Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11717010
“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
31–40 of 216 posts
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#32I love bugs like this. As a developer or Sysadmin you'd think the users are crazy again but then you dig deeper until you lose all hope and already book flights to become a farmer in the midwest and then you find something like thís
My favorite one is the one where engineer notices that he can login on terminal only when sitting down. When standing up, login fails.
Not the same one, but very recently, this problem has been cropping up for real all over the place! https://twitter.com/royvanrijn/status/1214162400666103808?s=... People having screens that turn off when you sit down or stand up.
SPOILER: its the gas compression in the shockabsorber causing an EM spike or something like that.
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#33I'm gonna argue that the bug is not in "file". The bug is that the workflow uses file, which by it's very nature must be based on heuristics and will get things wrong occasionally. EDIT: Well file really had a bug in this case, where they didn't detect what they thought they were, but the point stands.
I agree that you should use care when using file. My app relied on "file" to identify file types, and in some cases it mis-identified some Microsoft Office files. The problem was that Apple ships a very old magic file with macOS, and when I reported the bug they said they don't care.
Excel mis-identifies CSV files whose first column is named "ID" as SYLK files.
But who would EVER think of naming the first column of a spreadsheet "ID"?
https://www.optibrium.com/community/forums/6-general-how-do-...
>Q: I have saved the result table from admensa into .csv format. However I am not able to open in excel. It is said that SYLK: file format is not valid. Do you have any experience on it? Thanks.
>A: This is an Excel 'feature.' I would guess that the first column of your data is entitled "ID". For some reason, Excel interprets any CSV file beginning with "ID" as an SYLK format file (not really sure what that is!). If you edit the file in, say, Notepad and change the name of the first column in the header row, you should find that it will load without a problem.
>This will happen if you save a CSV file from any application with the first characters "ID". So, unfortunately, there's not much we can do about it, other than to recommend that users don't call their first column "ID"!
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#34I love bugs like this. As a developer or Sysadmin you'd think the users are crazy again but then you dig deeper until you lose all hope and already book flights to become a farmer in the midwest and then you find something like thís
I can't find it, but a while ago there was a post on some StackExchange page (SuperUser maybe?) and reddit that had the following problem: Whenever a specific person passed a specific cubicle, one of the monitors would turn black/lose signal and turned back on after the person was away again. I don't remember how it got resolved or rather what the problem was. Since it only happened on a specific person people were guessing it was about static electricity from the specific clothing(-style) or similar in the early process. Maybe someone else had heard of this or can find it?
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#35I love bugs like this. As a developer or Sysadmin you'd think the users are crazy again but then you dig deeper until you lose all hope and already book flights to become a farmer in the midwest and then you find something like thís
I can't find it, but a while ago there was a post on some StackExchange page (SuperUser maybe?) and reddit that had the following problem: Whenever a specific person passed a specific cubicle, one of the monitors would turn black/lose signal and turned back on after the person was away again. I don't remember how it got resolved or rather what the problem was. Since it only happened on a specific person people were g…
That sounds like a feature if I could somehow tie it to my boss
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#36Some years back I had a case where a co-worker complained his mouse didn't work in the afternoon. Eventually I went to have a look, and he demo'ed the issue; sure enough the mouse was completely unresponsive. Luckily I guessed the issue immediately and quicky demonstrated - with a shrug - that the mouse "works fine for me".
Thing was I'd spotted there was strong sunlight through the window hitting the mouse; guessing it was probably swamping the optosensors I made sure I covered the side of the mouse with my hand when using it. His puzzled looks as the mouse worked for me but not for him were priceless (I did let him in on the secret after a few minutes).
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#37I'm gonna argue that the bug is not in "file". The bug is that the workflow uses file, which by it's very nature must be based on heuristics and will get things wrong occasionally. EDIT: Well file really had a bug in this case, where they didn't detect what they thought they were, but the point stands.
Yes, this is why you should engineer things properly. Not duck tape them together with shell scripts!
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#38I'm gonna argue that the bug is not in "file". The bug is that the workflow uses file, which by it's very nature must be based on heuristics and will get things wrong occasionally. EDIT: Well file really had a bug in this case, where they didn't detect what they thought they were, but the point stands.
I agree that you should use care when using file. My app relied on "file" to identify file types, and in some cases it mis-identified some Microsoft Office files. The problem was that Apple ships a very old magic file with macOS, and when I reported the bug they said they don't care.
> Apple ships a very old magic file with macOS
I particularly relish the way it identifies macOS disk image files as VAX executables. I hope they never change that.
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#39I love bugs like this. As a developer or Sysadmin you'd think the users are crazy again but then you dig deeper until you lose all hope and already book flights to become a farmer in the midwest and then you find something like thís
I can't find it, but a while ago there was a post on some StackExchange page (SuperUser maybe?) and reddit that had the following problem: Whenever a specific person passed a specific cubicle, one of the monitors would turn black/lose signal and turned back on after the person was away again. I don't remember how it got resolved or rather what the problem was. Since it only happened on a specific person people were g…
https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-...
Also, some reddit makes it seem like a Titanium pin in his shoulder was to blame: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2rsivw/monitor...
Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure why people think they can rely on the pre-installed Unix utilities on macOS. EDIT: Apple routinely don't update the Unix utilities for a decade...
Yeah, those idiots! They buy something from Apple, and then find it doesn't work. What did they expect. This, of course, is passive-aggressive snark. Suffice to say that I disagree with you; why shouldn't people expect software they buy from Apple to work? People buy from Apple because they don't want to have to deal with all this sort of crap; they just want it to work.
I am more surprised Apple doesnt invest in their own Unix utils packages honestly. Its not like they dont have the money to do so.