The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Otac0n · 2006-03-10 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
reed:
WhiskeyTangoFoxtrotOver:

jspenguin:
Maybe it's because the CPU is IDT and the software is unable to determine which x86 family it's compatible with. (I'm guessing i686).

The WTF there is not so much that the installer mis-recognizes the CPU, but that the installer requires a particular speed at all. Let the user figure that out herself.

Plus, when did CPU speed ever matter for a damn *printer driver* ?

In practice, you'd sincerely hope it wouldn't matter. Where it *could* be a problem, though, is if for some dumb reason you were using a laser printer with too small of a buffer to hold the entire page bitmap in, so a buffer underrun would result in garbage output. I'm sincerely hoping no printer with such a constraint exists in the wild, though [:(]

My father is usng a 533 for a Xerox Phaser. Happens all the time for him.

makomk · 2006-03-10 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Personally, I love the "Never!" Its beautiful in its simplicitly. Presumably, its an error message offering nothing at all in the way of help to the [L]user. As a developer who was thrust into maintaining a crappy GUI, I'm seriously considering of replacing all of my errors with this. [:P]
Just another 'Unthinkable mayhem' or 'This cannot happen' condition handled gracefully.

Has anyone used "Has the world gone mad?" as an error message in this case? If not, I must do it at the first chance I get.

Otac0n · 2006-03-10 Reply Admin

Frijoles:
I was about to say the exact opposite. I've run in to a lot of shitty installers that will block a program from even being installed, even though it clearly meets the requirements. Like Doom 3. Yeah, I wanted to run it on Windows 2003 Server. I know it wasn't a great choice for gaming, but for hell's sake, let me at least try. In the end, I did get it to run, and it ran just fine (and you'll all be happy to know I'm back on XP now).
The point is, that's fine if you warn the user, but at least provide a way to get around it. If you want to make it not obvious, give me a flag I can use when I run the damn thing. Don't just say no.

Often times, you can manully install the files using an extraction program like WinZIP or WinRAR. I don't think so w/ doom 3 tho.

2006-03-10 Reply Admin

makomk:
Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Personally, I love the "Never!" Its beautiful in its simplicitly. Presumably, its an error message offering nothing at all in the way of help to the [L]user. As a developer who was thrust into maintaining a crappy GUI, I'm seriously considering of replacing all of my errors with this. [:P]
Just another 'Unthinkable mayhem' or 'This cannot happen' condition handled gracefully.

Has anyone used "Has the world gone mad?" as an error message in this case? If not, I must do it at the first chance I get.

Can I suggest the following idiom? It tests for failure of boolean logic.

boolean condition;
if (condition) {
// some code
} if (!condition) {
// some other code
} else {
throw new HasTheWorldGoneMadException();
}

mallard · 2006-03-10 Reply Admin

Manni:
I bought World of Warcraft a couple weeks ago, and at the first step of the installation I was told that my processor wasn't good enough. I don't recall what the minimum requirement was stated as, I think it was like 1.2 GHz. It compared it to the 2.13 GHz Pentium-M on my laptop and said I wouldn't be able to play it.

It could just be that at the moment of testing, the CPU's speed scaling had it under 1.2GHz... That kinda downgrades it to bug rather than WTF. (It is still possible to get the 'true' speed of the CPU when it is downscaled.)

gcalvin · 2006-03-10 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:
Just before reaching the End of the Internet, Bart B found the file "everything.sit", which apparently contained all knowledge in the universe. Fortunately, StuffIt let's you play solitare while it takes the next ~~2.3 million~~ 230 thousand years to expand the file ...

[image]

From the looks of the progress bar, he's already been waiting about a quarter of a million years. I'd have thought "everything.sit" would have been a whole lot smaller back then.

2006-03-10 Reply Admin

makomk:
Alex Papadimoulis:

That'll show David Koontz for going and buying a fancy-schmancy new computermagig ...

[image]

That reminds me... I really ought to install the drivers and software for my HP all-in-one device (PSC1410). I'm not particularly keen on the idea because the last few times I tried it, it failed in various weird (but sadly not that DailyWTF-worthy) ways and I'm not sure why. (Hopefully, now I've moved from 98 to XP it'll work better - right? Right?) Fortunately, I do most of my printing from Linux anyway, and HP's Linux drivers for it are actually reasonably good, by some miracle.

Actually, I think the installer I used *might* have had this bug but allowed me to continue anyway (are they making progress?).

I love HP printers...... but I hate all of their software. The only way I'll buy an HP printer is if it is old enough that Microsoft made a driver for it. I've seen HP drivers do some wacky stuff. It's also a rarity that they give you a driver in a standard .inf format the can be slipstreamed into an install. Installing drivers from a print server also often has issues. Every other printer brand I've used has not been like this. I just bought a Brother laser printer a few weeks ago. I brought it home fearing the worst.... that I'd see some ultra flakey installation that only supports XP Home or some other nonsense. What I got was a 1MB driver that installs with the "Have Disk" button of the standard Add Printer Wizard. Not bad for a $200 duplexing 30ppm laser printer.

RobIII · 2006-03-10 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

I love HP printers...... but I hate all of their software. The only way I'll buy an HP printer is if it is old enough that Microsoft made a driver for it. I've seen HP drivers do some wacky stuff. It's also a rarity that they give you a driver in a standard .inf format the can be slipstreamed into an install. Installing drivers from a print server also often has issues. Every other printer brand I've used has not been like this. I just bought a Brother laser printer a few weeks ago. I brought it home fearing the worst.... that I'd see some ultra flakey installation that only supports XP Home or some other nonsense. What I got was a 1MB driver that installs with the "Have Disk" button of the standard Add Printer Wizard. Not bad for a $200 duplexing 30ppm laser printer.

I love HP too. I only use HP printers in favor of Epson, Brother or other printers. Why? Because (IMHO) their hardware is superior. What really sucks though is that they supply printer drivers on CD from 45Mb up to 450Mb (I've seen them, really!). All I can do in such a situation is scratch my head and wonder...

It seems to be a trend though. Frikkin' soundcard drivers are over 30Mb offering me all kinds of "handy" stuff to position 81 speakers I don't have (I just want Windows to be able to play some MP3's and the default bling/bloing/plop sounds when something's going on). Network cards offer me 171 tools to monitor the status of my network and all the bits going in and out of my card (I just want my network card to talk to my server and gateways and just send/receive/pass the packets when it's asked to). Video cards offer 16 handy tray utilities to switch my resolution in one click and rotate my screen. Usually I set up my screen and that's the way it'll stay for the next 5 years. Why would I need a resident tray utility eating all kinds of resources doing NOTHING at all? I never use them. But I do need to download their 65Mb driver. I'm not saying this could be handy to other users, I'm sure it will be. But for Gods sake let me choose what to install and use. All I want is Windows to display a bunch of pixels, preferrably in 24/32 bit. That's it. Same for (Logitech) mouse-drivers. All I want is my mouse-wheel to "double-click" when I press it. That's all. I shouldn't be needing a 5Mb download for that, do I?

Now I need to plunge into regedit and remove all kinds of startup-crap I don't want (yes I know about MSConfig and other tools).

What's even worse though is this: If they would've "zipped" all the files I could live with it. I would just pick the ones I needed (driver-only, no crap) and let Windows figure it out. But NOOOO, they need to pack it all into one setup.exe which was built from a custom-setup builder (no .msi, not extractable in any way) wich extracts the "encrypted/packed" files and just kicks them around my system from system32 to windows to program files to common files etc. And if you're not careful it will double your registry size with it's entries and also modify the (non-existing) autoexec.bat, windows.ini and config.sys files "for you" so you don't need to do it yourself.

I've had it with these solutions which can't be deployed via a GPO or some other way without me having to go running to each system tweaking all sorts of business to make them just do what I want them to do, nothing more, nothing less.

Hmmm, ranting anyways so here's another one:

Why the hell does "Acrobat Reader" need to "optimize the data" before extracting all kinds of stuff before launching a custom installer which runs an .msi file? Why does "Acrobat Reader" (being a simple text-viewer to me) need to load 15 minutes before it starts? Why does "Acrobat Reader" need a "quickstart" application, running in the background eating resources (again), just to start "quicker" (NOT!). Why does "Acrobat Reader" need to load 450 frikkin' plugins before showing me a simple 8kb pdf file? And much of the same for "Quicktime". Why does it need to look for an update on each restart of my system (QuickTime Task)? Why does "Quicktime" change ALL of my preferences (MP3 player, AVI player, MPG player (even in my browser)) to itself? Why not leave it alone (when I tell it to leave it alone during setup, because it DOESN'T). Why do I need a "SunJavaUpdateSched" application checking for java updates every few minutes? When I want to update java I'll do it myself, I don't need another resource hungry application checking for me. And why in the world won't the go away when I tell them to (by removing them from my registry run-key, only to appear back again after reboot).

Annoyances, annoyances.

If only I wrote all the software in the world... what a beautiful place it would be *daydreaming*....

Sincerely,

Not Gene.

2006-03-10 Reply Admin

The WTF there is not so much that the installer mis-recognizes the CPU, but that the installer requires a particular speed at all. Let the user figure that out herself.

This would happen a lot on Sierra games. The game required a "minimum" processor speed to run optimally, so during the installation it would ask the system hardware what processor was installed, what video, etc. The problem is that later processors where not recognized and even in some cases the tests to determine video refresh rates would show readings that didn't mesh with expectations. Even though both worked, the installer couldn't tell that, because the information it got back wasn't a simple, "This is faster than a 100 mhz system.". Instead it might be looking for a string that literally said, "processor type blah 120 mhz", but would get something like, "AMD 1500", or even, "Cyrex II", etc. The information wasn't expected, actually appeared when parsed to be too slow or otherwise failed completely to come up with a usable value. For a while there, every manufacturer or version come up with some different info on the speed, none of it a simple case of is the speed of "this processor" bigger than the speed of "expected processor".

Made installing some games a pain in the ass, since you could often tell it to ignore the processor test, but it might refuse to install anyway if the video test came up with a refresh rate that was completely off the scale.

chrismcb · 2006-03-10 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Longhorn is a racial ephitet, unless I'm mistaken. You'd think they'd be more careful than to choose something racist, let alone to blame it on the Linux users.

I didn't realize that the restaurant between Whistler and Blackomb mountains was named after a racial ephitet... I always thought it was named after the cows that made Texas famous.

2006-03-11 Reply Admin

The HP software did this to me also; the problem is that it checks the current CPU speed, and then displays an error using the MAX CPU speed.

So if your laptop (or desktop, but that is more rare) is running in powersave mode, and hasn't yet kicked up the CPU speed because, well, the installer didn't need the muscle, then the HP installer eats it.

That said, the entire HP software package is one big wtf. It is HORRIBLE. Just about everything about it is crap.

januarys · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Cooper:
Cool - lots of 'Danger, Will Robinson!' stuff this week - I have always felt that way about Uncle Bill...

That one took me a minute, my mind was running in another direction. I kept thinking YOU KNOW my dangerous UNCLE BILL???? Man, do we have a lot to talk about.

SYSTEM
To end this post and prevent future file loss, press

jwenting · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Now we all know how fanatic those crazy-Slashdot-Linux people can get with their hatred of the world's greatest software company ... but am I the only one surprised to see that one of them actually landed a job?

Probably, I've encountered them several times in the real world in places from small shops to multinationals, and almost always they were the network admins (and twice I had to install a firewall on our team's systems to prevent those network admins from hacking them).

jwenting · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Just before reaching the End of the Internet, Bart B found the file "everything.sit", which apparently contained all knowledge in the universe. Fortunately, StuffIt let's you play solitare while it takes the next 2.3 million years to expand the file ...

[image]

Hmm I get 230.000 years from this... a lot less, so it's not that bad :P

So do I. I guess Alex mis-read the location of the decimal point.

Or maybe the real WTF is that it's showing 50% done when 90% of the estimated install time has already passed [:P][8-|]

jwenting · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

DiamondDave:
Anonymous:
I agree. Microsoft is full of violence, hate and racism.

Ironically, I once worked at a Windows shop that blocked out apache.org

I once worked in a government department (as a contractor, not an employee) that blocked out its own intranet!

2006-03-11 Reply Admin

boolean condition;
if (condition) {
  // some code
} if (!condition) {
  // some other code
} else {
  throw new HasTheWorldGoneMadException();
}

I don't know what's scarier... the fact that I've written code pretty much identical to this before, or the fact that I've had it encounter the else.

FunnyMan · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

boolean condition;
if (condition) {
  // some code
} if (!condition) {
  // some other code
} else {
  throw new HasTheWorldGoneMadException();
}

I don't know what's scarier... the fact that I've written code pretty much identical to this before, or the fact that I've had it encounter the else.

The code doesn't test for failure of boolean logic, but for failure of programmer. Notice what happens if condition=true. I've written the same kind of block, and had it hit the else, but the exception should really be FaultyProgrammerException.

-FM

2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Manni:
I bought World of Warcraft a couple weeks ago, and at the first step of the installation I was told that my processor wasn't good enough. I don't recall what the minimum requirement was stated as, I think it was like 1.2 GHz. It compared it to the 2.13 GHz Pentium-M on my laptop and said I wouldn't be able to play it.

That's due to the SpeedStep technology in the Pentium M CPU, that automatically lowers the clock speed, when it's not in use. Runs quieter and consumes less power/battery life. Your CPU was probably running at 600 MHz or so.

masklinn · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

RobIII:
Anonymous:

I love HP printers...... but I hate all of their software. The only way I'll buy an HP printer is if it is old enough that Microsoft made a driver for it. I've seen HP drivers do some wacky stuff. It's also a rarity that they give you a driver in a standard .inf format the can be slipstreamed into an install. Installing drivers from a print server also often has issues. Every other printer brand I've used has not been like this. I just bought a Brother laser printer a few weeks ago. I brought it home fearing the worst.... that I'd see some ultra flakey installation that only supports XP Home or some other nonsense. What I got was a 1MB driver that installs with the "Have Disk" button of the standard Add Printer Wizard. Not bad for a $200 duplexing 30ppm laser printer.

I love HP too. I only use HP printers in favor of Epson, Brother or other printers. Why? Because (IMHO) their hardware is superior. What really sucks though is that they supply printer drivers on CD from 45Mb up to 450Mb (I've seen them, really!). All I can do in such a situation is scratch my head and wonder...

It seems to be a trend though. Frikkin' soundcard drivers are over 30Mb offering me all kinds of "handy" stuff to position 81 speakers I don't have (I just want Windows to be able to play some MP3's and the default bling/bloing/plop sounds when something's going on). Network cards offer me 171 tools to monitor the status of my network and all the bits going in and out of my card (I just want my network card to talk to my server and gateways and just send/receive/pass the packets when it's asked to). Video cards offer 16 handy tray utilities to switch my resolution in one click and rotate my screen. Usually I set up my screen and that's the way it'll stay for the next 5 years. Why would I need a resident tray utility eating all kinds of resources doing NOTHING at all? I never use them. But I do need to download their 65Mb driver. I'm not saying this could be handy to other users, I'm sure it will be. But for Gods sake let me choose what to install and use. All I want is Windows to display a bunch of pixels, preferrably in 24/32 bit. That's it. Same for (Logitech) mouse-drivers. All I want is my mouse-wheel to "double-click" when I press it. That's all. I shouldn't be needing a 5Mb download for that, do I?

Now I need to plunge into regedit and remove all kinds of startup-crap I don't want (yes I know about MSConfig and other tools).

What's even worse though is this: If they would've "zipped" all the files I could live with it. I would just pick the ones I needed (driver-only, no crap) and let Windows figure it out. But NOOOO, they need to pack it all into one setup.exe which was built from a custom-setup builder (no .msi, not extractable in any way) wich extracts the "encrypted/packed" files and just kicks them around my system from system32 to windows to program files to common files etc. And if you're not careful it will double your registry size with it's entries and also modify the (non-existing) autoexec.bat, windows.ini and config.sys files "for you" so you don't need to do it yourself.

I've had it with these solutions which can't be deployed via a GPO or some other way without me having to go running to each system tweaking all sorts of business to make them just do what I want them to do, nothing more, nothing less.

Hmmm, ranting anyways so here's another one:

Why the hell does "Acrobat Reader" need to "optimize the data" before extracting all kinds of stuff before launching a custom installer which runs an .msi file? Why does "Acrobat Reader" (being a simple text-viewer to me) need to load 15 minutes before it starts? Why does "Acrobat Reader" need a "quickstart" application, running in the background eating resources (again), just to start "quicker" (NOT!). Why does "Acrobat Reader" need to load 450 frikkin' plugins before showing me a simple 8kb pdf file? And much of the same for "Quicktime". Why does it need to look for an update on each restart of my system (QuickTime Task)? Why does "Quicktime" change ALL of my preferences (MP3 player, AVI player, MPG player (even in my browser)) to itself? Why not leave it alone (when I tell it to leave it alone during setup, because it DOESN'T). Why do I need a "SunJavaUpdateSched" application checking for java updates every few minutes? When I want to update java I'll do it myself, I don't need another resource hungry application checking for me. And why in the world won't the go away when I tell them to (by removing them from my registry run-key, only to appear back again after reboot).

Annoyances, annoyances.

If only I wrote all the software in the world... what a beautiful place it would be *daydreaming*....

Sincerely,

Not Gene.

For stuff at startup that you seemingly can't remove (java update stuff for example), download "Autoruns" from Sysinternals, and just uncheck everything you don't want to start. I don't know what it does exacly (didn't bother checking), but I know for sure that most softwares reinstalling their respective autostarts when you remove the entries altogether don't do it when you just uncheck'em.

And Sysinternals tools are nifty (process explorer FTW)

makomk · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

RobIII:

I love HP too. I only use HP printers in favor of Epson, Brother or other printers. Why? Because (IMHO) their hardware is superior. What really sucks though is that they supply printer drivers on CD from 45Mb up to 450Mb (I've seen them, really!). All I can do in such a situation is scratch my head and wonder...

Yep, I know. Take a look at the hard disk space for a minimal install of the software for my PSC1410, for example (admittedly, it scans too, but...)

Image hosting by Photobucket

It comes with 2 CDs - one containing the Windows software, and one containing the Mac software and the user manual. (The official Linux driver, which they don't tell you exists and you have to discover and download yourself, is "only" 9Mb (for the source archive), GPLed, supports a large number of different models, and integrates quite nicely into CUPS and SANE. It still requires you to have two daemons running, though - one of which is written in Python.)

RobIII:
It seems to be a trend though. Frikkin' soundcard drivers are over 30Mb offering me all kinds of "handy" stuff to position 81 speakers I don't have (I just want Windows to be able to play some MP3's and the default bling/bloing/plop sounds when something's going on). Network cards offer me 171 tools to monitor the status of my network and all the bits going in and out of my card (I just want my network card to talk to my server and gateways and just send/receive/pass the packets when it's asked to). Video cards offer 16 handy tray utilities to switch my resolution in one click and rotate my screen. Usually I set up my screen and that's the way it'll stay for the next 5 years. Why would I need a resident tray utility eating all kinds of resources doing NOTHING at all? I never use them. But I do need to download their 65Mb driver. I'm not saying this could be handy to other users, I'm sure it will be. But for Gods sake let me choose what to install and use. All I want is Windows to display a bunch of pixels, preferrably in 24/32 bit. That's it. Same for (Logitech) mouse-drivers. All I want is my mouse-wheel to "double-click" when I press it. That's all. I shouldn't be needing a 5Mb download for that, do I?

Heh. That's probably why Microsoft ended up auto-hiding most of the system tray icons on Windows XP - otherwise, people find their system trays taking up a third of the space on the taskbar.

RobIII:

Now I need to plunge into regedit and remove all kinds of startup-crap I don't want (yes I know about MSConfig and other tools).

What's even worse though is this: If they would've "zipped" all the files I could live with it. I would just pick the ones I needed (driver-only, no crap) and let Windows figure it out. But NOOOO, they need to pack it all into one setup.exe which was built from a custom-setup builder (no .msi, not extractable in any way) wich extracts the "encrypted/packed" files and just kicks them around my system from system32 to windows to program files to common files etc. And if you're not careful it will double your registry size with it's entries and also modify the (non-existing) autoexec.bat, windows.ini and config.sys files "for you" so you don't need to do it yourself.

And I suspect a lot of the custom installers out there leave stray files behind when you uninstall too (hence why my Windows directory slowly grew over time). Windows now (finally) has something vaguely resembling package management - why doesn't more software use it?

mallard · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
The HP software did this to me also; the problem is that it checks the *current* CPU speed, and then displays an error using the MAX CPU speed. So if your laptop (or desktop, but that is more rare) is running in powersave mode, and hasn't yet kicked up the CPU speed because, well, the installer didn't need the muscle, then the HP installer eats it. That said, the entire HP software package is one big wtf. It is HORRIBLE. Just about everything about it is crap.

For a programmer, that's quite easy to work around. A simple C program that sits in a busy loop to bring the CPU speed up to full should suffice.

On a side note, I have a HP printer, a DeskJet 3744 and have never had any problems with the drivers whatsoever. Am I just lucky?
BTW, the computer it is connected to is also a HP (HP-Compaq Bussiness Notebook nx6125) maybe it does something special on HP computers?

2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
I noticed in the one about microsoft.com, you spelled it "microsft"; later on, you spell Windows XP "Wndows XP." What's this? Can you not write the true name of your lord (as some orthodox Jews write "G-d" rather than writing the true name of God)?

LOL on both of your comments. And I'm a Conservative Jew, and was always taught to write G-d.

Hitsuji · 2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:

Just before reaching the End of the Internet, Bart B found the file "everything.sit", which apparently contained all knowledge in the universe. Fortunately, StuffIt let's you play solitare while it takes the next ~~2.3 million~~ 230 thousand years to expand the file ...

[image]

thats not a WTF at all. Hes just using a really old PC, from the looks of it its 3/5th of the way complete, so hes already been running it for 345 thousand years. Back then i'm guessing the PC's were less than 1Hz so if he upgraded to a more modern PC its should install pretty quickly

2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Always

2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Heh,

I posted the HP All-in-one printer dialog to this site a year ago... I think there is a note int he post comments about how to get around it.

2006-03-11 Reply Admin

Found it in the sidebar... the iamge is gone but the note about getting around it is still there.

http://thedailywtf.com/forums/31484/ShowPost.aspx

impslayer · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

Manni:
I think I heard someone say once that the forum software was a WTF on its own. I can't remember who that was...

Nah, I think you're mistaken, most people here thinks it's brillant. At least that's what Paula said...

RobIII · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

mallard:

On a side note, I have a HP printer, a DeskJet 3744 and have never had any problems with the drivers whatsoever. Am I just lucky?
BTW, the computer it is connected to is also a HP (HP-Compaq Bussiness Notebook nx6125) maybe it does something special on HP computers?

It's not that the driver causes trouble or anything, but WHY (in the H*LL) would a simple printer-driver need 855Mb of disk space? That's what bugs me. I must admit that (usually) the HP software is pretty good (not excellent, but nice). It's just way to bulky.

ParkinT · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
The WTF there is not so much that the installer mis-recognizes the CPU, but that the installer requires a particular speed at all. Let the user figure that out herself.
This would happen a *lot* on Sierra games. The game required a "minimum" processor speed to run optimally, so during the installation it would ask the system hardware what processor was installed, what video, etc. The problem is that later processors where not recognized and even in some cases the tests to determine video refresh rates would show readings that didn't mesh with expectations. Even though both worked, the installer couldn't tell that, because the information it got back wasn't a simple, "This is faster than a 100 mhz system.". Instead it might be looking for a string that literally said, "processor type blah 120 mhz", but would get something like, "AMD 1500", or even, "Cyrex II", etc. The information wasn't expected, actually appeared when parsed to be too slow or otherwise failed completely to come up with a usable value. For a while there, every manufacturer or version come up with some different info on the speed, none of it a simple case of is the speed of "this processor" bigger than the speed of "expected processor". Made installing some games a pain in the ass, since you could often tell it to ignore the processor test, but it might refuse to install anyway if the video test came up with a refresh rate that was completely off the scale.

Ahh, the days of Sierra games. You are showing your age (which in this industry is several lifetimes).

I long for the days of the Infocom games running on DOS 3.3. No install scripts; simply place the 5 1/4 floppy in the drive and wait, wait, wait for the text to appear. In those days the machine as actually slower than the user!!

ParkinT · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

jwenting:

Just before reaching the End of the Internet, Bart B found the file "everything.sit", which apparently contained all knowledge in the universe. Fortunately, StuffIt let's you play solitare while it takes the next 2.3 million years to expand the file ...

[image]

Hmm I get 230.000 years from this... a lot less, so it's not that bad :P

So do I. I guess Alex mis-read the location of the decimal point.

Or maybe the real WTF is that it's showing 50% done when 90% of the estimated install time has already passed [:P][8-|]

True. Not unlike the progress bars that sit for several seconds on 100%.

In my mind (correct me if I am wrong) a progess bar should NEVER show 100%. At that point the process is complete and history.

I ponder things like this often.

2006-03-13 Reply Admin

marvin_rabbit:
I just yearn for the day that we can get people to STOP saving screen snapshots like this to JPEG's. That's about the worst choice to make. (Well, at least way down on the list.)

GIF, TIFF (compressed), PNG. Any of these would be MUCH better.

(And 'No', I'm not saying that jpeg's don't have a place. They are great for photos or anything with lots of color gradients. But not so great for a screen snapshot of text boxes.)

I would rather use BMP

2006-03-13 Reply Admin

You guys are super good at math - but am I the only one who noticed
"StuffIt let's you play solitare"
should be
"StuffIt lets you play solitaire"
?

Yes, I can be pedantic about spelling and grammar - if you're going to correct one mistake, why not another?

mlk · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

SerajewelKS:
Alex Papadimoulis:
That'll show David Koontz for going and buying a fancy-schmancy new computermagig ...

[image]

I love the "Retry" button. That implies that it could have incorrectly detected the CPU, or that you can change the CPU while the program is open.

Solaris lets you hot-swap procs... :)

GalacticCowboy · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

ParkinT:
Ahh, the days of Sierra games. You are showing your age (which in this industry is several lifetimes).

I just installed one last night... :) Grand Prix Legends - hadn't played it in years.

So the installer is almost finished and it informs me "The installer has placed Sierra Utilities in your Start menu. The Sierra Utilities can be used for blah blah blah..." It has its own entry in Add/Remove Programs. Uninstall... "We're sorry, but you still have a Sierra product installed. You cannot remove the Sierra Utilities until all Sierra products are removed." [:@]

Manni · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

To everyone who took this opinion, I pose this question to you:

If the installer is flawed because of features that might identify my processor wrong, or because of string-to-number comparisons, and after determining through these flawed methods that my computer isn't adequate to run the software but still let me install it anyway, then why even run that check in the first place?

Check to see that I have enough hard drive space, maybe check my DirectX drivers, and then let me handle it from there.

Manni · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

makomk:
Actually, letting you install anyway sounds like a sensible precaution - it means that, if the user thinks the software has got it wrong (or just wants to give it a shot anyway), they can do so.

I could have sworn I included this quote in my post. Try try again...

mercury600 · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

I got this lovely error message while trying to configure Eclipse to use a CVS. I couldn't resist taking a screen of it which I now pass along every time some tries to tell me they got worst error message ever. I think some of these other ones top this though ;)

[image]

2006-03-13 Reply Admin

Slightly more modern than the Sierra games...

Fallout and Fallout 2 come with an installer that makes the (incorrect) assumption that DirectX will never be ported to Windows NT. So if you try to run the installer for Fallout or Fallout 2 on Windows 2000 or XP, it fails and tells you that your computer doesn't have DirectX and therefore it can't run. If you bypass the installer, the program works fine, natch. But it took me awhile to find instructions to do that.

Lesson learned: If you require DirectX, check for DirectX damnit! Don't check OS-type and assume DirectX's availability based on that.

marvin_rabbit · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

Manni:
If the installer is flawed because of features that might identify my processor wrong, or because of string-to-number comparisons, and after determining through these flawed methods that my computer isn't adequate to run the software but still let me install it anyway, then why even run that check in the first place?

Check to see that I have enough hard drive space, maybe check my DirectX drivers, and then let me handle it from there.

Well now Manni, can't you use the same arguement you just made about processor speed/type, and apply it to your second examples (hard drive space, DirectX) that you said were, perhaps, okay?

Basically, I agree with you -- don't get me wrong. However, I think that I would run it a little on the other side of the equation. Doing the tests are not the biggest problem. Having 100% confidence in the results of the tests IS a problem.

By doing a test, you can at least give a warning or notification of potential problems to the user. However, and here I think that we would agree, once the user acknowledges that the potential problems exist, let the user decide to continue or not.

I don't care what the test is, there are thing that the installer could not possibly know about that could throw it off. CPU being cited earlier in the thread. Disk space; perhaps I know that I've got a compression method employed that will allow all the content to be stored, even though it is not reporting enough space. DirectX: "You only have directX 6 installed, this program requires DirectX 9. Do you want to continue?" Yes. Because I know that I am concurently downloading the latest directX from MS right now.

Do the test (hopefully as corectly as possible). Inform the user. BUT LET THE USER DECIDE!

(Like I said, Manni, I'm not critisizing your comment because I suspect that we largely agree.)

Manni · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

marvin_rabbit:
Manni:
If the installer is flawed because of features that might identify my processor wrong, or because of string-to-number comparisons, and after determining through these flawed methods that my computer isn't adequate to run the software but still let me install it anyway, then why even run that check in the first place?

Check to see that I have enough hard drive space, maybe check my DirectX drivers, and then let me handle it from there.

Well now Manni, can't you use the same arguement you just made about processor speed/type, and apply it to your second examples (hard drive space, DirectX) that you said were, perhaps, okay?

Basically, I agree with you -- don't get me wrong. However, I think that I would run it a little on the other side of the equation. Doing the tests are not the biggest problem. Having 100% confidence in the results of the tests IS a problem.

By doing a test, you can at least give a warning or notification of potential problems to the user. However, and here I think that we would agree, once the user acknowledges that the potential problems exist, let the user decide to continue or not.

I don't care what the test is, there are thing that the installer could not possibly know about that could throw it off. CPU being cited earlier in the thread. Disk space; perhaps I know that I've got a compression method employed that will allow all the content to be stored, even though it is not reporting enough space. DirectX: "You only have directX 6 installed, this program requires DirectX 9. Do you want to continue?" Yes. Because I know that I am concurently downloading the latest directX from MS right now.

Do the test (hopefully as corectly as possible). Inform the user. BUT LET THE USER DECIDE!

(Like I said, Manni, I'm not critisizing your comment because I suspect that we largely agree.)

My justification for having faith in the hard drive check and DirectX check is that the free space on your hard drive can't be misinterpreted (unless the installer is REALLY bad), and the theory is that you can only have one version of DirectX installed and active, so determining which version is active should be straightforward.

Maybe the solution would be to have installers perform the same checks, but for some of them say "Please double-check this information as it may have been calculated incorrectly". But I suppose that would reduce the users' faith in the software, and no company wants to do that.

ammoQ · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

mercury600:
I got this lovely error message while trying to configure Eclipse to use a CVS. I couldn't resist taking a screen of it which I now pass along every time some tries to tell me they got worst error message ever. I think some of these other ones top this though ;)
[image]

This one is old and the "I HATE YOU" message is part of the official CVS protocol.

januarys · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

ps (to y'all's s): have y'all visited Manni's site?? He is one funny dude.

I'm also trying to set a record for saying y'all in one post - how'm I doin' y'all.

John YaYa · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

GalacticCowboy:
ParkinT:
Ahh, the days of Sierra games. You are showing your age (which in this industry is several lifetimes).

I just installed one last night... :) Grand Prix Legends - hadn't played it in years.

So the installer is almost finished and it informs me "The installer has placed Sierra Utilities in your Start menu. The Sierra Utilities can be used for blah blah blah..." It has its own entry in Add/Remove Programs. Uninstall... "We're sorry, but you still have a Sierra product installed. You cannot remove the Sierra Utilities until all Sierra products are removed." [:@]

Grand Prix Legends is one of the greatest games of all time! One of the really cool things about it is that its user base is huge; new tracks, better graphics, better sounds... Welcome to the club!

Gene Wirchenko · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

januarys:
ps (to y'all's s): have y'all visited Manni's site?? He is one funny dude.
I'm also trying to set a record for saying y'all in one post - how'm I doin' y'all.

Please, no "'s"! You are using enough apostrophes anyway if you are using "y'all".

My boss used it only twice in an E-mail this morning, so you beat him.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

DWalker59 · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

What RobIII Said! Every bit of it is 100% true! Amen.

DWalker59 · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

And RobIII, look for StartupCPL. Much better than messing around in the Registry, and better than msconfig.

OmnipotentEntity · 2006-03-13 Reply Admin

I'm not sure what Chase.com is trying tell Michael Reilly here ...

[image]

I know I didn't submit that... so, hello to Michael Reilly from the other Michael Reilly. *waves*

januarys · 2006-03-14 Reply Admin

Gene Wirchenko. Sir. If I may. It is an honor to be corrected by you.

What I meant was "post script to y'all's script" with that 2nd s. As for the possessive y'all, I don't know how else to indicate that y'all own something. Sorry, I didn't quite make it to that grammar level in Alabama Spellin School. Only got to the one where we conjugate "fixin'ta."

GalacticCowboy · 2006-03-14 Reply Admin

John YaYa:
Grand Prix Legends is one of the greatest games of all time! One of the really cool things about it is that its user base is huge; new tracks, better graphics, better sounds... Welcome to the club!

[Y]

I'm the "Galactic Cowboy" of Sim Racing Connection... if you're familiar with the site... [:)] Played GPL for several years, but quit for a while about 2 years ago. Just now getting back into it.

GalacticCowboy · 2006-03-14 Reply Admin

heh... the emoticons don't even work right...

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