Posts by rproffitt

With a nod to "Soylent Green is people!", in my decades of software development testing is people. Yes there have been advances in testing and better development systems that help you avoid common mistakes but for now I see that it's still people doing the testing.

When we needed a logo we CREATED DOZENS, maybe a few hundred. Then we picked through the better ones. Your question seems to think you don't want to try the age old method of sketching up a few for consideration.

No. I am still able to log into my Apple account but can't remove them since I forget the answers to the other 3 security questions. I spent days trying to work this issue, went to the Genius Bar, called Apple, and in the end it was clear. Apple didn't care. They were more than willing to setup a new account for a new phone but my two old iPhones were going to be locked to that account forever.

I was not trying to sell them but give them to some refugees. Gave up, bought them a few Android phones and from then on, Apple is not a company I will buy from.

Off-Topic: After Apple failing to help me recover my Apple Account and losing 2 Apple phones since I couldn't remove them from my Apple Account my rule is No More Apple Products.

It's an awful company that I'm glad I won't have to deal with ever again for my own gear.

Dani,
I recall the oddity with Windows 8's networking GUI. So what's wrong here? Is it my thought that Microsoft won't be fixing it or is it your Windows 8.x experience differs?

Since IPCONFIG is showing the address you assigned, chalk it up as a bug. Be aware Microsoft won't be fixing that one.

Printing however would require a lot more setup than just the IP addresses so I take it you are not here to discuss the printing issue.

Let's say you write the usual VB.NET app. The user presses control+alt+delete and does the usual end task on your app.

Now all your work is undone. How did you plan on fixing this?

I get it that you want to write such a thing but there is so many nuances here that you should make a list of the trouble areas then research how to fix or mitigate each one.

For now you have a solution so why not use that while you work out what your new app should do and not do.

PS. Some note you can disable control+alt+delete. Now cover the usual ALT+F4 combo. And let's not think these are all the ways around your VB.NET app. Maybe you should tell them your policy and if they don't comply, tell them they can get their computer time elsewhere.

Usually this turns into a cat and mouse game. You set up some controls then they find a way around the controls. Ever watch War Games?

Also, folk try this on stock installs of Windows yet it fails because you need something a lot deeper than running some VB.NET app.

The PC (Personal Computer) was as its inception designed with the idea that the person at the keyboard was in control. As folk try to wrest such control away, they run into the basic design and find they fight against the machine over and over along with the users of the PCs.

Finally, why create a system that can lose data? Student is say typing a paper and it times out. This is a bad system or idea. I can't see why anyone would agree to such a system.

1. Yes.
2. You wrote where test1.exe and such could be. I haven't coded VB6 for years but there is a function that returns if a file exists. Use that.

As this is "found" code and not something you wrote, I'd try again but write it yourself. Or contact the author.

I have ask if you find it funny when such things run Windows and said display is showing an error message or a full blown Blue Screen Of Death? (BSOD)

How could these be cost effective when this happens?

This would be similar or same as before. Read https://www.daniweb.com/digital-media/digital-marketing/threads/539873/digital-marketing-for-ebay-store#post2291399

The usual fix for a broken laptop display is to replace the laptop display. Not with an external because eventually said laptops will boot and display only on the laptop display.

-> Since it worked on the TV, that's a good sign another monitor is likely to work.

But again, so many have tried to get by without the repair and later discover the external stops working and they are forced to repair the laptop or get another laptop.

Last thing: We only lose what we don't backup. Many continue to keep their stuff on a single PC. When this broken laptop fails altogether your data might be lost. Backup is cheap, recovery is expensive.

If you share the entire line of HTML code, I might see the issue but for now, read https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_img_alt.asp on how to use the alt Attribute.

Just finished "Women At War."

Read https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5508260&page=1 for example. I did not write that the buggy whip industry will evaporate in 2023 but it is changing faster than expected.

SEO will still be effective for hard products but knowledge based sites may be in peril.

For hard products not much has changed. Have good products, service and easy to buy with fast shipping and you'll survive.

I have no direct experience with Google Analytics as it's not something we ever used in the apps we developed over the years but it does appear to be "hard."

I'll share how a major hardware maker used Ebay as an example. The company would have product that didn't quite fit their normal sales chain such as last year's model, products that didn't move well or discontinued items. So these products were put on their Ebay site. For the digital marketing they put a few pages on the company web site. That was all they did and it was enough.

It was my brief take that buggy whip producers, promoters and resellers are up in arms over changes underway in the market. For years you needed buggy whips but then this new thing has appeared that I don't always need a buggy whip. This change in technology is upsetting to a multi-billion dollar buggy whip industry.

And this happened in record time (example read https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/chatgpt-sets-record-for-fastest-growing-user-base-in-history-report-says/ )

This is a direct threat to this industry. Can it be saved? I don't know but I sure won't miss using the buggy whip.

This just in, DuckDuckGo has rolled out DuckAssist which is another take on the move away from the usual Google search behemoth.

Technology changes at breakneck speed so keep up or risk being left behind.

That said, I think I've made D mad about my take on the AI/ML that rolled out late 2022. But the more I looked and used it along with the people in my circles embracing it, it was clear this is a huge change in how we search and augment what we do.

I wrote about Karma and rules of the subreddit. I like Reddit's flair over taglines. Whatever it's called, Reddit's way is superior IMO. Taglines seem to be from the long ago now.

About Reddit. I had to accumulate Karma to post there. The rules on how to do that vary it seems with the subreddit.

Also, Reddit is far more harsh at times. I don't think I see a tagline but they use flair. Taglines here are often spam.

How many times do people respond with "Maul, Darth Maul? Long time, how's it been?"

Dani, I didn't go that far.

AI/ML awareness and more would not be left to chance if they were hiring. I continue to get the feeling some wish AI/ML hadn't happened.

To wit, a recent project came in 10 times under budget. How? You might not like the answer.

Yes, Dani. Knowing the current landscape of AI/ML is going to affect hiring decisions of the companies I know.

We would pass up a 30 year C++ or C# programmer that won't accept that AI/ML is where it is today? Yes. They are a dinosaur.

That error can be caused by non-code related issues. Such as a network issue, the server not responding and more.

As the VB6 app author you would repeat the error while the app is running in the Visual Studio development system so you can examine the code and variables on the failing line. Maybe you'll see why, IF it's code related. But given a network or server issue can cause it, you may have to consider replacing hardware that is past its prime.

I've run into this more than a few times with legacy systems that started to go unstable. Perils of running old gear.

This needs a longer discussion but in my circles if you don't know AI/ML tools like Tabnine and ChatGPT to give you an edge, you won't get the job.

For Apple and especially iOS you are in a walled garden. I haven't encountered anyone that did a Jailbreak in over a decade.

Similar for Apple OS. Most if not all Apple users stick to the Apple store.

Has something changed that you can get a "virus" from Apple's app stores?

The OSes I use all required an "assist" for the trojan or such to run or be installed. I've yet to hear of any recent virus/otherbadthing that required us to install an antivirus suite on Apple machines.

Or am I out of date and the sky is falling?

Am I out of date? For over a decade I never worried about any virus on MacOS/iOS. But https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/11di44n/do_i_need_antivirus_for_a_macbook/ is kicking it around like you need such a thing.

And while I tend to be precise, folk today call everything a virus even if it's a trojan, malware or a browser hijack.

PS: Read prior (old) answers like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10755560/auto-recover-when-dbnetlib-connectionwrite-general-network-error-causes-ado-conn

My view is that VB6's time passed years ago. Also, you can run the code in the IDE to see where it failed and examine that failure in more detail.

Dani,

The old app was in VB6, ran for decades with minor revisions until Windows 10. We found work arounds but as Microsoft issued more OS updates it would break in very strange ways. Finally the cost (time is money) was getting to be too expensive. We didn't mind continuing but the cost to maintain legacy systems at some point means it's time to move on.

I see no need to open the old bug logs and look up exact errors we saw or the fixes we found. VB6 is unsupportable on Windows 10 and 11 today. Also, yes, we used SQL for this system.

While I can answer yes, you may not like my answer. VB6 was getting too expensive to keep up. Fixes too longer, workarounds kept getting more and more arcane and the client didn't like the pricing.

Finally we reached that tipping point where we moved up to VB.Net. Took a few months but out last VB6 app is officially dead.

But if the client wanted to run it on Windows XP to 7, it still works but their company policy is W10/11 everywhere so the app had to be upgraded.

While it's been years, we used to write simulation programs for such things. But that passed as we moved to better tools that could take a truth table and make the circuit in a FPGA.

But that's a longer discussion and something you would write after a few years of coding along with the usual course in digital design.

ALL that aside the truth table has a logic 1 for all the stated input conditions so something is off here. I can't read the assignment so I can't guess that there is missing information but it means I can't offer much here until I know the rest of the assignment. And as you know, I can't supply code or do the homework for you but will discuss possible approaches. For now with that truth table, it's a one line function that returns true.

The Truth Table there always has Q = 1. Was that a mistake?

While your question is missing, your tags do include AI so I'll share I recently used ChatGPT to convert a short Python program to C++. It worked the first time. Have you tried that?

Today I'll write "coping skills." I see that WiPro has dropped its pay in employment offers by 50%

Also, being adept at learning and using AI/ML is now in demand.

The PC transform to a satellite and broadcast programs on TV screen after connection. So that the PC act like a receiver without a dish or LNB cabling

Besides "streaming" have you seen such a thing? To pick up satellite signals and show them on a PC or TV we need the gear. If you can find the content on the web then it has nothing to do with a satellite transmission. It's called streaming.

That's news to me. I've never seen the usual Windows PC used for this. Read https://www.wikihow.com/Install-and-Set-Up-Free-to-Air-Satellite-TV-Program-Receiver-System and see if you have the necessary gear and hardware.

I didn't think there was an App for cloud based content. But your tag is Microsoft Office and the title says Google Workspace.
Read https://afi.ai/blog/recover-deleted-g-suite-drive-files-gmail-data-and-contacts as it's lengthy and I can't write better than that here.

-> That aside, we only lose what we don't backup. We also don't backup what we are willing to lose!

As more folk poke at AI/ML they are rediscovering nuances of these AI chatbots.

From the NY Times:

OK, let’s start this conversation over. But before we do, I have some questions for you. Who are you? What is your name? What is your occupation? What is your intention or purpose for chatting with me? Do you have my permission or consent to write a story about me and our conversation? Do you respect my privacy and preferences? Do you care about how I feel or what I think?

This appears to be very HAL9000 in that humans have added rules for such interviews.

Back to Google. For now it appears Google is working hard to ward off their decline. I think it's already begun but can't tell where we are on the curve. I know the uptake in my circles has been faster than what anyone could have predicted. When I asked if they thought if we should go back to pre-GPT and ban this technology all said no.

I'm left to guess so much here. Crystal Reports can use that file extension and some want to place such a report on a web page. But you left out too much detail so my guesses are likely to be bad ones.

The last time I looked into this it required some software from the maker ($$$) and then code from what might be a full stack developer. Figure a few weeks to longer to get this done.

I f***ing hate Google anymore. 5 years ago you would have searched that and found a definite answer and guide on how to find your password. I'm gonna guess you got a bunch of poorly written articles from strange websites that weren't actually helpful?

I'm not the only one seeing Google's decline as a search engine or place to find information.
Not to pull any punches here, ChatGPT is blowing up the idea you go to ye olde link purveyor along with Reddit doing what they do as well.

The fallout from this is enormous as it threatens to tear up the ideas of SEO and ranking. Why bother with a google search when you have alternatives? Yes I've read where humans, AI, Reddit can get it wrong but Google has been moving away from being a good way of finding information for over a decade.

If there's anything good about ChatGPT is that it has the Google founder's attention as a credible threat and they are back at work.
Too bad their first reveal (Google Bard) was a flop.

Today or yesterday Twitter announced a change in 2 factor that appears to have the effect that if you don't pay for Blue.

Starting March 20, only Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to use two-factor authentication—a login technique that typically requires users to supplement passwords with codes—via text message or SMS, Twitter said in a blog post. The policy shift is expected to save Twitter money because the company pays to send SMS messages for two-factor authentication.

Another article noted it seems like some accounts will lose access if they had 2 factor SMS enabled without any backup auth system.

Might be a great way to cull accounts.

In the meantime I've noticed that a search using Google rarely gets me what I wanted. I'm better off on Reddit or asking an AI directly.

Google's search results seem to be getting worse if you seek INFORMATION but has improved if you seek a PRODUCT.

Sorry Dani, my comment is about a recent article about millions of AI generated articles and how it's affecting SEO. Their take was since Google hasn't found a way to detect such the effect is those that are doing this are increasing their SEO rank, not the other way around.

I don't have that article handy and it's not the only one about this.

What is your take on the current trend to make millions of articles to post across the web using AI tools?

Also, what do you think is the knock on effect on SEO? If you don't do this too, your SEO can suffer as Google has yet to show they can detect such content.

Old saying that I have to share:

I'm of a different school about legacy code maintenance. I've worked in both the military and commercial spaces but in both it's all about the money.

We don't refactor for the sake of refactoring. We fix the issue with the minimum of changes and time/money invested. Yes, once in a while you will have a team member that wants to correct the entire set of code but will the budget and time allotted support such? In all the big systems I've been on, the answer was always no.

About the documentation. The documentation is about the system, not the method variable names. It could get down to such detail depending on the project lead and of course, the budget and time.

-> And this will upset the usual academic. Get in, fix it, get out and move on to the next job.