Tag Archives: crap - Page 2

Downloading Windows 7 Beta 32-bit

Posted by on February 3, 2009 No comments

I decided to download a beta of Windows 7, so many people shared their positive impressions of. I am not quite sure I will have time to actually evaluate it, but for the case I would feel like, it is always nice to have the .ISO image ready for a try.

There was nothing worth a word until I reached the download screen which opened an extremely awful Java applet that pretended to be a download manager. It seemed to be a new spin of technology and sort of I don’t need a nice download manager anymore because direct HTTP links are out of fashion. It started pumping bytes (actually thanks for that) and I my attempt to copy/paste a direct link into my DownThemAll FireFox plugin was vain.

At some 20% the download froze without a notice. The download did not even ungray the resume buttons before I restarted FireFox process and then any attempt to resume led to weird message boxes. Frankly at this point I almost lost the desire to actually complete the download. But left a last chance to have it completed by IE. Internet Explorer (expectedly!) preferred ActiveX control to Java applet. It’s GUI was a bit less scary and it took over incomplete download and…

An attached debugger showed a call stack (oops, I did not save exact call stack) in Manager.exe process in C runtime module, in a CString class method… It went no further than this crashing at exactly the same point until I manually deleted the incomplete download, when it again repeated a weird message box and then finally restart the download from the start. That was enough for me and found a .torrent with the exactly the same file on thepiratebay.org, which I am quite sure will download without a problem.

Isn’t it incredibly stupid that significant amount of work was invested into unnecessary task, ugly user interface, buggy implementation (freeze, incapable download manager, weird messages, crash) with a solid residual of inability to conveniently download the thing, while the file could be just put onto regular MS download service?

Skype Beta

Posted by on December 14, 2008 No comments

I recently advised to take a look at new beta version of Skype software, which I have to use nevertheless I would prefer Jabber for instant messaging if I would be free to choose. I was told that finally multiple chats are hosted in a single window and it is extremely convenient. While this looks hardly an advantage particularly to me, I still wanted to take a look at new fresh better Skype out there.

I am still very much disappointed by the trend of rewriting GUI. For god sake, who the hell needs that every single vendor mimic Vista’s GUI elements on his own? Why the hell would I want Vista buttons on Windows XP? They are still there as if there is no way to put an extra button to switch between compact and full view.

It may look that it is not worth whining around as this is a minor thing just to make it this way and not the other. Here is the Skype team achievement in imitating Vista interface on XP:

Window’s non-client area sometimes is calculating incorrectly and layout is updated so that menu has an extra empty line. The company massively invests in custom GUI that comes out crappy going out of uniform OS look and in additionally it is still buggy after passing QA. Yes, it is still a beta but it still gives a great idea about how things are cooked: a lot of work behind the scene and bugs are still here as a result.

Improved usability is questionable to say the least. A quick glance revealed issues:

  • area for typing in chat text is surprisingly small, even on expanded large enough window
  • roster has persistent useless (for me) items which were optional previously
  • roster has another GUI glitch most likely caused by new look
  • groups reworked as a dropdown list and if previously I could – this was very useful – multiselect groups to be visible by clicking them with a Control key being hold, this is not an option anymore, thanks for that

Update: luckily there is “Classic Windows” option!

FFDShow strikes back

Posted by on November 24, 2008 No comments

FFDShow is already known for it issues (including for example mentioned one). Today’s featured one is related to its Video Decoder. A great deal of FFDShow related issues amy be worked around with a single shot by listing the image name as an FFDShow exclusion under registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow; blacklist

but I felt relaxed and the problem re-occurred from Windows service where HKEY_CURRENT_USER was not available/applicable.

FFDShow Video Decoder registration looks like:

It is immediately clear that the filter registered with extremely (and definitely unreasonably, breaking guidelines) high merit in conjunction with generic video media type will be taken as a possible decoder in every single graph rendered. At the very least, this is a perofrmance issue, similar to frequently reported like this recent one: How to reduce time during pin connection on vista ultimate using RenderStream function…?.

However the real problem was that the filter was accepting connection on my source pin and pretending it could be a valid decoder instead my own one (definitely registered with a proper merit of 0×00800000 (MERIT_PREFERRED). Did it actually decode? No, just sent blackness on the output… It seems that it is getting a good manner to distance from this crapware by implementing IAMGraphBuilderCallback interface on the graph builder site and reject consideration of FFDShow A/V Decoders as candidates.

Disappointment with Magellan MapSend Lite

Posted by on November 15, 2008 No comments

I was recently at an autosport event under the aegis of FIA, where I leased my Magellan eXplorist 600 Europe unit to be used in the off-road race/baja (or “rally raid”) as a helper navigation device (the primary navigation for pilots is their roadmap in a hard paper version). Immediately before the rally the organizer was loading the track into pilot’s GPS and for the Magellan GPS owner it has always been an additional headache. First of all, most GPS units are Windows Mobile based or Garmins. Magellan is a rare bird and it was not the first time when they were just unable to load a track into it. I don’t even mention USB cable, which is buggy enough that only the device owner (who is also an advanced PC user) can make it work from time to time. Loading to SD card is also a problem.

However it would be the only problem if Magellan would provide satisfactory software. I used to make a few tools myself for frequent tasks and track log conversion is among them. But I am also using MapSend Lite to visualise tracklogs on map, correct, modify tracks etc. Earlier and this time again I had a problem loading a track into MapSend Lite for ridiculous reason. Once loaded most of the track points disappear.

Disappointment was the feeling to say the least. I am making software myself: codecs, performance, sophisticated format conversions, bugfixes and workarounds, maintaning version compatibility, third party components and stuff – all this myself. And from this point of view I don’t see any rocket science in getting damn track log loaded into map management software. Still the reality is that track log points disappear just because… they have the same timestamp. I had to manually add .01 to each timestamp in text editor to make the track log file valid for Magellan software! Maybe it is not quite correct that points don’t have valid time, I can understand this, but still this is the track and longitude and lattitude differ from point to point so why the hell software from leading vendor would drop points that have duplicate time – I could not accept any justification for this. With a $600 worth GPS device I would expect this be handled more adequately in software.

I would also wish eXplorist could follow track while recording a new one but frankly after disappearing points thing I can see that it is too much to ask from Magellan, basically it is the impossible. I am afraid there is no way I am going to have another piece of hardware from Magellan ever soon.

Crap Around the World – PICVideo MJPEG Decompressor

Posted by on November 13, 2008 No comments

Yesterday I received a complaint from a Most Important Customer about a weird problem on a few of their digital video recording servers. The problem was that a new version of software, client part, would out of a sudden auto-close without any notice. The problem was quite persistent and basically of not a difficult kind because such fatal problems are automatically logged with a descriptive enough log to identify the cause in an extremely effective way. However the log files appeared to be empty. Another unexpected part was that a few systems showed the issue while the other did not and software worked in a quite expected and stable way there.

After a couple of phone calls and setting up remote access using TightVNC and port forwarding I could see this myself and it was obvious that there is an exception, such as memory access vioaltion, which takes place however on a thread created outside of my code and runnning without a proper guarding section to at the very least catch the exception and log its call stack. The visual symptoms led to supposition that it is something DirectShow related and chances are high that it is either a hardware acceleration issue, or a software compatibility issue. Luckily, hardware acceleration assumption is easy to eliminate by switching off, letting it run without and seeing if there is any difference. There was not.

Then it appeared that while these system were close to clean installation state, there was another DVR software installed also, to be used for tasks not covered by our software. And my first guess was if it installed certain DriectShow filter of the crappy kind, which could interfere with our award winning software, the best of the best. A quick test of renaming “C:\Program Files\Another-DVR” into a different name making all contained binaries unopenable by path showed that nothing changed essentially. So it was GraphEdit, which was downloaded there and a list of installed filters was insepected visually.

There were a few filters that was present in the system but which were obviously installed additionally to the system, as a part of Another-DVR product or in a different way. There was a few filters by I. and then my look stumbled on something which I immediately thought of “That’s It!”. Well, taking into consideration time spent on the problem it was rather “That’s Fucking It!”.

A rename of the hosting file pvmjpg21.dll in %WINDIR%\system32 immediately fixed the problem! Oo-omm-m “PICVideo MJPEG Decompressor” by Pegasus Imaging Corporation, crap! It was one of those moments sung of by Fort Minor:

This is twenty percent crap, eighty percent lame
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!

However, let us what was going on there. A quick look at the registration information makes it clear the video decoding bastard registered itself under MERIT_PREFERRED (0×00800000) merit and generic MEDIATYPE_Video/MEDIASUBTYPE_NULL media type. Why on earth a properly made codec would claim to be able to decode any video as prefered software? It obviously adds overhead to the entire DirectShow subworld on that system by poking its pin into anything that moves without a proper luck to actually connect.

However, it would be just an overhead, maybe even unnoticable, if the bastard was a thread safe library. But it was unfortunately not. Since my software starts showing multiple video feeds simultaneously, this piece of junk was simultaneously instantiated in multiple threads and just crashed the entire process.

P.S. Bonus: “pvmjpg21.dll crash” on Google

To the collection of crapware: Nokia PC Suite

Posted by on August 22, 2008 No comments

Can there be any justification for a completely custom GUI replacing standard caption, buttons etc. and imitating Vista look on Windows XP? Vista look, but with unusual custom controls and still with a jerky Windows 3.11 style font (see prompt for installation path below).

I was about to write that unlike previous versions of Nokia PC Suite, this one at least does the very first thing it is expected to do… but nope, it crashed on… viewing contacts! And it crashes every time soon after contacts browsing is opened!

OK, this might be a “little glitch”, but the Suite is still losing USB cable connections just like it has been doing for a long long time, even when it did not yet have Vista look…

How many Windows processes is necessary for this type of application? I left Bluetooth and Infrared disabled as unneeded. Service context: ServiceLayer.exe which started NclMSBTSrv.exe, NclUSBSrv.exe, NclRSSrv.exe (thanks, because there is 4 more .exes in this Transports subdirectory); Desktop: PCSuite.exe and an application for any major task: ContentCopier.exe, ConnectionManager.exe, CommunicationCentre.exe. It makes an impression I have installed another operating system on top of Windows. I never thought that communication with a cellular phone might be such complex task, which requires so many applications started.

Nokia’s service is “ServiceLayer”, display name “ServiceLayer”, service description is missing…

How did they come to this software design? To implement custom look and feel, fully customized GUI and just not provide any descriptive name for the service, which is by the way starting automatically (well, service startup is Manual, but user applications auto-start by default and would start the service) and keeps bloating system even when the Suite is not being used.

FireFox 3 and multipart/x-mixed-replace MIME type

Posted by on August 14, 2008 No comments

I wonder what was the reason to change and basically disable well known behavior on multipart/x-mixed-replace MIME type with the release of FireFox 3? It never worked with Internet Explorer but it has been working with Mozilla Netscape through FireFox 2. Why the hell this was to be changed?

GET /cgi-bin/zzz HTTP/1.1
Host: xxx:yyy
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; ru; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: ru,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: windows-1251,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: GoAhead-Webs
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Type: multipart/x-mixed-replace;boundary=myboundary

--myboundary
Content-type:image/jpeg
DaemonId:0x00360003

No longer I can check server push M-JPEG streams using FireFox, supposedly there is a configuration tweak to bring well known behavior back.