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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘error’
05.08.2020
With the new season of Alarm fĂźr Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei nearly upon us, I decided Iâd pop into my Facebook group (Iâm still an admin) to see what had been happening. Iâve been there a few times this week and I have discovered some of the siteâs latest features.
Groups: these now have three posts. Thatâs it. Three. It doesnât matter how long they have been running, Facebook doesnât want you to be bothered by history or anything so stupid. Therefore, after the third post (fourth if youâve just posted something), youâve reached the end. Saves heaps on the server bills, since I guess theyâre not as rich as they would have us believe.
(This bug has been around for years but now itâs the norm, so maybe they eventually figured out it was a cost-saving feature.)
On groups: welcome to the end of Facebook. This is the last post.
Comments: donât be silly, you shouldnât be able to comment. This is a great way for Facebook to cut down on dialogue, because they can then just propagate nonsense before an election. We know where Zuckâs biases are, so they want to be a broadcaster and publisher. You can select the word âReplyâ in the reply box, you just canât type in it. (Again, an old bug, but it looks like itâs a feature. Iâm still able to like things, although on many previous occasions over the last decade or more that feature was blocked to me.)
Commenting: they let me have one reply, but replying to someone who has replied to you? Forget it, it’s impossible.
In the reply box, you can highlight ‘Reply’ but you can’t type in there. That would be too much to ask.
Notifications: these never load, had haven’t done for a long time. Remember the ad preferencesâ page? They donât load, either, so Facebook has now extended the âcircleâ to notifications. If you donât see notifications, you wonât need to continue a threadânot that you could, anyway, since they donât let you comment.
If you knew what your notifications were, you might stay longer and post stuff that makes sense. No, Facebook is for people who want to spread falsehoods among themselves. You have no place here.
Messages: why not roll out the same spinning circle here, too? They should never load, either, because, frankly, email is far more efficient and everyone should just give up on using Facebookâs messaging service.
Time to go back to email: if you were ever silly enough to rely on Facebook for messaging, then you’re out of luck.
I once thought that I encountered bugs on Facebook because I was a heavy user, but as I havenât even touched my wall since 2017, this cannot be the reason. I also used to say their databases were âshot to hellâ, which could be the case. And I still firmly believe I encounter errors because Iâm more observant than most people. Remember, as Zuckâs friend Donald Trump says, if you do more testing, youâll find more cases.
I’ve even found the “end” of Instagram, at the point where nothing will show any more.
The end of Instagram: when you can find the limit to the service.
No one’s posting much these days. In the early 2010s, there’d be no way I’d ever get to see the end of my friends’ updates.
Solution: donât use Facebook. And definitely don’t entrust them with your personal data, including your photosâeven if you trust them, they’ll potentially get lost. From what I can tell, the site’s increasing inability to cope suggests that its own technology might fail them before the US government even gets a chance to regulate! Andâthe above topics asideâit may be time to regulate Facebook and pull in the reins.
Tags: 2010s, 2020, 2020s, bug, bugs, computing, error, errors, Facebook, Instagram, privacy, technology, trust
Posted in internet, politics, technology, USA | No Comments »
17.01.2018
Two very helpful peopleâbwv848 at Bleeping Computer and Sumit Dhiman at Microsoftâhave taken me through the steps to figure out what was going on with my Windows 10 desktop computer, on which I’ve had between 100 and 200 BSODs since the Windows 10 Creators fall update arrived.
Windows claimed that the error was a DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL in tcpip.sys, but we know that that wasn’t the cause of the crash.
They had both got to the point where the Driver Verifier had to be run again. On the first attempt, the process had identified an Avira driver, although after removing and reinstalling the anti-virus program, the crashes continued. I had found other dodgy things in the Event Viewer, but solving them didn’t get rid of the BSODs.
Now that I’m back from holidayâand with Windows 10 crashing one more time and costing me more work that hadn’t been backed upâI gave Driver Verifier one more go.
I had been averse to it because of the crashes that resulted from it, and had a sense it would tell me the same thing it had in December.
True to form, Windows wouldn’t even load and it BSODed during the boot. But this time, running Windbg on the dump file revealed something called mobk.sys (Mozy Change Monitor Filter Driver), part of a program called Mozy.
I’ve never heard of Mozy, but it appears to be a back-up program. Checking my driver, it dates from April 2010 and was installed in 2012âaround the time I bought the computer.
It could well have been installed by me as part of a bundle, or by PB (the retailer).
Mozy wasn’t helpful. They have a forum, but when you sign up to use it, you get to a page where they want to charge you US$109 for one of their plans. Personally, if I was making software, I’d want reports from people like me. It’s not as though the question was complex: I wanted to know if it made sense to delete the offending driver in safe mode, or maybe download a trial version of their program, then remove it, in the hope that the driver would be overwritten and deleted. It’s only been a couple of hours since I Tweeted them, so I don’t expect any replies till tomorrow.
Rather than wait, I popped into safe mode and deleted mobk.sys from the system32\drivers folder.
These errors are deeply frustrating and in direct contrast to the stability that my Imacs have exhibited. Even though I’ve tired of OS X, at least I wasn’t losing work because of three to six BSODs per day.
The advice I can give to others is to create a system restore point, then run the Driver Verifier, and repeat the two processes until a culprit has been identified.
There are a few silver linings to this: I got rid of certain software which might have been insecure, and the random resets were quite handy in “clearing” the PC sometimes when I was doing work on it remotely.
I wonder what had changed in Windows between the spring and fall Creators updates that generated this very serious problem. I haven’t seen Windows crash this often since a dying laptop, on Vista, needed a fresh OS installation (it now runs Ubuntu). I’m still of the mind that Microsoft shipped a lemon, given that I’ve had no end of problems with this OS since it launched, from inconsistent behaviour (Windows 10 would originally be different each time it booted up, from Cortana settings to which keyboard it believed I was using), to very difficult updates (Anniversary took 11 attempts on this PC and never made it on to my laptop even after 40 attempts; it only updated to Creators because all other updates would fail).
While I can understand that there was no way either Mozy or Microsoft could have checked on a 2010 driver for compatibility, and there are so many configurations of Windows out there, there’s still no escaping that Windows 10 could have shipped with fewer bugs. Happily, as it turned out, the troubleshooting procedures may have worked, even if things wound up taking a month.
I’ll blog again if I’m wrong about Mozy.
PS. (January 18): After 24-plus hours with no crashes, I got another one, with the same message. Following my own advice, I ran the driver verifier again. Windbg pointed this time to Oracle Virtualbox. I intentionally ran an older version of this because since 2015, no newer version would work due to its hardening feature. Faced with no choice but to update, it had the same error which, finally, I traced to Mactype. This was the error, for those searching:
The virtual machine ‘Windows XP’ has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code -1073741819 (0xc0000005). More details may be available in ‘C:\Users\User\VirtualBox VMs\Windows XP\Logs\VBoxHardening.log’.
Result Code:
E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component:
MachineWrap
Interface:
IMachine {85cd948e-a71f-4289-281e-0ca7ad48cd89}
The key is to insert these three lines into Mactype.ini:
[UnloadDll]
VirtualBox.exe
VBoxSvc.exe
The error also picked up that there were McAfee drivers left behind from what should have been a full removal. I ran mcpr.exe, found in a thread with the ever-helpful Peter (Exbrit on the McAfee forums). Mcpr.exe did not remove the three drivers, so I took them out manually (despite this going against expert advice): mfeclnrk.sys, mfencbdc.sys and mfencrk.sys. There was also a driver from Malwarebytes, which I downloaded after expert advice in the wake of the damage done by Facebook and its forced download in 2016. Malwarebytes had to be removed with a program called mb-clean as it didn’t show up in the Windows 10 programs’ list.
One important point: when the system restored itself after the latest crash, it appeared the old mobk.sys reinstalled itself into system32\drivers. I removed it again in safe mode. I’ve since created multiple restore points so hopefully none of the now-removed drivers resurface to cause problems again.
I am very happy that I’m running the latest Virtualbox, too, since posting in 2015 resulted in no solid leads. It’s why I’m posting all of this stuff, in the hope others find it useful.âJY
P.PS. (January 22): No crashes for three days, I update both the Microsoft and Bleeping Computer threads with the good news, and within nine minutes, bam! Oracle VM Virtualbox is to blame again, if the driver verifier is accurate. That was yesterday. Today, I attempted to remove the program from the Windows Control Panel. Merely removing it caused three BSODs for three attempts, literally within minutes of each other. I booted into safe mode once, tried to remove it (I couldn’t), then back to the regular mode. I was then able to remove Virtualbox. I have since reinstalled itâlet’s see what happens next.âJY
P.P.PS. (January 23): Two BSODs this afternoon, still so very disappointed software is this unreliable today. Removing a networking driver from Virtualbox has made no difference. Same error as before. I haven’t re-run driver verifier, but I have now updated MacType to the latest version and double-checked the ini file changes are still there.âJY
P.P.P.PS. (January 24): MacType update did nothing. Bwv848 recommends removing Oracle Virtualbox altogether. I may have to do that, and reinstall it only when I need it, and see what happens. Sumit at Microsoft has given up for the time being.âJY
P.P.P.P.PS. (January 25): After one more crash despite some tweaking of the power options last night, I removed Oracle Virtualbox this morning. There were five remaining drivers that removal did not address, two from the latest version (VBoxNetAdp6.sys and VBoxNetLwf.sys) and three from the old one (VBoxNetAdp.sys, VBoxNetFlt.sys and VBoxUSB.sys). I manually removed them. No crashes since, though I will be interested to know if reinstalling, without any of the old drivers present, will make a difference.âJY
P.P.P.P.P.PS. (January 26): Got to its first crash by 11.45 a.m. Driver verifier now blames CLVirtualDrive.sys. Found one user on Virtualbox’s forum who had the DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL crash but the mod doesn’t like me helping out (very protective people, who don’t like their favourite software criticized). A system restore saw Oracle Virtualbox return, even though I made a restore point long after I deleted it. Let’s see what CLVirtualDrive.sys is. Four BSODs before noon. Man from Mozy got back to meâthe first contact other than on Twitterâbecause they wound up spamming me and never responded to my original support question. Amazing how a few eventsâincluding Facebook’s forced download in 2016âhave directly led to this time-wasting point in 2018.âJY
Enough postscripts. The next episode of the saga is here.
Tags: 2010, 2017, 2018, Apple, Avira, bug, bugs, error, errors, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Oracle, PB Technologies, software
Posted in technology, USA | 3 Comments »
30.12.2017
Many years ago, I was locked out of Facebook for 69 hours. It was completely a Facebook database problem, but in those days, they just locked you out without any explanation. It happened on a Friday. I believed I would not get back in till Facebook staff got back to work on Mondayâand I was right. This is a company that seems to close down for the weekend, and the important techs don’t get back till afterwards. It also doesn’t understand the concept of time zones, as six years ago, Facebook walls stopped working on the 1st of each month in every time zone ahead of Pacific Standard Time.
As it’s the weekend before the Gregorian New Year, Facebook’s probably closed again, so if their databases mess up, you could be stuck till Monday. Maybe later.
Except these days, I believe they run another con altogether, as I explained in 2016.
The theory: they now shift the blame to their users, by saying their computers are infected with malware, and forcing a malware scanner download on us. No one knows what this scanner actually does, but I know first-hand that it wrecks your real anti-virus program. I know first-hand that when Facebook and its scanner providers (which once included Kaspersky) are questioned on it, they clam up or they delete comments. I also know for a fact that others can log in to their Facebook accounts on the same “infected” PCs. All this is in earlier posts.
Some affected users over the last few years have said that they could wait this out, and three days seem to be the standard period (though some were out for a month). That sounds awfully close to 69 hours, which I was out for in 2014.
If word got out that their databases were this fragile, their share price would tumble.
In a year when Apple has had to apologize for short battery life on their Iphones, and sexual predators in Hollywood got outed, maybe we could finish off 2017 with Facebook having to apologize for lying to its users about just what this scanner does. Because we also know that people who have legitimate malware scannersâincluding ones supplied by Facebook’s “partners”âhave usually reported their PCs were clean.
Today is the day of the perfect storm: if there is a big database outage at Facebook, it’s the weekend, and no one is around to fix it. For whatever reason, thousands of people have been receiving Facebook’s malware-scan message, telling them their computers are infected: today has seen the biggest spike ever in users getting this, beginning 14 hours ago.
In my two years following this bug, I haven’t noticed any real common thread between affected users.
With Facebook’s old bug, where walls stopped working on the 1st of each month, there was a particularly noticeable rise in reports on Getsatisfaction when 2011 ticked over to 2012âprobably because no one was at work at Facebook to switch 2011 over to 2012. (I wonder if it had to be done manually. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me.)
While some of this is admittedly guesswork, because none of the companies involved are saying a thing, there are just too many coincidences.
Let’s sum up again.
⢠When certain Facebook accounts died three to four years ago, you were locked out, and this took roughly three days to fix (in my case, I got hit at a weekend, so nothing happened till Monday after a Friday bug). These bugs were account-specific.
⢠On January 1, 2012, Facebook walls around the world stopped working and would not show any entries from the new dayâtill it became January 1, 2012 in California, 21 hours behind the first group of people affected. It seems there is some manual tinkering that needs to go on with Facebook.
⢠Today, Facebook accuses people of having malware on their systems and demands they download a scanner. Yet we also know that others can log in to their Facebook accounts on the same “infected” machines. Conclusion: those computers are probably not infected as the lock-outs are account-specific. If it’s account-specific, then that leads me to believe it’s a database relating to that person.
⢠When people refuse to download Facebook’s scanner, many of their accounts come back online afterâyou guessed itâthree days. Ergo, they were probably never infected: Facebook lied to them.
⢠Those that do download the scanner cannot find it in their installed programs’ lists. Neither Facebook nor their scanner partners have ever come clean about what this program actually does or why it needs to reside in a hidden directory on Windows.
⢠It is December 30, 2017, and it’s a weekend, and there’s a spike in users getting this warning. It began, noticeably, 14 hours ago. It’s very hard to believe so many got infected at the same time by the same bug: even a regular virus, or the real malware that gets spread through Facebook, doesn’t have this pattern. It all points back to something happening on Facebook. My reckoning is that this won’t be fixed till January 1, 2018 or afterwards.
⢠Facebook is the home of fake accountsâit’s very easy to find bots and spammers. Logically, if resources are used to host the bots, then that means fewer resources for the rest of us, and potential database problems.
If you are stuck, I recommend you read the postscripts and relevant comments to my earlier posts: here and here.
Tags: 2010s, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2017, bug, bugs, error, Facebook, law, privacy, social media, social networking, software, transparency, USA
Posted in internet, technology, USA | 8 Comments »
23.11.2015
I have never seen a program as inconsistent as Microsoft’s Cortana.
We were always taught that computers were very logical, that they all followed a certain set of code each time.
Not so Cortana, which has had more different behaviours than anything I have ever seen.
When I run into technical issues, itâs the fault of certain parties for failing to anticipate the behaviour of ordinary people or for adopting a head-in-the-sand position to bugs that are very real or crooked company policies. These have been covered many times on this blog, such as Six Apartâs old Vox site refusing to accept a log-in, or Facebook ceasing to allow likes and comments; and then thereâs the human dishonesty that drove Googleâs failures on Blogger and Ads Preferences Manager.
This still fits into those categories, as Microsoftâs engineers on its forums are peddling standard responses, none of which actually work. One even damaged my start menu and forced a system restore.
The bugs are so varied, and that to me is strange. Normally bugs will take one form and one form only. Address that, and your problem is solved.
However, Cortana has done the following.
Day 1. Refused to work, with Windows saying US English was not supported (curious, given itâs an American program). I downloaded the UK English language pack. Worked perfectly for the rest of the day. How novel.
Day 2. Refused to work, but prompted me to set up again, and then it worked.
Day 3. Cortana becomes deaf. No prompts to set up again, but I do it anyway. It works again.
Day 4. I play with the microphone settings (by âplayâ I mean clicking on a setting but not actually changing it) and Cortana would work intermittently.
Day 5. Cortana would not work except at night, and I play the movie quiz.
Day 6. Cortana claims my Notebook is inaccessible because I am offline. Clearly I wasnât offline because I was doing stuff online.
Day 7, daytime. Cortana refuses to answer and sends all queries to Bing. The Notebook screen just displays animated ellipses.
Day 7, evening. Cortana works after I plug in my headphones (which has a microphone). After I unplug it, my regular webcam microphone starts picking up my voice again. Cortana works again.
Day 8. Cortana hears me say âHey, Cortana,â but then just goes to âThinkingâ for minutes on end. It might display, âSomethingâs not right. Try again in a little bit,â after all that. Apparently Cortana still cannot retrieve my interests because I am âoffline,â which is amazing that Iâm posting to this blog right now.
The microphones work with other programs. And browsing the Windows forums, this has been going on since July. The November service pack was supposed to have fixed a lot of issues, but clearly not.
Iâll be fascinated to see what it does tomorrow. But I am tired of the BS that their techs are dishing out as âsolutionsâ. I’m being reminded why I don’t use Word or Outlook: because I have a short fuse when it comes to crap.
PS.: Day 9, same as day 8. Day 10, asked a few set-up questions (again) and it works, though âThinkingâ still came up for a few seconds on the first go. Day 11, worked without intervention (amazing!). Day 12, see day 7 (evening).âJY
Tags: 2015, bug, bugs, computing, error, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, software
Posted in India, internet, technology, USA | 2 Comments »
24.12.2014
Rather than repeat the story in new words, here is a draft of the post that was sent to Cyberfox’s support forum.
The short story: Cyberfox no longer displays text as of this morning after working well for its first evening yesterday after installation for the first time. Glyphs that are not from a @font-face linked font will not show, so if a page is calling fonts from the system, the browser displays blank text. Nothing happened overnight. I switched the machine off, and when I switched it on again, Cyberfox exhibits this behaviour.
The long story: in 2011, Firefox had a bug which meant there was no backward compatibility with PostScript Type 1 fonts (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=628091). This is very similar to that except the text areas are blank, rather than filled with squares or hex codes.
About two Firefox versions ago (I am guessing v. 32), the browser stopped showing text. I switched to Waterfox, which lasted one more version before it, too, stopped showing text. I downloaded Cyberfox last night and was truly pleased that here was a Firefox-based browser that actually worked. Text displayed as normal, and these were my Type 1, TrueType and OpenType fonts. To top it off, Cyberfoxâs rasterizer and the way it handled sub-pixel rendering was superior to that of the other two browsers (see my blog post at http://jackyan.com/blog/2014/12/switching-to-cyberfox-after-waterfox-and-firefox-stopped-displaying-text/ for two screen shots of the type). Naturally, I was over the moon and made Cyberfox my default.
Just to be on the safe side, I turned off hardware acceleration as when I posted the above bug to Mozilla Support, I was told that that could be a culprit. I made no change to OMTC.
Today, as mentioned, Cyberfox has become just another Firefox where no text is displayed. But the really weird thing is that the typography, for the type that does show, is identical to Firefox and Cyberfox: the superior rendering is gone.
Also, Iâve since altered the font family I use as a default for Windows displays to OpenType (I work in fonts), so there should no longer be an backward-incompatibility issue. Nvidia updated one of its drivers today, so I let that happen, and confirmed that all my drivers are up to date.
Reinstallation (while keeping profile data) actually fixes everything: the type is back, rasterized more sharply,
I was using Australis as the theme but have since gone back to classic.
Iâd be grateful for any light you can shed on this as Iâm keen to stay within the Firefox 64-bit family. Whatever makes Cyberfox display better than the other two immediately after installation (though not after a reboot) solves this major problem of no type appearing.
The different rendering method is the fix. The questions are: why does Cyberfox render type differently if it’s Mozilla Firefox-based? And why does rebooting my computer change this setting?
Tags: 2014, bug, Cyberfox, error, fonts, Microsoft Windows, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, software, typography, web fonts
Posted in internet, technology, typography | No Comments »
09.01.2014
A month or so ago, our Feedburner stats for Lucireâs RSS feed delivery tanked. I put it down to the usual “Google being useless”, because we would have expected to see the opposite. The take-up of Feedburner feeds has usually slowly grown since we started this one in 2007, without any promotion on our end.
I clicked through the Feedburner link on the site this morning to discover this:
That’s not our site. Maybe on seeing the wrong content, we lost a bunch of subscribers?
Now, I did change the ID for the feed, but that was last week, not December 11â12. Maybe I’m naĂŻve, but I don’t expect Google to allow the hijacking of a feed ID that rapidly, since Google forbids, for example, people taking up old Blogger names. Unless they have inconsistent policies between their properties? Or maybe Feedburner is broken and dyingâthe complaints have been coming for a long time.
Now’s a good time to check your feeds anyway, if you use Google’s Feedburner service, to make sure that they are still serving the correct sites.
The changes did not affect those who were getting Feedburner updates via their email (since I’m on that mailing list myself).
Since I can’t trust Google with anything, we’ve changed our RSS feed to the one natively supported by Wordpress.
Tags: bug, error, Google, internet, Lucire, publishing, website, Wordpress
Posted in internet, publishing | 3 Comments »
21.06.2012
I realize software crashes can happen to anyone at any time, even Microsoft Windows president Steve Sinofsky, when demonstrating the new Microsoft Surface tablets in front of an audience in Los Angeles.
However, it does remind me of the year where Internet Explorer 9 would not work on any of our computers. The question must be asked: if one of Microsoft’s own bosses can’t get Internet Explorer to work, what hope do the rest of us have?
Tags: bug, California, error, humour, Internet Explorer, Los Angeles, Microsoft, software, USA, web browser
Posted in humour, internet, technology, USA | 2 Comments »
19.12.2011
I seem to be putting the major news events on my Facebook as public posts these days, such as the passing of Kim Jong Il or the Murdoch Press phone-tapping scandal. Since Facebook introduced public sharing in August, I’m having a rethink about what each outlet means. What is this blog for? What is my Tumblr for?
The things that used to go on my Vox blog were the problems I had with websites, which I have a knack of either crashing, or finding major bugs that no one seems to have confronted.
Last month, I found that I could no longer tag myself in a particular photograph in Facebook and had to ask a friend to do it for me. She obliged, and that worked.
Today, that became harder still. It turns out that even if someone else tags you, the tag won’t “stick”.
I had been uploading some old photos after our new Microtek Scanmaker 5800 arrived. I realize that scanner buffs will tell me it’s not new, but let’s just say I’m the first owner, and I wanted a unit that would plug into the existing LAN without any changes of software.
I put up a photograph. So far so good. I could tag myself. But the minute I added a friend’s name in the caption, or a date, or a location, my tag disappeared.
Facebook has had problems with tagging since the beginning. I still have photographs where Facebook has among the tags my name (unlinked), then my name again (linked). Some photos I had to tag twice before Facebook “remembered” who it was.
This time, even when a friend tagged me, the tag would not “stick”. I approved it each time, but it would vanish. A friend even saw it disappear from her ticker at exactly that moment. It would also disappear from my Facebook journal: there’d be an ‘Approve all’ button, but nothing below that to approve.
As usual, I have found out what is wrong. And Facebook doesn’t know, or doesn’t care. I’m pasting the solution, as I did when I discovered Facebook blocked me from selecting Limited Profile two weeks ago, in case anyone else comes across this problem.
In this and the previous case, I have told Facebook. Here is what I wrote (italics added):
If you have your privacy settings thus:
Tag review: On
Facebook can check you in to places using the Mobile Places app: Off
any tags you make of yourself will disappear the minute you add a date or a location.
Any attempts to re-tag will not work.
The only way to then have the tag âstickâ is to turn tag review off and have a friend tag you.
Then, you manually approve the tag (which is a bit odd, since turning the tag review off would imply that you wouldnât need to review the tag), during which Facebook will ask if you want the Mobile Places check-in turned on. You answer in the affirmative.
Then, and only then, can a dated, location-added photograph be tagged with your own name.
In other words, as I told a friend: ‘OK, hereâs what you have to do: turn off your verification in the privacy settings. Sign on as someone else. Tag yourself. Sign out. Sign back in as yourself. Say yes to Facebook asking if you want to turn mobile tagging on. Approve the tag. Go back into your privacy. Turn off mobile tagging. Turn on verification. Do not add location, do not pass go.’
I’m not the only one this has happened to, and presently the above appears to be the only answer.
I’m not terribly sure when I became Facebook’s QC department. Mark, where’s my cheque?
Tags: blogosphere, bugs, error, Facebook, internet, social media, social networking
Posted in internet, technology, USA | 10 Comments »
01.11.2011
I know Iâm not alone on this, as I have heard from two other Facebook friends, but Facebook has trouble getting to a new month with Timeline.
Ever since my Facebook went to November 1, Timeline stopped updating. What rests there is the last post of October 31.
Earlier today, I could still have a look at November entries by forcing the URL www.facebook.com/jack.yan/timeline/2011/11, but that eventually stopped working, too.
There’s no November entry in the month links at the top right-hand corner, either.
The only way I can see my Facebook entries is in the full history. Yet no one seems to have reported this bug, which only happens on the 1st of the month. Looks like Iâll have to.
PS.: Facebook Timeline finally made it to November, presumably because the US west coast got there. I assume Facebook is unaware that there are a lot of time zones ahead of Pacific time?
Tags: bug, computing, error, Facebook, internet, social media, social networking
Posted in internet, technology, USA | 14 Comments »
21.04.2011
The bug I wrote about a few days ago that’s emerging when I use Autocade is now filed with Telstra Clearâand it’s been escalated.
For years I would report various faults, including with Telstra Clear, and I would not be believed. What a difference now that I am believed.
For around two years, no one at Telstra Clear believed me when I told them that the internet went down when it was windy. They kept blaming me and how I used my computer. I guess the wisdom was that wind caused computer operator misuse. Until one day, I said, ‘I know what your script says. I have done [x, y and z]. Now, here’s what I want you to do.’ The technician came down from Palmerston North and confirmed there was a loose wire. He then called another technician. Zero marks for efficiency, though the error was eventually fixed.
Or the Vox error, which went on for months in 2009, blocking me from using the service. When I complained to Six Apart, which ran the now-defunct blogging platform, it was apparently my fault. Or my ISP’s. Or the internet’s. Until, again after a long, long time, I gave them my username and password. Only then did they confirm that something was wrong: they could not log on as me even from their own HQ.
Even Mozilla took its time, though happily, when they got on to it, they were remarkably quick in solving my reported bugs. And these days, I find I am not disbelieved there.
Now that Lucire is on Cloudflare, I’m also finding that speedy service and, last night, confirmation that they did, indeed, suffer a DDOS attack. There are no doubts there, eitherâjust rapid acknowledgements and very personal service, answering my concerns about various settings, the Google bot, and the way Cloudflare works.
The latest one is the Google Ads Preferences Manager, though I was told today at our monthly Vista lunch by Jim Donovan that he had been checking his, and found that his opt-out had been respected. I wonder if Google is only respecting the choices of Chrome users.
I have had a few friends discover their Ads Preferences Manager behave the same way as it does for me, but maybe there are some people for whom it’s working.
Nevertheless, the Network Advertising Initiative, to whom I have informed of this issue, has not responded, which I imagine amounts to being disbelieved.
All I can say to the disbelievers is this: I am a reasonably intelligent person. I have been playing and working with computers since 1978. That means, if I say there is a bug with your service, there is a greater chance that I am right, than there is for your belief that I mucked up.
This time, it’s plain nice for Telstra Clear to come back to me without questioning how I use my computer. Or saying I pressed the wrong button. Or used the wrong finger in pressing that button. Here’s hoping it can be resolved for, as the tech told me yesterday, it’s very hard to identify an intermittent error. (However, today it is not intermittent: I have been consistently unable to get on to Autocade without adding www to its URL.) From my point of view, it’s just great that the right people are dealing with the right issue in my world.
Tags: advertising, Autocade, bug, California, Cloudflare, customer service, error, Google, internet, Jim Donovan, Lucire, New Zealand, Six Apart, Telstra Clear, USA, Vista Group, Vox
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