Comment On Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

I'm on year 4 of my free 30-day WinZip trial. I've really gotta register that thing. Brenda likes to be prepared, and appreciated a 50,504,432,782,230,120-year advance warning that her PGP key was expiring. [expand full text]
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Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 11:46 • by tag (unregistered)
"Less than" could also be only one, couldn't it?

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 11:47 • by Anonymous (unregistered)
Please.. like PGP is still going to be around in 50 quadrillion years.


(btw saying 'first' is obnoxious and childish)

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 11:47 • by Sam (unregistered)
Wouldn't the universe have ended by the time that thing expires?

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 11:48 • by AC (unregistered)
127724 in reply to 127720
tag:
"Less than" could also be only one, couldn't it?


I think you meant "Less than" could also only be FIRST POST!

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 11:53 • by Quietust (unregistered)
Apparently, their software doesn't quite know how to handle a key that expired 197 days ago.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 11:55 • by CAPTCHA Test (Required For Anonymous Users) (unregistered)
The real wtf here is that you're using WinZip.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 11:55 • by snoofle
127727 in reply to 127725
Quietust:
Apparently, their software doesn't quite know how to handle a key that expired 197 days ago.

I must be brain-dead today - how do you figure 197?
Edit: Never mind - just jump-started brain (no coffee this morning).

Edit 2: I suppose it could have been worse:
Key: 54EC3NaN

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:01 • by spamparranoid (unregistered)
7-zip... Cmon winzip trial? does anybody buy that?


Use 7-zip. it's free and open source.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:05 • by ItsMeAgain (unregistered)
127731 in reply to 127728
spamparranoid:
7-zip... Cmon winzip trial? does anybody buy that?


Use 7-zip. it's free and open source.


I second this, plus its native .7z format is far more compact than .zip

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:06 • by seconddevil (unregistered)
As long as the final warning doesn't come -9876543214568875 years before expiry everything will be OK I think...

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:06 • by Myself (unregistered)
I'm getting kind of tired of these Error'd stories with programs that show really big numbers because of overflow. It's only funny once.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:07 • by MX5Ringer (unregistered)
I'm on day 1850 of the 30 day evaluation period of winzip,
I just can't make up my mind if it's really what I need!

Why is using winzip a WTF? it does exactly what it says on the tin!

CAPTCHA:- tastey, back to schrodingers cat food again

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:09 • by jethrotull (unregistered)
Geez, half of the "Error'd" is about integer overflow. Really childish, boring and somewhat pathetic.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:13 • by Thief^
127737 in reply to 127735
I stopped using winzip when I got windows XP 4 years ago, with it's native .zip (aka compressed folder) support.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:15 • by ASDF (unregistered)
Not to knock the .7z format or the fact that 7zip is faster, but it has the worst UI known to man.

WinRAR all the way.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:17 • by Rick (unregistered)
127739 in reply to 127733
Myself:
I'm getting kind of tired of these Error'd stories with programs that show really big numbers because of overflow. It's only funny once.


Well, can I suggest you don't read them then? The rest of us do enjoy them.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:20 • by me (unregistered)
WinRar > all

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:21 • by jethrotull (unregistered)
127742 in reply to 127739
Rick:
Myself:
I'm getting kind of tired of these Error'd stories with programs that show really big numbers because of overflow. It's only funny once.


Well, can I suggest you don't read them then? The rest of us do enjoy them.


No, rest of us hates them also.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:26 • by Akerbos (unregistered)
7zip won't remove items from an archive but will open a dialogue stating "Not implemented".
I use it anyway; I like the way the integration in Windows' context menu is done. Hated that in WinRAR.

stinky?! I am not stinky, hopefully.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:26 • by foxyshadis
127744 in reply to 127738
ASDF:
Not to knock the .7z format or the fact that 7zip is faster, but it has the worst UI known to man.

WinRAR all the way.

No, it's just second-worst. Worst UI will always go to the hotel booking system.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:26 • by rien (unregistered)
127745 in reply to 127738
ASDF:
Not to knock the .7z format or the fact that 7zip is faster, but it has the worst UI known to man.

WinRAR all the way.


well, at least 7zip developpers understand that a directory tree should be presented to the user the way they are accustomed to, that is as a tree and not as a flat list with the directory appearing somewhere in a column. it took almost 10 years to WinZip developpers to understand that.

personally, i appreciate the simplicity and no-bells-and-whistles style of 7zip GUI...

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:32 • by bstorer (Too lazy to login) (unregistered)
127748 in reply to 127744
foxyshadis:
ASDF:
Not to knock the .7z format or the fact that 7zip is faster, but it has the worst UI known to man.

WinRAR all the way.

No, it's just second-worst. Worst UI will always go to the hotel booking system.


How dare you forget FileMatrix!

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:34 • by JamesKilton
127751 in reply to 127745
GUI? Integration right into context menu!

I don't know much about 7zip (other than it has incredible compression), but WinRAR handles every single compressed file format known to man, and can even unpack .cab and .iso files. Easy to install, easier to use, and not a single problem in years.

WinZip is just a joke.

GUI WTF (Was: Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute)

2007-03-21 12:44 • by jtwine
Well, from a GUI point of view, the WTF here is that [1] there is a
Do not ask again
option but with no question being asked, and [2] there are
Continue
and
Cancel
buttons, but no explanation as to what action you are continuing or canceling.

A GUI is the central interaction point of most applications, but it often gets the worst treatment.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:44 • by rmr
Seeing all of these issues in dialogs makes me wonder how often errors like this happen in places in the program you can't easily see.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:46 • by ssprencel
127759 in reply to 127748
bstorer (Too lazy to login):
foxyshadis:
ASDF:
Not to knock the .7z format or the fact that 7zip is faster, but it has the worst UI known to man.

WinRAR all the way.

No, it's just second-worst. Worst UI will always go to the hotel booking system.


How dare you forget FileMatrix!


Agreed. The Hotel Booking System doesn't hold a candle to the FileMatrix. Even to this day, that one drops my jaw.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:50 • by Phat Wednesday (unregistered)
127760 in reply to 127751
Zip Genius FTW!

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:50 • by Anonymous (unregistered)
127761 in reply to 127737
Thief^:
I stopped using winzip when I got windows XP 4 years ago, with it's native .zip (aka compressed folder) support.

I found that to be just about incredibly, embarassingly, unbearably slow.
How the hell can it take several seconds to extract ~50 files totaling less than 1 MB? Heck, my old 486/33 was faster than that!
Can't Microsoft do anything right?

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 12:56 • by Dark Shikari (unregistered)
What's so hard about 7zip?

Right click, add to archive.

Right click, extract.

I don't see how it could possibly be any easier. Plus the compression ratio can be much better than RAR.

Regardless, *real men* use PAQ8JD ;)

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:04 • by Patrick (unregistered)
Why does the Winzip trial never expire?

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:15 • by Mcoder
127767 in reply to 127735
MX5Ringer:
I'm on day 1850 of the 30 day evaluation period of winzip,
I just can't make up my mind if it's really what I need!

Why is using winzip a WTF? it does exactly what it says on the tin!


Except for delaying you several seconds every time you need to use a zip file... And getting your attention away, making you press a button that changes its place every time you open the program... And you being a pirate (not that I think that badly about software piracy)... It does just what it says.

And for the other poster that said that WinRar opens every file format, every windows compressor/extractor does that nowaday. Linux, otherwise, have one for each format (do just one thing, but do that well).

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:29 • by ailivac
127768 in reply to 127741
me:
WinRar > all


(proprietary algorithm with decoder source code licensed to explicitly forbid the creation of a free encoder) < all

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:40 • by AnthonyG
For one thing,The 7z GUI is optional, I think it's just a front end. You can also write your own(Not too hard).

And no, I don't hate the int overflow stories. It is indeed a WTF when you consider these things are or close to commercial products...

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:42 • by Cube (unregistered)
I've tried using 7zip for a while, and it is ok. I've also tried IZArc (http://www.izarc.org/), and it is nice as well, but not open source.

What I really miss about winzip is that it does not extract to a temporary directory and then copy the file to the destination. Extracting a large archive from one partition to another is painful with 7zip and IZarc. Any ideas?

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:45 • by John Doe (unregistered)
What, you're all using different applications just to zip/unzip different files? Just use Total Commander (http://www.ghisler.com/).
And for 7zip, bzip2, etc, you can download free plugins. Works wonderfully! As for me, I nearly forgot how Winzip looked like. (And how bad Windows explorer works for that matter ;) )

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:46 • by anal grammar (unregistered)
There's a grammar error too.

Should be "fewer than", not "less than."

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:49 • by danixdefcon5
127776 in reply to 127763
Nah. Real men use bzip2!!!

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 13:56 • by Abscissa (unregistered)
Another WinZip-hater/WinRAR-user here. I'll have to give 7Zip and Total Commander a try.

FWIW, the zip functionality built into Windows blows. Who needs a wizard just to extract an archive? Even the otherwise-subpar WinZip allows a simple "Right Click->Extract", IIRC.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:13 • by RobertB
127781 in reply to 127742
jethrotull:
Rick:
Myself:
I'm getting kind of tired of these Error'd stories with programs that show really big numbers because of overflow. It's only funny once.


Well, can I suggest you don't read them then? The rest of us do enjoy them.


No, rest of us hates them also.

Not so. I think they're funny at least 4294967295 times.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:15 • by Dark Shikari (unregistered)
127785 in reply to 127770
I submitted one the other day, not sure if it'll get approved or not.

EVE Online is a relatively popular MMORPG, and recently they added a new feature allowing people to buy gametime cards from other players using in-game money via a direct interface on the website which directly interfaced with the game database. The purpose of course was to eliminate any risk of an ingame trade; just do it directly. It also prevented people from reselling codes, as they are applied directly to the account.

So I go to try to buy one... and I get an error.

Apparently, you see, the wallet in-game is stored as some sort of value... probably a double or long. But then it has to be read into the Microsoft SQL server code and checked to see whether the wallet is large enough to buy the gametime code.

They converted it to an int.

And since I'm a rich bastard in-game, it overflowed.

Oops.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:15 • by Dark Shikari (unregistered)
Bah, I meant to quote the above one. I was giving an example of my own int overflow story.

/smacks self

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:15 • by Dark Shikari (unregistered)
Bah, I meant to quote the above one. I was giving an example of my own int overflow story.

/smacks self

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:15 • by ammoQ
127788 in reply to 127767
Mcoder:
Linux, otherwise, have one for each format (do just one thing, but do that well).

Konqueror knows how to open all of them. (At least .zip, .tgz, .tar.bz2)

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:16 • by Dark Shikari (unregistered)
Bah, I meant to quote the above one. I was giving an example of my own int overflow story.

/smacks self

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:16 • by Dark Shikari (unregistered)
Aggghhhh my connection buggered and triple posted... some mod please delete the extras ;)

Captcha: RIAA

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:19 • by JarFil (unregistered)
Hey, you get what you pay for.

OpenPGP is free (and open), and WinZip... well, who knows what they paid the guy that made WinZip. It sure doesn't seem like it was too much ;)

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:23 • by The Rest Of Us (unregistered)
127793 in reply to 127739
Rick:
Myself:
I'm getting kind of tired of these Error'd stories with programs that show really big numbers because of overflow. It's only funny once.


Well, can I suggest you don't read them then? The rest of us do enjoy them.


No, we do not enjoy them either.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:36 • by gnobal
That's actually -1 in an unsigned 64 bit integer :)

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:40 • by Fez (unregistered)
I'm not too fond of Winzip. Someone once got ahold of one of my credit card numbers and used it to buy copies of Winzip.

The real WTF about that is why anyone would pay for it when the trial never expires. Let alone do so with a stolen credit card!

/7-zip on Windows, bzip2 on FreeBSD.

Re: Don't Wait Till the Last Minute

2007-03-21 14:51 • by mrprogguy
127799 in reply to 127720
The REAL WTF is that it's apparently impossible to post something anymore without the discussion devolving into

"The real WTF is that you use {appA} when {appB, usually open source} is so much better!"

Could those of you who just can't get through the day without waggling your winky at someone in this manner head over to /. and leave the rest of us adults alone?
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