• temp (unregistered)

    have had the same "do not reply" footer when enquiring about a matter, but they did in fact respond to the matter (they were asking for more information and asked to reply with the enquiry id as the subject). they LIED, they did read it

    also, frist? (am i doing this right)

  • (nodebb)

    Matthew J's problem might be caused by eastern Turkey, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, India, or Bangladesh, all of which are in Asia, but none of which are in the Far East...

  • Gino (unregistered)

    <<"Hello this is tech support."

    "Hi, I'm calling because I'm trying to install your program and it said that it couldn't install Visual C++ 2010 Runtime, can you help me?" <<"Sure, what does it say is the reason it couldn't install?" "Asia" <<"Erm, I'm sorry what?" "Apparently Visual C++ 2010 Runtime doesn't work in a world where Asia exists..."

  • Gino (unregistered)

    The REAL wtf is how I posted a comment with >> and << indicating who was saying what on separate lines of a conversation and the site unceremoniously converted it to block quotes in a block quote....

  • (nodebb)

    Am I missing something about the fitbit one?

    2pm to 2am would be a 12 hour period.

    It says select a time between 5 - 14 hours.

    12 is in the range of 5-14...

    Or does the red text mean your range is outside of the accepted range? If so, the image and comment is not clear that this is a warning.

    Then again, I don't use FitBit... maybe FitBit is like ubiquitous or something and I'm the lazy bum who has never seen the interface before.

  • Nebukad (unregistered) in reply to lordofduct

    Using 24h format because it is easier for me. So the selected range is from 14:00 to 02:00.

    Assuming the current time is 12:00. 02:00 would mean in the next day, the app might not understand this. So the app might calculate 02:00 - 14:00 with all times on the same day getting a result of -12 hours. Which is what I would assume is happening.

  • IBBoard (unregistered)

    Erm, is the "Eject Thumbdrive" one REALLY an eject thumbdrive? Surely it's just "eject removable media", and if you've got an SSD then it can be hotpluggable. The fact that it is C:\ means it isn't wise to do that, but still, it is a device that could be hotplugged and hence removed.

    And the Fitbit one isn't borked so much as bad error checking assumptions. 2am is before 2pm, therefore it is a negative time period. There was no marker to say "tomorrow", so in a trivial "time of day" sense then it can't know that it is supposed to go past midnight.

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to IBBoard

    sata does do hotplug so that will show up in windows but it will not let you take out the boot disk.

  • 24h (unregistered)

    The real WTF is insisting on keeping this AM/PM nonsense

  • EatenByAGrue (unregistered)

    The reason Dinerware Workstation can't locate the Brain is that he's running around trying to take over the world with his pal Pinky. Which will of course fail due to some hilarious oversight.

    As for the FitBit one, I think we can all guess what happened: The code assumed that the hours would be during the same day, subtracted 14:00 from 02:00, came up with -12 hours, which is outside the 2-14 hour range.

  • Sam (unregistered)

    The real Error'd is that the Atlanta screensaver picture was apparently taken via EXIF rotation, and when you read this article in Feedly, the pic is sideways.

  • Chris (unregistered)

    Actually the "Asia" error just happened in the heat of the moment...

  • Scott (unregistered)

    FitBit user here... The FitBit tracks steps by day -- midnight (00:00:00) to midnight (23:59:59) and it resets your step count at 00:00:00 local time, so specifying an activity time period that crosses midnight is something I guess they never thought to support.

    FitBit -- only supported for people working 1st shift.

  • _that_guy_ (unregistered) in reply to Scott

    I'm not even a fitbit user, but from reading the explanation in the background I could figure that out. "Consecutive hours in the day" does not allow for crossing midnight.

  • Corey Jones (google)

    Ah ... MARTA displays not working ... TRWTF is that it's more surprising when they are working than when they're not.

    Though to be fair, there are plans to upgrade the displays soon.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered)

    have had the same "do not reply" footer when enquiring about a matter, but they did in fact respond to the matter (they were asking for more information and asked to reply with the enquiry id as the subject). they LIED, they did read it

    The NSA sent you e-mail? And you replied to it?

    We should be grateful the NSA exists. Otherwise no one would read our e-mail.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered)

    Surely it's just "eject removable media"

    Yes, but 99% of the time it's only meaningful for thumb drives. Usually Windows XP and later reject requests to disconnect USB hard drives, so I have to shut down the PC to do it. Windows 10 is more dangerous because shutdown might not be a full Windows shutdown even though it powers off the PC, and if you disconnect the hard drive the NTFS structures might be corrupt.

    and if you've got an SSD then it can be hotpluggable. The fact that it is C:\ means it isn't wise to do that

    It doesn't have to be an SSD. Around 2003 there was a popular laptop chipset that had a single IDE channel with master and slave ports. Laptop makers put an IDE hard drive on the master port and optical drive on the slave port. Something in the BIOS told Windows that the slave port was ejectable. When recovering one abandoned laptop, I had a DVD drive that was permanently wired to be a master drive (intended for a laptop with dual IDE channels) so it didn't work when connected to that laptop's slave port. I also had a hard drive that could be jumpered to make it a slave drive, unusual for laptops but it worked. So with the DVD drive as master and hard drive as slave, the BIOS worked, Windows XP worked, and I gave a working laptop to a friend. However, something in the BIOS still told Windows that the slave port was ejectable. So when I clicked on that icon in the notification area[*], Windows didn't allow me to ask for permission to disconnect the DVD drive, it allowed me to ask for permission to disconnect the hard drive with drive letter C where Windows XP was installed and running. It wouldn't be wise because the laptop would have to be partially disassembled while Windows was running, but I don't remember if I experimented with asking.

    [* That was Windows XP, so it was before Microsoft started calling the system tray the system tray.]

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered)

    I forgot where I read this:

    "Life is too short to eject USB safely."

  • Randal L. Schwartz (github) in reply to 24h

    Actually, depending on DST crossings, that might also be 11 or 13 hours. Please stop DST now!

  • Micha (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond

    No, I think you have it the other way around. I'm pretty sure it used to be called the system tray, but a couple versions ago it was officially renamed the notification area.

  • I dunno LOL ¯\(°_o)/¯ (unregistered)

    Dinerware appears to have gone into "zombie mode".

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered)

    "No, I think you have it the other way around. I'm pretty sure it used to be called the system tray, but a couple versions ago it was officially renamed the notification area."

    The old new name was notification area, which absolutely wasn't the system tray, and you weren't allowed to use Spy++ to see its window class because it absolutely wasn't the system tray.

    However, to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to 10 or downgrade from Windows 7 to 10, some Microsoft web pages describe how to use the GWX icon in the system tray, at least when GWX wasn't crashing.

  • Lurch (unregistered) in reply to Sam

    I am feel as an RSS viewer I seem to get the beta version of posts with random bold text, last weeks images (assuming they haven't been forgotten entirely) and wonky pictures. I demand to be treated like a normal human being dammit, I am not some 18th century French peasant!

  • (nodebb) in reply to Norman Diamond

    "The old new name was notification area, which absolutely wasn't the system tray..."

    I'll make explicit the allusion made:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/09/10/54831.aspx

    And although I don't have any official word on current terminology, 10's UI generally avoids referring to it explicitly (talking instead about the "taskbar"), but when it does need to be more specific it's called the "notification area". However, searching through the control panel for things related to the "tray" does get hits on taskbar-related stuff, and "systray.exe" is a thing, so.... Between "Notification Area" and "System Tray", I find the term that gives least confusion is "Down There In the Corner By the Clock".

  • (nodebb) in reply to Joe

    sata does do hotplug so that will show up in windows but it will not let you take out the boot disk. Well, not unless you close all handles to it first...

    Addendum 2016-07-12 08:51: Well, not unless you close all handles to it first... wasn't supposed to be part of the quote...

  • blah (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond

    if you use process explorer then search for the drive letter (D:), it'll return a list of open handles so you know what to close to unmount it (usually it's explorer exploring that causes it)

  • (nodebb)

    Regarding the "Windows thinks a device is removable but really shouldn't because Bad Things would happen", there's a registry hack to change it to non-removable, but it has to be re-applied every time you reboot and it requires admin privileges to change the registry value. A scheduled task can be used to automatically change it each time the computer is started.

    http://www.paralint.com/blog/2008/11/13/stop-internal-drive-showing-up-in-safely-remove-hardware/

    It comes down to the following command line:

    reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\{KEY}" /v Capabilities /t REG_DWORD /d {VALUE} /f

    This must be run in a scheduled task that is run under the SYSTEM account, to obtain the correct permissions to edit the registry key.

    {KEY} must be found using RegEdit. It will begin with a folder for the type of device -- PCI, SCSI, USB, etc. There will be a folder for the device type, and a folder for the specific device instance. This should contain a DeviceDesc and/or FriendlyName identifying the device, so it should be possible to find the correct key by searching for part of the device name from the removable hardware list. It should also contain a Capabilities, which is a bitmapped field. The "removable" bit in this field has a value of 4, so {VALUE} should be found by taking the original value of Capabilities and subtracting 4 from it.

    Create the scheduled task to run as SYSTEM each time the computer boots up.

    Addendum 2016-08-08 11:44: After creating the scheduled task it can be run on demand to test it without rebooting. The change will be immediate -- just open the removable devices menu again to verify that the device no longer appears in it.

  • SomeName (unregistered)

    I am having similar problem with eject feature. Whenever I eject by USB thumbdrive it also decides to eject both of my HDDs. Luckily OS is running on SSD.

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