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posted by martyb on Monday May 08 2017, @08:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the PSA dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Microsoft's Edge browser is the subject of an amusing new bug report, alleging it somehow manages to screw up printing strings of numbers.

The report on Microsoft's developer portal describes the issue where PDF files printed through Edge will display numbers and text incorrectly when exported.

"Edge displays PDF correctly but printed content differs notably," the bug notice reads. "Printed content depends on selected printer, on printer settings, and on used computer (please try a different setup if first result looks correct)."

[...] In the meantime, it might be a good idea to use another application to export your PDFs, especially if you're filling out an expense report or making math assignment.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Monday May 08 2017, @10:25AM (20 children)

    by anubi (2828) on Monday May 08 2017, @10:25AM (#506279) Journal

    I still think DOS 6.20 was Microsoft's pinnacle product...

    I could never figure out just why it took a Microsoft so many megabytes and so much processing power to do anything, after seeing how Commodore 64's did similar stuff. They had some quite clever hardware in their VIC chip, and it looked like the way to go for making graphical display standards for computers.

    As graphics chips evolved, they could have more resolution and be able to display more windows simultaneously, spanning multiple VGA ports.

    It sure seemed that Microsoft always took the most inefficient way of doing anything. I wanted so bad to see most of the windowing graphics done in hardware, with minimal software overhead. All standardized for interoperability. With standard drivers all in BIOS, just as they did under DOS.

    Instead, what to me should have been a simple machine morphed into something so damned complex that no-one seems to know how to fix the damned thing.

    And its got so thin-skinned and puny that as much as putting one on the internet without all sorts of antivirus is like sending a sickly kid to school where he comes down with all sorts of diseases the first time he sits in a classroom. Business-grade robustness.

    This is the same disgust I have with the automobile industry, which is starting to do the same thing.

    I do not want to go fullbore luddite, but I sure appreciate simple tools that I can fix if they break.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @10:35AM (14 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Monday May 08 2017, @10:35AM (#506281) Journal

    The WinTel approach seems to be patch just enough to get the next batch of features in and then sell. Only redesign when it's dead stop. Just look at the ATA interface.

    Expecting quality software from Microsoft is like expecting nutritious food from McDonalds.

    The automobile industry is worse because your life will be at stake. But one good start is to rip out any antenna so that the system can't phone home and get one of those CIA "killer" updates. Or Intel strnnncmp() idiots behind the keyboard "fixes".

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday May 08 2017, @10:51AM (2 children)

      by anubi (2828) on Monday May 08 2017, @10:51AM (#506283) Journal

      Expecting quality software from Microsoft is like expecting nutritious food from McDonalds.

      I love that analogy. I gotta admit McDonalds knows how to make anything look and taste good.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @04:27PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08 2017, @04:27PM (#506417)

        It's trendy to hate on McDonald's for offering food many people choose to eat on a daily basis. Of course eating 3,000 kcal every day from a specialized menu at a fast food place isn't going to be healthy no matter which chain it is.

        I've found that McDonald's does have some quality offerings for breakfast at least. Their burgers leave something to be desired imo, but while I know I'm starting my day off with, what is it?, over 1,000 kcal?, I also know that if I get a sausage and egg muffin, I'm getting a cruelty-free, locally produced egg from the exact same farms that sell to supermarkets here and some decent sausage. Haven't tried them, but I hear the hash browns are decent and the oatmeal is surprisingly good.

        I mean, I prefer my own version of that sandwich (same eggs but not mixed with milk prior to frying [roommate is lactose intolerant and I just don't drink milk on a daily basis so there's never any in the house], better quality cheese, same sausage, and a whole grain flatbread bun instead of a "muffin"), but I don't have infinite time and a lot of the time I just want to grab something on the way to work.

        At least when they don't serve me a sandwich they made at 3 AM the previous night that's been sitting under a heat lamp for hours just waiting for me to come along. Had that happen the other day at a location that's usually quite good during breakfast rush, which left me scratching my head wondering if I'd been the only person since midnight including the entire breakfast rush before I got there who ordered that specific sandwich. Ugh, dried out and nearly unpalatable.

        Eh, sorry for going way off topic, just a pet peeve of mine that McDonald's gets all the blame for people's chronically poor dietary choices. McDonald's is simply selling the food people want to buy. I'm sure somebody will accuse me of being a shill in 3... 2... 1...

        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @05:01PM

          by kaszz (4211) on Monday May 08 2017, @05:01PM (#506430) Journal

          The problem is additives, frying, pesticides, GMO and selection of food.

          You can probably use the ham bread as insulation without any mold issues.. ;)

    • (Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Monday May 08 2017, @12:29PM (1 child)

      by art guerrilla (3082) on Monday May 08 2017, @12:29PM (#506310)

      i generally use firefox with adblock, noscript, ghostery, and something else i forget, BUT, when i need to go to 'official' sites to download shit, or go to gummint sites to fill in forms, etc, i fire up a plain vanilla version of Inertnet Exploder/Edge i use expressly and only for those purposes...
      went to do so y'day on a mainstream site (autodesk.com), and the damn thing froze up like a mofo... locked up so tight, task mgr wouldn't start... thought it was a random glitch, but after re-starting twice and doing the same thing, i have to suspect Edge was the reason... (firefox loaded site fine, and got done what i needed without noscript getting in the way...)
      dog damn, i hates me some bill gates... i blame him personally every time windoze fucks up...

      • (Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:10AM

        by anubi (2828) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:10AM (#507423) Journal

        You hit the nail on the head about how poorly coded websites lock up browsers.

        I run NoScript on Firefox. People say I am blocking ads. No. I am blocking scripts.

        If a business started putting "people stoppers" in their parking lot, but some caused me problems with my suspension and hung up my van, are they in any position to blame ME for trying any way I can to avoid their parking lot?

        These invasive ads are the result of a business mentality that says its OK to code whatever the scripts allow them to do and horse around in one's machine.

        However, these same business types would probably be one of the first to complain if I visited their store with a vanfull of invisible kids, who ignored all their "employees only" signs, tried every door they could find, messed with the sales displays, while I took full advantage of the law I got Congress to implement for me that made it a felony to touch a kid, or even disassemble my methods of hiding the kid behind the invisibility cloak of obfuscated code.

        Would I blame the businessman for trying any way he could to keep my troublesome flock of scripts out of his shop?

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 3, Disagree) by Grishnakh on Monday May 08 2017, @03:03PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday May 08 2017, @03:03PM (#506373)

      Expecting quality software from Microsoft is like expecting nutritious food from McDonalds.

      This is a terrible analogy. McDonald's has actually made significant strides here by selling salads, and they also publish nutrition information for their food. MS hasn't made any improvements at all, and they keep all their stuff secret.

      I think a better analogy is that it's like expecting ethical business practices from MS-13.

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @05:27PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Monday May 08 2017, @05:27PM (#506444) Journal

        Large corporations in general seems to compete with MS-13 in ethical matters.. :->

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday May 08 2017, @05:30PM (6 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 08 2017, @05:30PM (#506446) Journal

      That's really the wrong criticism. Redesigns are fertile ground for new bugs. And for misfeatures. New and flashy is usually worse then stable and useful...but it doesn't sell as well.

      The real problem I have with MS is that they don't care much about user security, so they give it just enough priority that they can claim to be making advances. A secondary problem is that they don't care much about usability, or at least that's the impression I get. And a third problem is that they are excessively controlling, but that's a disease that even Linux has picked up. If one of the BSDs could handle ext4 file systems I'd probably be migrating away right now, but it's not yet bad enough that I feel impelled to bite the bullet and do a transfer to a new file system. It does, however, seem clearly headed that way. But perhaps Slackware or Devuan or some other distro will remain viable. (Devuan would be the easiest transition for me, but I'm not sure how durable they'll be.)

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @08:24PM (5 children)

        by kaszz (4211) on Monday May 08 2017, @08:24PM (#506546) Journal

        Redesigns are fertile ground for new bugs. But it's also a base for being able to efficiently prevent them in the first place because there will be less quirky corners for them to hide. And fixes can be executed smoothly without hacks. Like taking a drivers license, lot of initial work but a long time of benefits.

        MS btw only cares about their profit and style of management (MBA is the king). Control is a byproduct to ensure they can ram their thievery down peoples throat.

        Why is ext4 so important? it's just a filesystem. I'm sure BSD has at least as good if not better. Besides there's ZFS if you got 4 GB of RAM and UPS.

        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:47PM (4 children)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:47PM (#507003) Journal

          ext4 is important because during the conversion I would need to share a data file system between two systems (alternately, not simultaneously), and it's currently ext4. To handle the conversion I'd need to reformat one disk in a system that could be used by both BSD and Linux, transfer the data over, set up the new system, discover what needed to be rewritten and do the rewrite, etc. This is doable, but not instantly, so I'll need to be going back and forth.

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:58PM (3 children)

            by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:58PM (#507007) Journal

            Use a network file sharing?
            Or just tar -cpf - . | netcat .. netcat | tar -xpf - ?

            Do an extra backup?

            • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:55AM (2 children)

              by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:55AM (#507401) Journal

              Sorry, they have to share the same computer. I do have extra backups, but there's not a spare computer, only a spare disk. So I need to switch back and forth while deciding whether the proposed new system will really do what I need.

              --
              Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
              • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 10 2017, @10:31AM (1 child)

                by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @10:31AM (#507456) Journal

                Buy a cheap second hand extra computer? It doesn't have be fast or have gigantic with memory.

                You can probably get away with CPU 400 MHz, RAM 256 MB, Network, VGA 640x480, S-ATA port, Power 200 W.
                Only needs to be running for a few hours, once. Only ZFS needs 4 GB or more RAM.

                • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:53PM

                  by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:53PM (#507632) Journal

                  I'd need to buy space to put it in.

                  FWIW, I've never said I couldn't make the switch, just that if it were easier I might have actively investigated it.

                  P.S.: Currently my backups use ext4, so I'd first need to decide what file format to reformat my backup disks to. I haven't found a convincing alternative.

                  --
                  Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 08 2017, @09:21PM (4 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday May 08 2017, @09:21PM (#506592)

    I thought the peak was DOS3.3, everything after that was "99% compatible" with previous generations, which meant to me: if your software has more than 100 lines of code, you're probably dysfunctional in the newOS, but they still piled a bunch of crap in there for reasons of "compatibility" as well as laziness to not re-implement it.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @03:59AM (3 children)

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @03:59AM (#506735) Journal

      Yes, MS-DOS v3.3 included most things worthwhile. The rest is just needed for specific issues. Usually harddisk size.

      • (Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:16AM (2 children)

        by anubi (2828) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:16AM (#507427) Journal

        Usually harddisk size.

        Which was the main reason I upgraded. So I could use the new IDE drives. IIRC, I was limited to those 32MB partitions under DOS 3.3.

        DOS6.22 had Doublespace... which relentlessly caused me far more trouble than it was worth.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
        • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 10 2017, @10:35AM

          by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @10:35AM (#507458) Journal

          And it caused Microsoft a long legal headache.. because they tried to get away with the tech that Stacker had patented. ;-)

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 10 2017, @12:19PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @12:19PM (#507488)

          Nobody will ever need more than 640KB of RAM.

            - some rich guy

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]