A typical conversation with a Chinese PCB manufacturer - a gerber mystery

Is winzip/7zip compatible with each other ?

Some variants of maximally compressed ZIP file written with the latest and greatest version of the official software won't open in older versions or clones. ISTR the defaults are reasonably safe and portable.

I have known ZIP files get damaged in transit so it might be worth asking them to send back the file they can't open and compare it with the original as sent.

Martin Brown wrote in news:qmkurn$1o9i$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org:

They probably have better numbers than the US for worker tenure. Just because they do not get paid, does not mean it is not modern day slavery. The only turnover is when they accidentally hire in idiot.

Apparently your old PCB firm is now fooly populated with idiots if they cannot even open a zip file.

Send the raw files with the extensions changed on those the email system barfs on, and instructions to re-name the files. Yeah... they have the aptitude for that, right? I mean they make precision PCBs but they can't use a computer.

Dear Peter,

But what are those files, anyway? Regards, Winnie

snipped-for-privacy@decadence.org wrote in news:qmkvks$1rrl$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org:

Much... was suposed to be "do not get paid much".

Evidently they are unable to read the zip file contents for some reason. Being rude & unconstructive won't solve the problem.

They might've installed some "security" software from Cisco or whatever else company that was famous many years ago before it went to the dogs. Those once famous gurus hired a bunch of idiots named "software engineers" who have never seen anything but Windoze so their "security" software unpacks zip (or whatever) archives, checks files inside and repacks them back. The only small problem is that it treats everything as text and it is Windoze text so it "fixes" the files by converting 0x0a to 0x0d 0x0a (it is how text files should be, right?) thus corrupting everything beyond repair. There might be other mechanisms as well but result is always the same -- all binary files got corrupted in transit.

I had to deal with it at my previous job where corporate IT installed "the best software available" for checking files on the fly and that was from "a reputable" company named Cisco. This was used as proxy for everything including copying files to shared drives so every archive just copied to shared drive from a Windoze machine got corrupted. We had offices here in Las Vegas and in Ithaca, NY so it was a nightmare to exchange design files between offices. Usual hack was renaming those archives to *.pdf so that stupid software wouldn't touch them (everybody knows that any file named blah.pdf is a PDF and file extensions always tell what file it is and can't be faked, right?) but at some point even that failed to work so we had to resort to overnighting USB sticks with those files. That was easier than to persuade IT to kill that stupid thing.

It is totally possible they also installed some of those weirdos so they actually can't open those zip files because they _ALWAYS_ end up corrupted when sent over the Net. It is difficult to convince IT it is broken because "everything works fine here" i.e. all office lemmings send their Word and Excel files without problems.

Some e-mail systems may also remove .exe, .bat etc. files. . You may have to use some password protected zip files. Send the password in the message body or with a text message.

So far, ALL Zip prgrams from PKZIP/PKUNZIP (DOS, 1993) to WinZip90 are totally compatible with each other. Cannot say about 7-zip as i do not use it.

I have seen exactly this problem with PDF files (see your comment below). Some e-mail clients/servers will do this, and cannot be changed. In that case, i Zip the PDF and all is OK.

It was nothing to do with the zipfile.

It was just some people being incredibly stupid.

Same thing happens in the US all the time, you send an email to someone whose job it is to handle a thing, you'd imagine they'd do it every day but they seem confused how to do whatever it is their job is like it's the first time anyone ever asked.

Or you go to like a UPS or DHL pickup location and the employee doesn't understand why you're there. "I'd like to pick up my package..." "package?" "Yeah I have a tracking number..." "tracking number?" and they stare at the tracking number and the computer confused "Oh right, package...probably around here somewhere..."

etc.

You can view it as people being "incredibly stupid" or that in a large number of jobs other than engineer the employer doesn't want to spend the money to train the employee how to do the jobs, and the employee isn't getting paid enough to teach themselves.

?????????????????????????????????????????????

remind me not to sign up to work at your company! lol

Oops! I read your statement wrong. My apologies. The lack of contractions made that sentence a little hard to parse. I just turned 40 maybe I need glasses :(

well it still doesn't make sense but I think I know what was intended.

it would be entirely plausible and somewhat hilarious if their software was right and he was sending them viruses too

I found a bunch of videos on YouTube titled "Malicious Compliance" about em ployer/employee relations where the company/boss is a dick and are given th eir comeuppance by doing exactly what they asked for. Often they try hard to explain how bad this may turn out and are given a hard time for trying t o be the boss. The worst ones seem to be when the company tries to save mo ney. lol They set such poor rules that things can get pretty bad before t hey figure it out.