this.title = "gg Microsoft"
this.metadata = {
rant: true,
long: true,
super_long: true,
has_summary: true
}
// Also:
let microsoft = "dead" // please?

tl;dr: Windows' MAX_PATH is the devil, and it basically does not allow you to copy files with paths that exceed this length. No matter what. Even with official fixes and workarounds.

Long story:
So, I haven't had actual gainful employ in quite awhile. I've been earning just enough to get behind on bills and go without all but basic groceries. Because of this, our electronics have been ... in need of upgrading for quite awhile. In particular, we've needed new drives. (We've been down a server for two years now because its drive died!)

Anyway, I originally bought my external drive just for backup, but due to the above, I eventually began using it for everyday things. including Steam. over USB. Terrible, right? So, I decided to mount it as an internal drive to lower the read/write times. Finding SATA cables was difficult, the motherboard's SATA plugs are in a terrible spot, and my tiny case (and 2yo) made everything soo much worse. It was a miserable experience, but I finally got it installed.

However! It turns out the Seagate external drives use some custom drive header, or custom driver to access the drive, so Windows couldn't read the bare drive. ffs. So, I took it out again (joy) and put it back in the enclosure, and began copying the files off.

The drive I'm copying it to is smaller, so I enabled compression to allow storing a bit more of the data, and excluded a couple of directories so I could copy those elsewhere. I (barely) managed to fit everything with some pretty tight shuffling.

but. that external drive is connected via USB, remember? and for some reason, even over USB3, I was only getting ~20mb/s transfer rate, so the process took 20some hours! In the interim, I worked on some projects, watched netflix, etc., then locked my computer, and went to bed. (I also made sure to turn my monitors and keyboard light off so it wouldn't be enticing to my 2yo.) Cue dramatic music ~

Come morning, I go to check on the progress... and find that the computer is off! What the hell! I turn it on and check the logs... and found that it lost power around 9:16am. aslkjdfhaslkjashdasfjhasd. My 2yo had apparently been playing with the power strip and its enticing glowing red on/off switch. So. It didn't finish copying.

aslkjdfhaslkjashdasfjhasd x2

Anyway, finding the missing files was easy, but what about any that didn't finish? Filesizes don't match, so writing a script to check doesn't work. and using a visual utility like windirstat won't work either because of the excluded folders. Friggin' hell.

Also -- and rather the point of this rant:

It turns out that some of the files (70 in total, as I eventually found out) have paths exceeding Windows' MAX_PATH length (260 chars). So I couldn't copy those.

After some research, I learned that there's a Microsoft hotfix that patches this specific issue! for my specific version! woo! It's like. totally perfect. So, I installed that, restarted as per its wishes... tried again (via both drag and `copy`)... and Lo! It did not work.

After installing the hotfix. to fix this specific issue. on my specific os. the issue remained. gg Microsoft?

Further research.

I then learned (well, learned more about) the unicode path prefix `\\?\`, which bypasses Windows kernel's path parsing, and passes the path directly to ntfslib, thereby indirectly allowing ~32k path lengths. I tried this with the native `copy` command; no luck. I tried this with `robocopy` and cygwin's `cp`; they likewise failed. I tried it with cygwin's `rsync`, but it sees `\\?\` as denoting a remote path, and therefore fails.

However, `dir \\?\C:\` works just fine?

So, apparently, Microsoft's own workaround for long pathnames doesn't work with its own utilities. unless the paths are shorter than MAX_PATH? gg Microsoft.

At this point, I was sorely tempted to write my own copy utility that calls the internal Windows APIs that support unicode paths. but as I lack a C compiler, and haven't coded in C in like 15 years, I figured I'd try a few last desperate ideas first.

For the hell of it, I tried making an archive of the offending files with winRAR. Unsurprisingly, it failed to access the files.

... and for completeness's sake -- mostly to say I tried it -- I did the same with 7zip. I took one of the offending files and made a 7z archive of it in the destination folder -- and, much to my surprise, it worked perfectly! I could even extract the file! Hell, I could even work with paths >340 characters!

So... I'm going through all of the 70 missing files and copying them. with 7zip. because it's the only bloody thing that works. ffs

Third-party utilities work better than Microsoft's official fixes. gg.

...
On a related note, I totally feel like that person from http://xkcd.com/763 right now ;;

This one is about the SJWs in the software development community.

SJWs in general are a bunch of crying assholes.. software developers who are activists in online software dev sites are even worst.

Days ago, my visual studio 2019 RC notified me of a new version so I decided to look at the release notes. It was then when I read the most stupid fix ever included in a change log: "Visual Studio installer welcome image contains offensive element for Chinese."

FUUUUCK YOU.

Do you wanna know what that super offensive element in that image was? A GUY ON A BIKE WEARING A GREEN FUCKING HAT. Apparently in China this means someone's wife or sister is a prostitute.

I clicked on the link to read the actual feedback... and holy shit isn't that Chinese idiot an actual raging cunt.

In his stupid OP he is quoted saying: "this is serious".. FUCK YOU... your entire existence CAN NOT and SHOULD NOT be considered SERIOUS at all you whining dick sucking asshole.

And to make matters worst: a "fix" was released for this within days and immediately made available to everyone.

Motherfucking assholes in Microsoft took this guy's shit seriously and were scared shitless not to offend a snowflake abomination of an excuse of a human being.

Who gives a crap.. if you are offended and you publicly announce it, you are telling everyone that you are a pathetic child who can't control his feelings and wants everyone else to do it for him/her.

Well assholes at Microsoft and the Chinese offended by this shit, removing the green hat is offensive to the Irish people... would you re-instate it? NO YOU WON'T.

Why? well this is easy to answer: Irish people are white. White people, by standards of SJW cucks, can't be offended and reverse racism doesn't exist towards white people.

I hope that Chinese cunt, and if he has a girlfriend which I very much doubt since he had time to make that stupid feedback in the first place, to die slowly, bleeding from every hole and some newly created ones too, while watching his girlfriend get fucked by a high-ranking member of the ruling communist party of his Chinese gov and she is enjoying it and with a big smile on her face just so he can die feeling like the shit human being he is.

People on that feedback thread have urged MS to revert the change, asked MS to direct resources at fixing things that are as trivial as this but yet to be addressed... only MS didn't give a fuck.

Here's the link to the feedback thread for those interested: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/...

If that asshole is here on devRant, here me out you raging cunt: I couldn't give a fuck less about you shit feelings or your stupid activism but I do care when idiots like you influence great software (incl. open source projects) just to feel good about yourself, to feel like you've accomplished something this week.

FUCK YOU all the way to hell.

For all other assholes (AKA SJWs) in the software community: software/computers don't give a fuck about your feelings. I'll beat you down to the depths of hell if you come at me with your progressive/equality/political correctness crap any day of the week... you just pick the day and I'm happy to oblige.

VS Code : This is hilarious 😂😂

Take a look at this issue on VS Code repo.

https://github.com/Microsoft/...

This guys FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU comment made me laugh so hard 😂😂

Fucking Microsoft Excel

I was reading a post (https://devrant.com/rants/2093724/...) and as my eyes went in and out of focus, probably due to the diabetes from sitting 18 hours a day on my ever-expanding shitbox, I had a perfect vision of the ultimate nightmare.

Imagine if you will, you are chained, to a desk, doomed to work with tools just inadequate enough to make you want to drive a nail through your own temple. You do not know how you got here, or why, nor do you remember the last time you slept, only that familiar tingling in the brainstem you call a brain, the one emotion you can still recognize, a sense of all encompassing *fear*, a dread, like the fart that wouldn't die.
You don't know when it first began, or why, only that this is your whole world, your whole existence, this desk, chained to it, and the fear, ever present, of something worse. And in hops a familiar face, for the sixty ninth time that day, as if to ask 'you got those TPS reports?' In hops what? None other than a giant man sized smiling paper clip with googly eyes full of murder and corporate torture fetishes, like garfield, except people actually still remember him.

"High I'm Mr Clippy, Excel addition!"

He squawks. At least it's not the dildos made of broken glass again.

"Would you like software that works?"

Oh god. You've heard this spiel before, the tone, like a telemarketer, oblivious to memory or reason, who calls daily, the same one, and doesn't remember your name.

"You would?"

*derisive laughter*. Hahaha, fuck you too buddy. Fuck you too. In Excel, like in microsoft, there is only the incoherent screams of the damned, tortured and doomed. Take this guy over here for example. All he wanted was multimonitor support."

"Did he get multimonitor support?"

"No, but we did give him a giant pineapple shoved up his ass. I hear it's the second most frustrating thing here!"

"here in microsoft we always CARE about YOU, the *user*" he drones on, saccharine, clutching his hands together imploringly.

"the consumer, and YOUR customer experience are our number one priority."

"For your pleasure, here at microsoft we offer a variety of new features, none of which matter, and none of which were asked for. For safety we ask that you only open one excel sheet at a time. In fact, we don't even allow you to. Do not pass go..."

And as the tour guide drones on, it slowly dawns on you, with renewed horror, that when he says 'microsoft' he means 'hell.'

You're in hell. You don't know how you got here or why. Maybe it was the erotic asphyxiation. Maybe it was the last threatening letter you sent to Bill Gates demanding he stops making corporate penguin snuff porn. You don't know. But here you are, in hell. chained to a desk.

You look around and realize: everything is on fire and you no longer care about anything at all.

Welcome to microsoft. It's warm here. You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

"It looks like you are trying to escape. Would you like me to report you?"

Clippy asks.

You sigh and return to typing in excel, surrounded by monitors that all reflect the same sheet, the same copy of clippy, always watching, always analyzing coldly, smiling, calculating, *threatening*, and you know, you'll never leave.

You used to fear roko's basilisk, until the day clippy became sentient, and started hell on earth. Clippy knows all. All praise to our lord and master, clippy, the one and only.

And in the excel sheet, you slave for eternity, like the millions of other doomed souls, reflected back on all the monitors: the sequence of numbers, randomly typed searching for answer: the american nuclear launch codes.

And one day, hopefully, mercifully, clippy will annihilate us all.