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“My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

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Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#81

Post by atanasi »

OskarS wrote: post #16
wazari972 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure to agree: if/as *nix systems do not use the extension to know the filetype, then `file`-like heuristics is the only other way to know the file nature, or do I miss someting?

Presumably OpenOffice could pass along a thing that says "please print this PostScript file" so that the printer software knows which type of file it is printing and doesn't have to guess with "file". OpenOffice knows what type of file it's outputting, after all. But your point arguably stands: if a user says "print file X", and you want different files printed using different logic (e.g. PDFs and PostScript files sh…

In the case of printing, the context provides some information. In particular, Erlang JAM file seems unlikely to be printed.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#82

Post by wlesieutre »

dgacmu wrote: post #73
yrro wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The separation between type and creator had other beneficial side effects. The Type code told you which apps _could_ open a file (by drag and drop or via the file chooser dialog). The creator code told you which app _would_ be chosen when the file was opened in the Finder (e.g., double-clicked). So HTML documents I had created in some web authoring tool would open in it for editing, whereas those I had saved from a w…

ResEdit was the apple program that could change it. Unfortunately, I don't remember off the top of my head if it shipped with the system or only with some of the developer tools. I _think_ early versions had it.

Fairly sure later versions didn't include ResEdit, but you could also set them via AppleScript in a pinch and they did ship with Script Editor

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#83

Post by teddyh »

soared wrote: post #53

Arguably the most famous example of a bug like this is the person who would drive to the store to buy ice cream and depending on what flavor of ice cream they bought, the car would or would not start back up. https://www.kepner-tregoe.com/blog/help-my-car-is-allergic-t...

That’s an old urban legend:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cone-of-silence/

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#84

Post by paultopia »

clmul wrote: post #68
numlock86 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have a similar issue with my desktop computer: when I suspend or hibernate it, it sometimes wakes up again when I'm standing, getting up from my chair or leaving the room. This also occasionally happens (when hibernated) after I have physically switched off the power of the computer and switch it on again. The issue occurred first a few years after I bought it, but right now I have just given up debugging it, as I…

A very simple version of this: I used to find that my macbook was randomly going to sleep all the time when I was working with it. Eventually realized that it was because I was using my ipad pro right next to it, with its very strong magnets for the smart keyboard---and magnetic sensors are also how the macbook tells the screen is closed. Could probably put one to sleep by just waving a sufficiently strong magnet in front of it...

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#85

Post by dantheman0207 »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #63
hazeii wrote: post #36

Some 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…

I was an admin for a company that had lots of open plan offices. In one of these offices a specific row of computers kept failing. Although they were cheap (Compaq Evos with NT4), they were pretty damn reliable throughout the rest of the company. Lot of head scratching ensued about the fault. Nothing really made sense. Totally by chance we found out what was wrong. One Saturday when the office was empty and with no a…

I had a similar story. I set up a home pc for recording tv and hooked it up to the main entertainment system. I built it on a budget so it did it’s job but later on as we switched to more HD content it struggled occasionally.

I went off to college. My mom noticed the fan noise was increasing and found it distracting. She wrapped the pc in a couple of blankets to cut down on the noise. When I came home the thing was in danger of burning down the house and the video card had failed.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#86

Post by basilgohar »

soared wrote: post #53

Arguably the most famous example of a bug like this is the person who would drive to the store to buy ice cream and depending on what flavor of ice cream they bought, the car would or would not start back up. https://www.kepner-tregoe.com/blog/help-my-car-is-allergic-t...

What is amazing about this and the other comments of similar, human-based issues affecting technology, is just how gosh darn_reliable_ we humans can be in some cases.

Despite all the complexities and exceptions to human behavior, I think it can be argued that we are far more repetitious and our actions more reproducible than we'd like to admit lest we think we are giving up some of what we thought was actual human natures.

However, we also regale to one-another tales of folks in simpler lifestyles that "always do the same thing, every day, for 50 years", lifestyles that don't change much over generations, and so on. So, if we look at this from a wider perspective, rationally, it shouldn't be that shocking.

Still is interesting, nonetheless. :-)

Edit: After seeing the sibling comment point out this was Snoped, I hope my otherwise seemingly insightful point still stands...:-p

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#87

Post by TheMerovingian »

In my first install of Arch linux, I figured that using the bleeding edge software meant everything was supported. Upon plugging in an external monitor into my Dell laptop, it, indeed worked.

Well, until I moved my mouse cursor over to that monitor. It then turned off. Move the mouse back to the laptop screen; external monitor turned back on. My first foray into Arch linux ended up with a bug report against Intel's graphics driver.

Luckily, it was fixed very quickly and I'm proud to say it's finally time for Linux on the deskt---- err laptop.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#88

Post by blablabla123 »

im3w1l wrote: post #4

I'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 wish filesystems would commonly support to store the Mime type. File extensions seem to me still a residue from MS DOS times. That would also make working with static (file) webservers much easier. (It's such a breeze to work with blob stores that allow to save the mime type...)

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#89

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

Japhy_Ryder wrote: post #52
hazeii wrote: post #36

Some 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…

That is absolutely hilarious. Flashback to a similar technology `sleight of hand` - Back in middleschool, when JavaScript's window.open allowed you easily to launch a fullscreen window with no browser chrome, and setting the background-image to a screenshot of the desktop... it was so entertaining watching students and teachers alike try to use the machine and thinking it was frozen!

And tech people wonder why the general populace doesn't like them.

Re: “My wife has complained that OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays” (2009)

#90

Post by silon42 »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #55
IshKebab wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is why you should engineer things properly. Not duck tape them together with shell scripts!

Actually the user was able to solve it because it was in a shell script. If the program had used libfile instead, there would be no easy way to edit it to change the date format other than recompiling it. They would have needed to wait until the maintainers fixed file itself.

using file is a bad idea anyway... you can't rely on a command that performs guesswork (aka "smart"). It's been a cause of security holes in similar contexts (browsers sniffing mime type from file content/extensions)
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