Jun 15, 2011 01:21

Sickening: Jul 15, 2007; Now... Let's go synthesize some LSD!

RadicalR posted:

Can I join the "HP can go gently caress themselves on a long pole" club?
We deployed drivers for their 1522 All-in-one (a POS if I ever saw one).
We got calls that for some reason, the scanning feature was scanning really, really light.

Now, I just spent the whole day loving with the drivers, trying to figure out what's wrong. On a long shot, I grab one of their "full solution" for another region. I gave Windows 7 the drivers for "HP Scan" and presto, the loving thing starts working correctly. Really, HP? Is it too loving hard to put your drivers IN THE RIGHT PACKAGE? HOLY poo poo.

Sorry for the long post of swear words, but seriously, I'm kinda pissed at myself for not thinking of it sooner (who would've thought of it, to be honest?)

You used logic when dealing with a HP device. This was the root to your entire problem.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 01:58

RadicalR: Jan 20, 2008; "Businessmen are the symbol of a free society
---
the symbol of America."

I know, so what is the right answer?
Whiskey? And lots of it?

# ? Jun 15, 2011 02:00

Hard NOP Life: Jan 22, 2004; Your clothes.

Give them to me. Now!

Docjowles posted:

poo poo that did not piss me off: "Hey boss, our 'office IT' is loving awful. We have no central management of anything, everyone's local admin, users are not backed up, managers go to Wal-Mart with a credit card when a PC breaks. Can I fix this?"

"Sure"

Ahahaha I just made so much work for myself...

There are only 5 of us in my office, so this hasn't been that big of a pain to deal with.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 03:12

Docjowles: Apr 9, 2009

RadicalR posted:

I know, so what is the right answer?
Whiskey? And lots of it?

yes

MEAT TREAT posted:

There are only 5 of us in my office, so this hasn't been that big of a pain to deal with.

This is how I got into this situation. It wasn't a problem, then we added 50 employees. Which rules for finance, but leads to "whiskey and lots of it" for IT.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 04:45

Crowley: Mar 13, 2003

Docjowles posted:

poo poo that did not piss me off: "Hey boss, our 'office IT' is loving awful. We have no central management of anything, everyone's local admin, users are not backed up, managers go to Wal-Mart with a credit card when a PC breaks. Can I fix this?"

"Sure"

Ahahaha I just made so much work for myself...

You are going to get so much flack for that in here.

We would all have done the same when we were young, dumb and had the future ahead of us.
Now we have become those we scorned.
We are the greybeards.
You will be too.

Edit: HP Data Protector is pissing me off today. Especially when I have to figure out how to plan the backups around the several 12+ hour jobs for backing up our media archive.

Crowley fucked around with this message at Jun 15, 2011 around 09:51

# ? Jun 15, 2011 06:59

hirvox: Sep 8, 2009

Institutional amnesia.

Hey, can you do a deployment at 8 AM or 12 PM?

Sure, but it'll require a short service break, so you probably shouldn't do it at business hours.

No problem, do it at 7 AM or 3 PM.

Okay, but..

Wait, wait! Can you do it at 6 AM or 5:30 PM? We have people on adjacent timezones!

Sure.

How do you forget that you're a multinational consortium?

# ? Jun 15, 2011 13:05

SynMoo: Dec 4, 2006

So the version of the file you want to work on is a month old at your temporary workstation, but it points to the network share? Let me guess, you copied the original off of the server and have been working on it locally on your primary desktop, haven't you?

# ? Jun 15, 2011 13:33

Drighton: Nov 30, 2005

Jadus posted:

Have you any documentation that Office Pro Plus is required for the online archiving?

The only requirement I've seen is the Enterprise CAL.

I can't seem to find the page on Microsoft's website that we referenced, but I did find another one.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 13:37

BastardAus: Jun 3, 2003; Chunder from Down Under

FISHMANPET posted:

FFFFFFF, I installed 10.0.1 on some laptops, ran mozilla.com/plugincheck to make sure I was fine, it said reader was out of date, I saw 10.1, read it as 10.0.1, and went on with my life.

Every second day with Adobe, particularly with Reader. gently caress, just knock out the bugs and get it right you shitheels.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 15:11

wintermuteCF: Dec 9, 2006; LIEK HAI2U!

Christ alive, people, why do you insist on falling for the simplest of ruses, the [b]Fake AV Scanners[b]!? Especially when you've got delicious bits of Engrish (honestly, the best argument for paying attention in grade school grammar is that it could save your personal data).

As if the name "Win 7 Internet Security 2012" isn't enough of a clue.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 16:41

Jadus: Sep 11, 2003

Drighton posted:

I can't seem to find the page on Microsoft's website that we referenced, but I did find another one.

Thanks for the link.

This right here is poo poo that pisses me off, and I've seen it for Excel 2003 as well.

I had always thought (logically, I hope) that the Outlook or Excel you get with any version of Office is always the same; that the tiers of Office only provide additional programs over the lower cost options.

But I've seen this behavior with Excel's XML import feature, and now Outlook with the archiving.

That's a big giant gently caress You from Microsoft for those companies who've got Office 2010 Standard deployed company wide, and want to use a single feature.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 16:42

boo_radley: Dec 30, 2005; Politeness costs nothing

wintermuteCF posted:

Christ alive, people, why do you insist on falling for the simplest of ruses, the [b]Fake AV Scanners[b]!? Especially when you've got delicious bits of Engrish (honestly, the best argument for paying attention in grade school grammar is that it could save your personal data).

As if the name "Win 7 Internet Security 2012" isn't enough of a clue.

but but but it says a Viras is Detect!

Jadus posted:

That's a big giant gently caress You from Microsoft for those companies who've got Office 2010 Standard deployed company wide, and want to use a single feature.

Look, MS can't keep losing money with their online gaming, cellphone and business software divisions if they can't fragment and overcharge on their office software. I don't know what you expect.

edit: it is also literally impossible to estimate work

code:


The farm is being upgraded in the timer service process. The task is 10.00% completed.

(deleted x 59)

The farm is being upgraded in the timer service process. The task is 10.00% completed.

Successfully upgraded SharePoint Products.

boo_radley fucked around with this message at Jun 15, 2011 around 17:11

# ? Jun 15, 2011 16:57

Megiddo: Apr 27, 2004; Unicorns bite, but their bites feel GOOD.

Apparently Adobe Reader X now requires authplay.dll to be present to function properly. Deleting authplay.dll (or removing it via the Customization Wizard) was one of my cornerstones of trying to keep this POS a little less vulnerable, but now you have to have the drat Flash dll or it will crash if a user clicks the "Comments" button.

But then Adobe had to double-down on this bullshit by making sure that the authplay.dll they included with the new Adobe Reader 10.1.0 was version 10.3.181.22 - yes, their update for Reader includes the vulnerable version of Flash that was just updated yesterday.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 17:33

Kuros: Sep 13, 2010; You may have to metaphorically make a deal with Mort. And by "Mort", I mean Robot Mort. And by "metaphorically", I mean get your coat.

Short handed today, 3 people are away for training the next three days and one guy is out due to his daughter being sick.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 18:01

Salt Fish: Sep 11, 2003; fear itself

One user where I work gets virus and malware infections pretty much daily. Our policies have everyone on a local administrator account, and it usually isn't an issue except for a few people.

Anyway, last time I got a ticket from this user I reimaged his HDD because I figured after 5 or 6 infections in 2 weeks it was my fault for not cleaning up properly. The new image didn't even last a day.

A ticket came in....dude got an infection at 8pm yesterday and just turned off his computer. I head over there and he apparently has no idea how this could have happened. His mouse is slippery. Yeah, slippery. I wanted to gag. Slimy lubey mouse. Whyyyyyy?! get everything taken care of and manage to peek at his browsing history. "How to download files with IRC"

god drat it.

I washed my hands as soon as I escaped. I'm on lunch now and I'm already eye-balling the liqor store across the street.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 18:45

Dravs: Mar 8, 2011; You've done well, kiddo.

Salt Fish posted:

One user where I work gets virus and malware infections pretty much daily. Our policies have everyone on a local administrator account, and it usually isn't an issue except for a few people.

Anyway, last time I got a ticket from this user I reimaged his HDD because I figured after 5 or 6 infections in 2 weeks it was my fault for not cleaning up properly. The new image didn't even last a day.

A ticket came in....dude got an infection at 8pm yesterday and just turned off his computer. I head over there and he apparently has no idea how this could have happened. His mouse is slippery. Yeah, slippery. I wanted to gag. Slimy lubey mouse. Whyyyyyy?! get everything taken care of and manage to peek at his browsing history. "How to download files with IRC"

god drat it.

I washed my hands as soon as I escaped. I'm on lunch now and I'm already eye-balling the liqor store across the street.

Ahhh people like this make me literally retch. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to have any contact with them whatsoever, but when I have to do something on their computer and their mouse literally feels like it's lubed up, and what I can only describe as skin infested pubic hair litters the keyboard tray....

There is one guy who works in a really remote part of the building and they had to ask us to remove his network access because when he was on his own he was going onto the internet and doing... unsavory things.

The amount of that disenfectant gel I go through is unreal. Down in security they pu in one of those alcohol ntibacterial disenfecters. It smells disgusting but at least after some scrubbing I feel clean.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 19:04

boo_radley: Dec 30, 2005; Politeness costs nothing

Email: Sharepoint Adoption � Learning from LADY GAGA

# ? Jun 15, 2011 19:06

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 20, 2013 00:10

Maggot Monster: Nov 27, 2003

boo_radley posted:

Email: Sharepoint Adoption � Learning from LADY GAGA

Post it. Do it.

# ? Jun 15, 2011 19:31

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