• toxik (unregistered) in reply to Coughptcha
    Coughptcha:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    cypher35:
    damn, i wish my cd/dvd burner worked at 2 terabytes per second
    should be gigs, no?
    whoops, I've been drinking again
    Hopefully, not nearly as much as I have :)  Then again ... I might be so much happier at that rate ... and the "Roll Up The Rim" ... contest has left me short of a WinneBagel (*).

    * - Maybe it's an inside joke.  Clarification to follow from a dozen others over the next couple days.  And if they leave me hanging, then maybe I'll have to "justify myself".


    If you even had the vaugest idea of that would make sense, you were wrong.

    However, those from the Czech (apparently) guy at the end isn't so much of a WTF.
  • (cs) in reply to Albatross
    Albatross:

    Cooper:
    All your tests are belong to us....

    All your bugs are belong to us.



    Oh, for fuck's sake.  If you're gonna make a geeky joke, at least make it right.

    "All your test are belong to us"

    "All your bug are belong to us"

    Kids today.  Pschaw!

    Simon
  • Jernej (unregistered) in reply to felix
    felix:
    "Quicktime couldn't open this file, probably because it was a long filename or used unusual characters."

    The true WTF here is Windows letting you create a file with such a name that you can't manipulate it anymore.

    And here's a related one, right from the Freepascal FAQ page:

    Free Pascal installation hints

    • Do not install the compiler in a directory which contains spaces in its name, since some of the compiler tools do not like these
    I've seen a lot of shareware having the same odd requirement. What's the big idea? If the OS can handle it, how come a program can't?



     because of the way those command line tools parse command line.
     
  • Jernej (unregistered) in reply to felix
    felix:
    "Quicktime couldn't open this file, probably because it was a long filename or used unusual characters."

    The true WTF here is Windows letting you create a file with such a name that you can't manipulate it anymore.

    And here's a related one, right from the Freepascal FAQ page:

    Free Pascal installation hints

    • Do not install the compiler in a directory which contains spaces in its name, since some of the compiler tools do not like these
    I've seen a lot of shareware having the same odd requirement. What's the big idea? If the OS can handle it, how come a program can't?



    I've seen a lot of shareware having the same odd requirement. What's the big idea? If the OS can handle it, how come a program can't?

  • Jernej (unregistered) in reply to toxik
    toxik:

    However, those from the Czech (apparently) guy at the end isn't so much of a WTF.


    you are "apparently" very sure, but im sorry, it is not Czech.
     

  • cjd1 (unregistered) in reply to Jernej

    Everybody knows you parse commands by spaces.  Then, adding a check for quotation marks will only bog down your routines.  It's called optimizing!

  • (cs) in reply to reed
    reed:
    VGR:

    Or is "Yes, Nokia phone" just more message box text which can't be activated at all?  That would be an even more impressive WTF.


    Yes, clearly:


    void displayMessageBox(int flagsForDefaultPredefinedButtons, char* title, char* text1, char* text2, char* buttonLabel1, ...);



    ...
       int dialogFlags = CANCEL_BUTTON;
       ...
       displayMessageBox(dialogFlags|NO_BUTTON, "Mobile Master", "Do you use a Nokia phone?", "Yes, Nokia Phone", "No Nokia Phone", NULL);

    Ah, now it makes sense.  (You may have guessed that I don't know MFC at all.  I'm a Motif and Java guy.)

    I had thought the "Yes" option was intended to look different.  Don't laugh, people have done it before.  In fact, you can find it in Windows without having to look too hard.
  • Martin (unregistered) in reply to Jernej
    Anonymous:

    Free Pascal installation hints

    • Do not install the compiler in a directory which contains spaces in its name, since some of the compiler tools do not like these
    I've seen a lot of shareware having the same odd requirement. What's the big idea? If the OS can handle it, how come a program can't?

    I've seen a lot of shareware having the same odd requirement. What's the big idea? If the OS can handle it, how come a program can't?


    I think the problem is that the tool launches other tools via a shell or batch file, and
    doSomething.bat my file

    will make the tools belive it got 2 files called my and file insted of one file called "my file"
    The solution is ofcause always to put arguments in "" but that would be to easy.

    ps: I got a similary problem with linux. If want to play all my mp3 files containing the word bakery, I will do a
    xmms `locate -i bakery`
    but that does not work if the mp3 file contains any space. Does anyone know how to solve that problem :}

    Martin who don't belive that space in filenames should be permitted.

  • (cs) in reply to Martin

    Masking the space with a backslash () should do it; this works with normal shell commands, and if xmms parses its commands properly it should do the same:

    xmms locate -i bakery\ file

    I'm not sure if quotation marks would work, but this might be possible too:

    xmms locate -i "bakery file"

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Martin

    locate -i bakery | perl -pe 's/\n/\0/g' | xargs -0 xmms

  • (cs) in reply to Arancaytar
    Arancaytar:
    Masking the space with a backslash (\) should do it; this works with normal shell commands, and if xmms parses its commands properly it should do the same:

    xmms `locate -i bakery\ file`

    I'm not sure if quotation marks would work, but this might be possible too:

    xmms `locate -i "bakery file"`


    The problem is not to specify a space in the argument to locate, but that locate returns files with space in them. (But the perl version below does work :}


  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    locate -i bakery | perl -pe 's/\n/\0/g' | xargs -0 xmms


    Wow, that's interesting use of perl and xargs, but it is working, so thanks :}


  • McBruce (unregistered) in reply to felix
    felix:
    "Quicktime couldn't open this file, probably because it was a long filename or used unusual characters."

    The true WTF here is Windows letting you create a file with such a name that you can't manipulate it anymore.

    Actually, in linux once I somehow created a filename beginning with the '-' character. That was fun trying to get rid of it, as it kept thinking the filename was an argument to rm.

  • Master Of The Universe (unregistered) in reply to VGR
    VGR:
    The Nokia Mobile Master thing is an example of someone who knows so little about design user interfaces that he/she is utterly lost.  "Should I have hyperlinks?  Should I have buttons?  I keep changing my mind."

    Here's an easy answer:  NEVER PUT HYPERLINKS in anything other than a hypertext document (meaning, for the most part, web pages).

    I'm looking at the last few screenshots (from "Jernej") and I'm puzzled.  I've never used a non-English version of Windows, so maybe there are things I don't understand.  Why are the buttons at the bottom of each dialog localized while the rest of each dialog is not?  Did Microsoft do a half-assed job of localization?

    Now not too long ago, I was at a Microsoft seminar where they told us that for Vista we should be using hyperlinks for all sorts of things. More as a general design philosophy though, not just for Vista itself.

  • (cs) in reply to McBruce
    Anonymous:
    Actually, in linux once I somehow created a filename beginning with the '-' character. That was fun trying to get rid of it, as it kept thinking the filename was an argument to rm.


    I trust you ended up learning about "--"?
  • (cs) in reply to Martin
    Anonymous:

    I think the problem is that the tool launches other tools via a shell or batch file, and doSomething.bat my file will make the tools belive it got 2 files called my and file insted of one file called "my file"
    The solution is ofcause always to put arguments in "" but that would be to easy.


    That explains it. WTF, indeed...

  • (cs)

    May I be a pedant and point out that you use "who's" where you should have "whose" and "it's more ridiculous restrictions" (about Quicktime) doesn't need an apostrophe.  Otherwise, a hoot of a post.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to felix

    On the subject of All Your Base,

    "And I suppose we'll wrap up today's post with another capture from Jernej, who's computer"

    Jernej who is computer, eh? The secret of the funky error messages is solved!

  • Devdas (unregistered) in reply to Martin

    Set IFS to exclude space
    IFS='
    ' xmms locate -i bakery

    Alternatively (replace / with the appropriate path(s)),
    find / -type f -iname "bakery" -print0|xargs -0 xmms

    or even
    mv ~/.xmms/xmms.m3u ~/.xmms/xmms.m3u.old && find / -type f -iname "bakery" > ~/.xmms/xmms.m3u && xmms

    (Forogt to login)

  • Mihai (unregistered) in reply to felix

    To this, and the the <<Actually, the filname length restriction may be with Windows.   I think there is a 255 character limit to the filename, including the full path.  I've been bit by this when trying to delete files, and it comes back saying the filename is too long.>>

    The message seems to refer to an     existing file. So the WTF is the application.
    Spaces in file names are valid since Win 95 (about 10 years ago :-)

    Because it mentioned about "unusual characters", I suspect the application is non-Unicode, and cannot access files with characters outside the current system code page.

    This can explain something for <<    Didn't you say your lead programmer is brilliant>> guy.
    Converting an application to Unicode is not a simple bug fixing opperation. Depending on the size, it can take months or fixing and texting.

  • Anony Mouse (unregistered) in reply to felix

    felix:
    I've seen a lot of shareware having the same odd requirement. What's the big idea? If the OS can handle it, how come a program can't?

    It's a service designed to protect innocent people from the horrors of Pascal, of course.  ;)

    Also, when Windows added long filename support it was done as a layer over top of the old DOS style filename. There's a lot of older software (even regular off-the-shelf commercial software) that either uses tiny buffers or DOS-filename only APIs. The OS couldn't just handle it, because the apps were written for more restrictive assumptions, and could easily be broken if a previously illegal filename was returned from a call to an OS function. And now, you occasionally get people using legalcy APIs that only exist for backwards compatability, but that's getting into a whole nother debate.  ;)

    Low level stuff (CDROM drivers and ISO file processors) and filesystems needs to be written properly to handle long filenames, as well. Of course, anything like that really ought to get the basic stuff right, but isn't always written by people who know as much as they should.

    Still, anything written in the last 5-9 years (if not more) that can't handle long file names is almost always a WTF. You'ld have to work at it to write a new app that gets it wrong.

  • Anita Tinkle (unregistered) in reply to Kiss me, I'm Polish

    <font size="4">Question:</font>

    Have you stopped beating your wife?
    Yes / No / Cancel

    Anonymous:
    Question: Do you have a Nokia phone?
    Answers:
    - No, I have a Nokia phone.
    - Yes, I have a Nokia phone.

  • (cs) in reply to McBruce
    Anonymous:
    felix:
    "Quicktime couldn't open this file, probably because it was a long filename or used unusual characters."

    The true WTF here is Windows letting you create a file with such a name that you can't manipulate it anymore.

    Actually, in linux once I somehow created a filename beginning with the '-' character. That was fun trying to get rid of it, as it kept thinking the filename was an argument to rm.



    Sweet Feathery Christ...
    We've got an escapee from the Linux "gurus" on Slashdot.

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon

  • Jon (unregistered) in reply to Anita Tinkle
    Anonymous:
    <FONT size=4>Question:</FONT>

    Have you stopped beating your wife?
    Yes / No / Cancel
    FileNotFound, of course.
  • (cs) in reply to notromda
    notromda:
    Actually, the filname length restriction may be with Windows.   I think there is a 255 character limit to the filename, including the full path.  I've been bit by this when trying to delete files, and it comes back saying the filename is too long.

    Incorrect.  There is no inherent limit for the length of filenames in Windows.  A lot of people *think* there is because the ANSI (DOS-compliant) API limits you to 255 chars - which is purely for DOS-compatibility.

    Any Win32 program that suffers from a 255 character limit on filenames is either extremely old or poorly written.

  • (cs) in reply to Richard Nixon

    cube.exe - Application Error

    The instruction at "0x00333107" referenced memory at "0x0a32a580". The memory could not be "read".

    Click on OK to terminate the program

    OK

  • (cs) in reply to Steeldragon

    cube.exe - Application Error

    The instruction at "0x00333107" referenced memory at "0x0a32a580". The memory could not be "read".

    Click on OK to terminate the program --------------------------- OK

  • no name (unregistered) in reply to Xarium
    Incorrect. There is no inherent limit for the length of filenames in Windows. A lot of people *think* there is because the ANSI (DOS-compliant) API limits you to 255 chars - which is purely for DOS-compatibility.
    Any Win32 program that suffers from a 255 character limit on filenames is either extremely old or poorly written.

    It's not as bad as 255, but there several limits on filename length.

    First, MAX_PATH is defined as 260, blame MS for that one.

    The limit of the APIs when not using \\?\ (this is the limit for explorer, and 99.9% of windows apps). I can't remember what it is but it's not unlimited.

    You can create a path so long explorer itself can't handle it.

    The limit when using \\?\ is in the 32k range.
  • John Hensley (unregistered) in reply to no name
    Anonymous:

    First, MAX_PATH is defined as 260

    And as every F-head knows, that limit applies not just to file paths but to every string in the universe!
  • (cs) in reply to felix
    felix:
    "Quicktime couldn't open this file, probably because it was a long filename or used unusual characters."

    The true WTF here is Windows letting you create a file with such a name that you can't manipulate it anymore.

    And here's a related one, right from the Freepascal FAQ page:

    Free Pascal installation hints

    • Do not install the compiler in a directory which contains spaces in its name, since some of the compiler tools do not like these
    I've seen a lot of shareware having the same odd requirement. What's the big idea? If the OS can handle it, how come a program can't?


    I once managed to create a directory with the name " " (yes, a single space character) in Windows XP (I think it happened when I accidentally typed an extraneous space into the target path box of some installer - like "C :\<some_path>", note the space between "C" and the ":"). Anyway, to make a long story short, I got a bunch of really funky error messages trying to get rid of it...

  • (cs)

    The AVG popup makes perfect sense... if you're Czech (as the AVG home staff is), and you haven't yet learned that "uz" sometimes translates as "now" rather than "already." In other words, they thought they were saying:


    "Test cannot be started because it now does not exist." -- that is "Test cannot be launched because it no longer exists."

    erisd

  • Rhialto (unregistered) in reply to Martin
    Anonymous:

    I think the problem is that the tool launches other tools via a shell or batch file, and
    doSomething.bat my file

    will make the tools belive it got 2 files called my and file insted of one file called "my file"
    The solution is ofcause always to put arguments in "" but that would be to easy.

    And what if the filename has a quote in it? Or if it contains a $ ?
    It isn't always so easy, unfortunately...
  • (cs) in reply to 4tehwin!

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    cypher35:
    damn, i wish my cd/dvd burner worked at 2 terabytes per second



    should be gigs, no?


    whoops, I've been drinking again

    No because it actually is 1,999999999068677425384521484375 TeraBytes/sec...[8o|]

     

  • marc (unregistered) in reply to felix

    Putting "" around it sounds easy in the windows world, however fpc uses tools (ld, make) which originate form the unix world. Spaces are there almost "not done". Once the fpc team has tried to get make fixed. The answer of the make team was easy: don't use spaces. To avoid a lot of user WTFs this requirement was added.

  • (cs) in reply to VGR
    VGR:
    reed:
    VGR:

    Or is "Yes, Nokia phone" just more message box text which can't be activated at all?  That would be an even more impressive WTF.


    Yes, clearly:


    void displayMessageBox(int flagsForDefaultPredefinedButtons, char* title, char* text1, char* text2, char* buttonLabel1, ...);



    ...
       int dialogFlags = CANCEL_BUTTON;
       ...
       displayMessageBox(dialogFlags|NO_BUTTON, "Mobile Master", "Do you use a Nokia phone?", "Yes, Nokia Phone", "No Nokia Phone", NULL);

    Ah, now it makes sense.  (You may have guessed that I don't know MFC at all.  I'm a Motif and Java guy.)

    I had thought the "Yes" option was intended to look different.  Don't laugh, people have done it before.  In fact, you can find it in Windows without having to look too hard.


    Alright, not an MFC guy here either, but it still doesn't make sense to me - why would Windows put an accelerator shortcut on something it thought was a static text item, regardless of whether the developer thought it was a button or not?  That sounds like a WTF for sure.  I also note that only the static text item has an accelerator shortcut - the buttons themselves don't!  I'm still confused.

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    When it comes to Digital Rights Management, some software requires that you enter a license key code from the CD case to verify that you own it. Other software verifies the license with Internet Activation. TaxCut's License Verification program, as Kyle Trauberman noticed, just asks nicely ...

    [image]

    Actually, this makes a marginal amount of sense -- by explicitly asking the question it changes the users liablity in the advent of future legal action from negligance (the user should have known better, but arguably didn't) to willful misconduct (the user knew that what they where doing was wrong, but did it anyway).  Of course, the legal system is pretty much a gigantic WTF itself, so I guess the article is an overall WTF...

  • (cs) in reply to VGR
    VGR:

    Yes, I know what keyboard mnemonics are.  I also know that there is no point to having a label with a keyboard mnemonic for a button, since buttons can have their own mnemonics on them.  So what does Alt-Y actually do?  What control does Alt-Y activate?


    None, most likely. Either that or the next activatable control in the tab index order for that window - probably the "No Nokia phone" button.

    to give a clue about which key can be used to jump to Labels have accelerator keys used on them all the time. Normally they're used in conjunction with text boxesthat box. Check out the Start->Run dialog, for instance. You know you can use Alt-O to jump to the text box because the label beside it has an accelerator key marked.

    I'm not certain about this, but I believe it's only in environments like VB where putting an accelerator key on a label will *automatically* make it so that the next control in the tab index can be focused on by using the accelerator. I could be wrong about this, but I think that outside of VB or another environment that does that, you have to assign them yourself.

    Hope this helps. :)
  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Peter McMinn learned his lesson about buying cheap free-after-rebate CD-RWs. His super-fast 1.43166e+007x CD burner is stuck running at only 24x.

    [image]



    SWEET! I didn't know the 14316600x cdrw's were out already! I always wanted to burn a cd in less than a second!

  • (cs) in reply to Ciaran
    Ciaran:

    to give a clue about which key can be used to jump to Labels have accelerator keys used on them all the time. Normally they're used in conjunction with text boxesthat box. Check out the Start->Run dialog, for instance. You know you can use Alt-O to jump to the text box because the label beside it has an accelerator key marked.


    Whoops. That should read:

    Labels have accelerator keys used on them all the time. Normally they're used in conjunction with text boxes to give a clue about which key can be used to jump to that box. Check out the Start->Run dialog, for instance. You know you can use Alt-O to jump to the text box because the label beside it has an accelerator key marked.
  • (cs) in reply to Xarium
    Xarium:
    notromda:
    Actually, the filname length restriction may be with Windows.   I think there is a 255 character limit to the filename, including the full path.  I've been bit by this when trying to delete files, and it comes back saying the filename is too long.

    Incorrect.  There is no inherent limit for the length of filenames in Windows.  A lot of people *think* there is because the ANSI (DOS-compliant) API limits you to 255 chars - which is purely for DOS-compatibility.

    Any Win32 program that suffers from a 255 character limit on filenames is either extremely old or poorly written.



    I don't think this is correct.. I would consider Windows Explorer a pretty up-to-date program, and I have had errors creating MP3's in a really deep path something like C:\some dir\mp3\band name - year - album name\band name - album name - track number - song name.mp3.  And this was on an NTFS partition, so I don't think it is any kind of DOS limitation.

    As an aside, I've wanted for a long time to parse the filenames of my mp3's in order to set all the id3v2 tags.  I've got a Perl script that does the parsing quite well, but I really need some kind of command program that will let me set the tags with input parameters, and I haven't been able to find one.  Anyone know of such a program?  Just thought I'd try..
  • (cs) in reply to Mihai
    Anonymous:

    Spaces in file names are valid since Win 95 (about 10 years ago :-)


    I've always assumed that Microsoft intentionally chose to install new programs in "Program Files" (a directory with a space in the name) to force developers to learn how to handle those directories properly.  If so, I guess it didn't work on QuickTime developers. :)
  • Moriarty (unregistered) in reply to Jernej

    Anonymous:
    toxik:

    However, those from the Czech (apparently) guy at the end isn't so much of a WTF.


    you are "apparently" very sure, but im sorry, it is not Czech.
     

    Slovenian?

    Wow, the captcha is almost invisible

  • cowboy_k (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    locate -i bakery | perl -pe 's/\n/\0/g' | xargs -0 xmms


    If all you're doing with perl is a regexp replace, you could probably replace that with a sed call instead -  less overhead than the perl interpreter...

    what, me, pedantic?
  • (cs) in reply to njbartlett
    njbartlett:

    "If you obtained this copy [..] on loan [...] you are using an illegal or unlicensed copy"

    The publishers of TaxCut need to look up the term "fair use". There's nothing illegal about borrowing software, much as there is nothing illegal about borrowing a book.



    The only reason for it not to be illegal is that no one ever find a way to prevent it to happen.
    Of course that they keep trying...
  • (cs) in reply to VGR
    VGR:

    I'm looking at the last few screenshots (from "Jernej") and I'm puzzled.  I've never used a non-English version of Windows, so maybe there are things I don't understand.  Why are the buttons at the bottom of each dialog localized while the rest of each dialog is not?  Did Microsoft do a half-assed job of localization?


    Not quite. There are objects for YES/NO button that windows localize for you.
    But the message come from the program.

    This is very frequent... This and pop-ups where the tranlated text is bigger than the available space.
    You can get 2 situations here, a button over the message, wich is bad, or a button that was pushed out of it's place and that can be unclickable... wich is much worse.

  • (cs) in reply to tufty
    tufty:
    Albatross:

    Cooper:
    All your tests are belong to us....

    All your bugs are belong to us.



    Oh, for fuck's sake.  If you're gonna make a geeky joke, at least make it right.

    "All your test are belong to us"

    "All your bug are belong to us"

    Kids today.  Pschaw!


    Spelling counts, too.  It was "YUOR".

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko


  • (cs) in reply to Gene Wirchenko
    Gene Wirchenko:
    tufty:
    Albatross:

    Cooper:
    All your tests are belong to us....

    All your bugs are belong to us.



    Oh, for fuck's sake.  If you're gonna make a geeky joke, at least make it right.

    "All your test are belong to us"

    "All your bug are belong to us"

    Kids today.  Pschaw!


    Spelling counts, too.  It was "YUOR".

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko



    I think not, young Skywalker

    [image]

    Simon
  • (cs) in reply to notromda

    notromda:
    Actually, the filname length restriction may be with Windows.   I think there is a 255 character limit to the filename, including the full path.  I've been bit by this when trying to delete files, and it comes back saying the filename is too long.

    However, I've learned the hard way not to try to add anything to iTunes that has a file name longer than, oh, about 64 characters.  Where it's in "C:\music"...

  • (cs) in reply to Gene Wirchenko
    Gene Wirchenko:
    tufty:
    Albatross:

    Cooper:
    All your tests are belong to us....

    All your bugs are belong to us.



    Oh, for fuck's sake.  If you're gonna make a geeky joke, at least make it right.

    "All your test are belong to us"

    "All your bug are belong to us"

    Kids today.  Pschaw!


    Spelling counts, too.  It was "YUOR".

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko




    No, it was not.

    sincerely,
    Richard Nixon
  • Incen (unregistered) in reply to kipthegreat
    kipthegreat:

    As an aside, I've wanted for a long time to parse the filenames of my mp3's in order to set all the id3v2 tags.  I've got a Perl script that does the parsing quite well, but I really need some kind of command program that will let me set the tags with input parameters, and I haven't been able to find one.  Anyone know of such a program?  Just thought I'd try..

    Don't hold me to it, but I think Foobar2000 can parse filenames into id3v2 tags in a regexpy manner.

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