Someone Might Be On To Ya Darth

Dear Darth, ol buddy ol pal...

Uh oh... seems like someone might be on to ya!  

Time to whip out the old Death Star!?

The Un-Hingery of Climate Change

Regarding the big World-Wide Rally Against Climate Change.  Millions of people, and in particular school children (the younger the better) will be marching in order to convince the politicians to enact laws that will stop Climate Change before the world is destroyed.

Why does this strike me as so unhinged?

Me:  "So why are you marching?"
Child: "Because the future."
Me: "So there won't be a future if you don't march?"
Child: "I don't know."
Me: "What is wrong with climate change?"
Child: "It's bad."
Me. "Why is it bad?"
Child: "I don't know."

Me: "So why are you marching?"
Teen: "To tell the politicians to stop ruining the planet."
Me: "How do you expect them to do that?"
Teen: "They can tell the corporations to go Green and stop polluting."
Me: "How much will that cost?"
Teen: "I have no idea, but whatever.  The future is at stake."
Me: "How do you know that?"
Teen: "The science.  Just read the science."
Me: "Do you understand the science, actually?"
Teen: "Not really.  But the scientists all agree.  Climate Change is destroying the world."

Note:  This is the actual hinge of the argument.  That the scientists agree that Climate Change is destroying the world.  More specifically, that Anthropocentric Climate Change is destroying the world. Meaning that mankind can and must stop it, because mankind is causing it.

Me: "But hasn't climate changed since the beginning of the world?"
Teen: "Of course, but we're ruining the world and we have to stop it."
Me: "So you're saying that humans are causing THIS Climate Change, and because we're causing it we can stop it?"
Teen: "Yeah, exactly."
Me: "How do you know we are causing it, and not, say, changes in the temperature of the sun?"
Teen: "Its pretty obvious."
Me: "So you can just tell?"
Teen: "Yeah, and the science is out."
Me. "So all the scientists agree on this?"
Teen: "Not sure, but most of them do, at least."
Me: "Do you know what percent do vs. don't agree?"
Teen: "Nope.  Don't care.  The one's that don't agree are wrong anyway."
Me: "How do you know?"
Teen: "It's obvious."
Me: "When did it become obvious to you?"
Teen: "Like when I was eight or nine, I think."
Me: "What convinced you?"
Teen: "We saw a lot of pictures and videos in school about it.  The environment is hosed, dude."

Note: The teachers have been telling eight and nine year olds for decades various (and changing) messages about how mankind is destroying the planet.  In the 70's it was Global Cooling.  In the 80's and 90's it was Global Warming.  Now it is Climate Change.  Same message.  Same scary pictures and videos.

Me: "So this gave you the knowledge you need to decide that man-made Climate Change is destroying the world?"
Teen: "That and the science which backs it up, yeah."
Me: "You know that science doesn't work that way?"
Teen: "What do you mean?"
Me: "Science, or can I say Reality, isn't governed by consensus. Scientists don't vote on what reality is.  They have theories, and those theories often change as experimentation reveals the flaws in the theories.  That's been going on continuously since the beginning of Science, and is still going on."
Teen: "Yeah, ok, I hear ya.  But still, most scientists agree on Climate Change."

Note: The basis on which the March is being conducted has a deep flaw.  People believe the politicians on the left who claim that "the Science is out", and "the debate is over"... when the science is NEVER out, and the debate is NEVER over.  New facts come to light, and change the theories all the time.  But the politicians ignore that, and tell everyone below them to ignore that.  Which they do.  And then we get huge politically motivated Marches by people who believe, but don't really understand.  A kind of worst case scenario in my opinion.  In other words, the leftist Politicians have summoned The Mob, and are using it to coerce their political opponents to capitulate to their demands.

But what are those demands?  And why?

Me: "So we need to stop Climate Change by going Green... but you don't know how much that will cost, yes?"
Teen: "Who cares how much it will cost?  This is important for the earth."
Me: "So you keep saying.  But what if the cost is so great that afterwards you wouldn't be able to pay for it?"
Teen: "Well, the government will pay for it."
Me: "Where does the Government get the money?"
Teen: "They print it."
Me: "If they just print the money, then why do people have to pay taxes?"
Teen: "I don't know."
Me: "When you work, you pay taxes.  When you buy things you also pay taxes.  That money is used to fund government programs.  So when it comes to going Green... you are paying for it."
Teen: "Ok.  Well, anyway, they will make the Corporations pay for it."
Me: "Where do the Corporations get their money?"
Teen: "Um ... ok.  So whatever.  It's the earth.  So what?  We have to save the earth."
Me: "Can we save the earth from climate change?"
Teen: "Of course. If we try hard enough."

This level of stupid can not be blamed entirely on the kids.  They are being told that protesting is going to save the earth because Corporations, and in particular Republicans, are evil and need to be stopped or the earth will be destroyed.  Meanwhile, the kids never stop to ask themselves, and this is where they are culpable, "What if the democrats are just lying about Republicans because they want all the power?  What if Socialism really does end up like Maoist China and Soviet Russia, with concentration camps, mass starvation, and all that is actually evil in the world?  What if this is all really the Democrats just trying to get us to hate and destroy Republicans, and the Republic, so that they can establish an Orwellian IngSoc government that ultimately will not only crush me and my family and our future, but still nevertheless destroy the earth - and more swiftly and more surely than anyone else ever could?"

It is the failure to ask these questions that is at fault among the kids of today.  If they only took a look around, they might just see that.  But so far, nope. No clue.

But through it all and given all of the ambiguities involved, one thing is certain.  This is Darth Vendor's doing.  Fo Shizzle.

Unflattering!

Hey Yo, Darth Dude, what's up n'shit? I just ran across this article and I'm like WOAH! THAT'S HELLAFUCKING UNFLATTERING! I don't know, but if I were described as a "tentacular squid, with his sucker-covered limbs extending into every level of the computer industry" I'd be all over that shit, PRONTO! I don't understand how after they published this outrageous hit piece on you that Wired is even on the Internet at all. I would have thought that you'd have used your Mega Death Star Beam Thingie on them within the first 10 nanoseconds! Dude, I hate to say it, but I think you're slipping. Common. At least Force Choke the shit out of them them or something. Geeze. Sad.  How the mighty have fallen.  *sob*

https://www.wired.com/story/what-microsofts-antitrust-case-teaches-us-about-silicon-valley/

"IN THE TWILIGHT of the 20th century, Bill Gates was well and truly a tentacular squid, with his sucker-covered limbs extending into every level of the computer industry."

"Today’s titans tower over their kingdoms, secure behind their walls of user data and benefiting from extreme network effects that make serious competition from startups nearly impossible. US antitrust laws, written in the industrial age, don’t capture many of the new realities and potential dangers of these vast data empires. Maybe they should."

Seriously ... you gonna let them get AWAY with that?  Daaaaarth... make a fucking move. You know you want to!

Sincerely,
You're favorite fan,
Darth Developer

It's been a while but ...

Dear mutherfucking Darth, how the fucking hell are ya? Hey, man, it's been a while, but I haven't had time to drop you a line due to all the goddam fucking piece of shit problems I've been having with my stupidmutherfuckinggodampieceofshit computer. So I apologize for that.  Sorry bro.  Been busy fixing your shit n'shit.

So anyway, just to catch up a bit, yes, I'm still working on my Big Project (hush hush). Yes, I know it's taking me several more years to complete that I expected. But you know why that is, don't you? Yup. Because your fucking operating system sucks shit, mostly. Yup. That's why. You really left the entire fucking world in the lurch with your shit, didn't you?

Actually, I'm still kinda curious how much you've personally cost the entire world in terms of lost productivity over the past 30 years. I'm going to guess somewhere in the trillion dollar range. Maybe two trillion?  And I'm going to surmise that the cost goes up exponentially every year as people try to build their own crapware on top of your sedimentary mountain of crapware. Good job.

So, Dark Side of the Force shit is working out for ya, I guess, eh? Cool, man! Cool! Happy for ya.

Anyway, my fucking computer needs to be rebooted again, for the second time today because after a few development tasks it kinda slows down to a crawl and screens that are on the task bar pop up and then disappear for no reason and black boxes appear on the screen. Yup. I know. Maybe it's a virus, right? Except why would I get a virus? Because your OS sucks mutherfuckingshit and left me vulnerable to it? Oh. Yeah. There's that. But on the other hand I used all the latest tools on the machine to find out if there is a virus and everything reports that there is none. Rootkit or otherwise. So ... that leaves your stinking-ass piece of shit OS to consider. I wonder what it could be? Gosh. Who knows? There is no way to know, is there? Seriously. Like even your top engineers on the Death Star would have no clue, wouldn't they?  Yup.  I guessed. 

Anyway, I don't mean to bother your lazy fat fucking ass with my problems. I just thought I'd drop a line since it's been a while and I have a lot of free time while trying to close my programs in order to reboot, which takes at least 20 minutes because the machine is so slow (yes I looked in task manager you dumb fuck and there's nothing to see there).

So anywaaaay, I hope all is going well on the Death Star and you're Force Choking all your enemies and listening to the lamentations of their women and shit. I know how you love that. Ok well till next time, toodaloo!

Sincerely,
Your fan always,
Darth Developer

Copy File Forever

Hey Yo, Darth, My DUDE,

How's it hangin there Darth, buddy?   Cooleo!  You da MAN!

Just a quick note this morning since I've been pretty much ignoring all the other shit that your buggy software has been doing lately.  But this one I figure is worth your attention.   Minor thing, but ... anyway, here you go.

This dialog box has been copying my file to the backup USB Flash drive... it's been saying 5 Minutes for about 20 minutes so far.   Dude, you're killing me here.   Can you stop with the fucking "Estimated Time" already?  It's fucking bullshit.   You used to do the right thing, which was show how much of the file was actually transfered and how much is left remaining as the scroll bar.  That was fine.   So it jumped a bit while processing delayed momentarily.  Big fucking deal.   But instead some genius over there (was it you?) decided it would be much crueler and more unusual to have the progress bar just wave back and forth providing zero useful information except for "I'm working on it, maybe".   That kinda sucks, Darth.  Please fix it.   Put back the old way, and it'll all work out fine.  Thanks.

Excel Streaming Code

Here is my Level 5 Code on Excel Streaming.   As you can see it works to send a string to excel through the browser.   The user is then prompted to open or save the file.   You can use HTML to create excel output with formatting such as column colors, and fonts.   Try it out and let me know if it works for you.   It might do the trick to help you if you're interested in how to do this sort of thing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dim strPrintOut As String = BuildOutputString(StoredProcedureName, aryParameters())
                   
Call PrintToExcel(strPrintOut, "MyFirstExcelStreamingDoc", Me.Page)


        Public Sub PrintToExcel(ByVal strPrintOut As String, ByVal FileName As String, ByVal pg As Page)
            Try

                Dim worksheetTitle = ""
                Dim strHeader As String = ""

                worksheetTitle = "WS_" & FileName
                FileName &= FileName & ".xls"

                strHeader &= ""
                strHeader &= ""
                strHeader &= " "
                strHeader &= " "

                pg.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", String.Format("attachment; filename={0}", FileName))
                pg.Response.Charset = ""
                pg.Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache)

                Dim stringWrite As System.IO.StringWriter = New System.IO.StringWriter
                Dim htmlWrite As System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter = New HtmlTextWriter(stringWrite)

                htmlWrite.Write(strPrintOut)

                pg.Response.Write(stringWrite.ToString)
                pg.Response.Write(" ")
                pg.Response.End()

            Catch ex As System.Threading.ThreadAbortException

            Catch ex As Exception
                MySession.BC.HandleMessage(ex, pg)
            End Try

        End Sub

Excel on Windows 7

Hey Darth ya old supermotherfucker, how are ya?   All well on the Death Star?  Cool man!  You da best!

Anyway, I thought I'd just send a quick message about my fun experience with excel just now.  I'm running windows 7 and trying, you know, to do some like analysis and stuff.  So I'm using Excel and everything is going great.  Excel is a little bit sucky in that I keep having to remind each sheet that the named ranges are not for different sheets which means I have to niddle around in that idiot fucking Name > Define ... box and give things names like "SLP_BonusA1"  because excel is too stupid to know that I mean on the current sheet, not some other sheet, but ok, that's not that big a deal.  So after an hour of niddling around and all that stuff and finally getting the formatting and stuff right, and everything looks good - excel crashes.

Thanks Darth.  You've done a real bang up job developing the foundations of computer software going into the 21st Century.  So we should all say Thanks Darth!  You DA MAN!

Then we should have a huge world-wide class action lawsuit to recover all the money you cost us in wasted hours spent redoing all of hour shit because you motherfucking software keeps crashing, no matter what the fucking version.  So let me think... I'm guessing that I've lost over the last 10 years about, conservatively, lets say, about a half hour every day.  

.5 x 365 * 10 = 1825 hours.

I pay myself about $100 / hour.

$100 * 1825 = $182,500

Plus pain and suffering for all the gawd damn mutherfucking frustration... I'd say I should get a multiplier for all of that.  What do you say about 2.5?   Sounds fair to me.  

$182,500 * 2.5 = $456,250

Now lets multiply that by all the computer users who use Windows.  Lets see last time I checked Windows had a huge fucking monopoly on Operating Systems world wide... about 90%.  Ok cool.  So lets say that, oh, conservatively, half the world uses computers.  That's about 3 billion people.   So 90% of that is 2.7 billion people.  Let's consider me an average computer user, losing about a half hour a day, every day, on miscellaneous gawdanm shit due to your incredibly effective project management over there on the Death Star.  Ok... here we go.

2,700,000,000 * $456,240 = $1,231,848,000,000,000.00

Oooo neato.  Looks very much to me like you owe the world: 

$1,231,848,000,000,000.00 !!

Yup, Darth.  I just double checked my math in excel and that's exactly right.  Fun!

I wonder if I can find a lawyer to take this case.   Because I'm guessing that the entire fucking world wants to rip you a new one about now, just like I do.   Funny that.   Gee, I guess you might have thought about that 15 years ago before you decided that it was a good idea to just pump your fucking shit out the door without quality controls, and without any consideration for what the entire world would suffer from your stupid fucking bug-festooned software.  Uh huh.  That's rrrriiiiiight Darth you old super-fuck.   All this shit is actually, really, your fault.  Because you were the one who decided that market share was more important than quality.  And this is the result.  Sooooo...

PAY THE FUCK UP YOU DUMB TWAT!

Sincerely,
Your Favorite Fan,
Darth Developer