Comment On The Core Launcher

Evan:

Ralph:

This whole story just reeks of layer upon layer of WTF.

For starters, spaces in filenames and pathnames? Certifiably insane. Begging for trouble. Surprise! Trouble happened! A billion times over!

So instead of correcting the error, we'll just "fix" it by trying this, that, the other, hoping eventually to guess what was intended.

When you have a computer guessing, and trying, and failing, and trying something else... well can you be even the least bit surprised when you get random behavior from a deterministic machine?

All you knee-jerk bootlicking Redmond-worshippers cannot justify this insanity. It is a poorly thought out design error of epic proportions. No excuses.

Yes, I know most every copycat GUI does the same thing. Doesn't make it any less stupid.

I_know._I_hate_spaces,_which_is_why_I_never_use_them._Interesting_that_you_do,_though._Clearly_you_haven't_seen_the_light_in_its_full_glory_yet.

OK, less sarcastically, I don't get that position. Pretty much at all. Yes, spaces makes some things less convenient, but it makes lots of other things more convenient, especially in the GUI world, where there's essentially zero problems because of spaces. Even in the command line and scripting world, it's usually only a somewhat mild inconvenience because now you have to type a few more quotes or escapes.

But computers are here for humans to use. We use spaces, very reasonably. Why should I have to call a file "01_In_The_Flesh"? It's called "In The Flesh"! Computers should be programmed to match our thinking as best as possible, not the other way around. "You shouldn't be able to use spaces in file names" is, IMO, almost the quintessential example of the exact wrong way to think.

Also, you have some chronology messed up. But whatever. And none of this is really intended to justify the Windows behavior of just trying different breaks between commands and arguments, though I do suspect their hand may have been forced a little because of backwards compatibility problems.

you don't get it do you ?

That a front-end for morons accepts spaces, touch inputs or whatever matters not.

But BUILDING A FRIGGIN OS on such unreliable complex stuf IS A BAD IDEA.

imho it should NOT be supported @ CLI, it's heavy, slow and useless (me and my computer don't care if the file is named "e87607-063b1-4bdf6bdbca3f8-00000000", we even think it to be a much better name than "In The Flesh".

Ignorants who do NOT use a CLI should have absolutely no bearing on underlying technology decisions and that's PRECISELY where Microsoft failed, delivering user-level craptastic performance and stability in order to deliver a user-friendly interface.

OTOH .. Linux is based on a tough kernel (can't break it bitch), supplemented by slightly crappier modules and in the end relatively crap open source software.

But at least the core is tough and you can trust it.

[quote user="PRMan"][quote user="deckard"][quote user="Andrew"][quote user="deckard"]
CreateProcess is the function that creates processes, so what's left for you to miss? Cmd.exe imports it just like every other Win32 subsystem application that launches other processes.
[/quote]

Then why does cmd.exe empirically not work this way?[/quote]

Because it parses the command line itself. It doesn't just hand it straight to CreateProcess.[/quote]

Which imho is another major fail .. why the f* would you have TWO "execute CLI" parsers ... wtf.

Mad Bug:

Those that defend Microsoft have a valid point about backwards compatibility.
My argument is that Windows took a long time to be not junk as a result of that because DOS was garbage. A hobby OS bought at the last minute that was not fit for purpose.
It's up there with IE6.
The problem isn't how bad it is/was, but the fact that it has to break so much stuff in the future.

You can claim they need to do backwards compatibility, but it would be nice for them to build their foundations out of stone rather than straw. Though to be fair, we are talking history now, we just all wish history went a different way.

Backwards compatibility is overrated. I use chrome, it's not backwards compatible w/ IE6 and I couldn't care less.

I've tried this *bug* myself just now and what makes your comment so funny is: It works exactly the same way in Linux.

I renamed a file to "Program.exe" and moved it to the c: root. I opened up a command prompt, navigate to the Program Folder and try to run a program.
C:\>cd "Program Files (x86)"
C:\Program Files (x86)>cd "Programmer's Notepad"
C:\Program Files (x86)\Programmer's Notepad>pn.exe

This works fine. Note the quotes around the paths because it will throw an error otherwise. Now, let's try the "enter the entire path without quotes" way:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Programmer's Notepad>cd \
C:\>C:\Program Files (x86)\Programmer's Notepad>pn.exe

This indeed launches Program.exe in my c: root with the rest of the string as command argument. THIS IS NORMAL BEHAVIOR. If I want spaces in my path on a windows PC, I add quotes. If I want spaces in my path on a linux PC, I escape the space character. If you neglect to do this, both on linux and windows, it will try to interpret the first part as a file.

At least POSIX doesn't use backslashes for path construction. Seriously, you have to be a special kind of idiot (Microsoft) to use backslashes to form a path, given that the backslash is also an escape character in many programs. Thus, each backslash turns into two backslashes, UNC paths turn into a turdified mess.

Come on... is there nobody here from the 95 / 98 / ME days?

In those days, if you wanted to go to "C:\Program Files" you could either use quotes, OR cut it off with a ~
so you could get into program files with:
c:\Progra~1\

I think the problem came from there

faffmatic:

At least POSIX doesn't use backslashes for path construction. Seriously, you have to be a special kind of idiot (Microsoft) to use backslashes to form a path, given that the backslash is also an escape character in many programs. Thus, each backslash turns into two backslashes, UNC paths turn into a turdified mess.

They also make a RDBMS that uses a single quote as escape character --

L.:

Mad Bug:

Those that defend Microsoft have a valid point about backwards compatibility.
My argument is that Windows took a long time to be not junk as a result of that because DOS was garbage. A hobby OS bought at the last minute that was not fit for purpose.
It's up there with IE6.
The problem isn't how bad it is/was, but the fact that it has to break so much stuff in the future.

You can claim they need to do backwards compatibility, but it would be nice for them to build their foundations out of stone rather than straw. Though to be fair, we are talking history now, we just all wish history went a different way.

Backwards compatibility is overrated. I use chrome, it's not backwards compatible w/ IE6 and I couldn't care less.

Wow, thank you! You opened my eyes. YOU use Chrome and don't care about IE6 compatibility. That certainly changes things. Have you contacted Microsoft? Now they can finally tell all those billion-dollar corporations that are stuck using a 10-year-old web application that only works in IE6 to go fuck themselves.

TimeBandit:

This is how Microsoft software work: error

FTFY ;o)

See also this entry from The Old New Thing.

M.:

L.:

Mad Bug:

Those that defend Microsoft have a valid point about backwards compatibility.
My argument is that Windows took a long time to be not junk as a result of that because DOS was garbage. A hobby OS bought at the last minute that was not fit for purpose.
It's up there with IE6.
The problem isn't how bad it is/was, but the fact that it has to break so much stuff in the future.

You can claim they need to do backwards compatibility, but it would be nice for them to build their foundations out of stone rather than straw. Though to be fair, we are talking history now, we just all wish history went a different way.

Backwards compatibility is overrated. I use chrome, it's not backwards compatible w/ IE6 and I couldn't care less.

Wow, thank you! You opened my eyes. YOU use Chrome and don't care about IE6 compatibility. That certainly changes things. Have you contacted Microsoft? Now they can finally tell all those billion-dollar corporations that are stuck using a 10-year-old web application that only works in IE6 to go fuck themselves.

Who cares about fail corporations with fail IT policies and fail web applications ?

Seriously, yes they can go fuck themselves, for just the price of their application maintenance they could have the front-end rewritten in pure clean html5/css3/js and all that requires is A FRIGGIN IT POLICY UPGRADE to chrome.

I don't just use chrome, I write webapps, not the kiddy iphone flavor either, and I don't support IE6 and never will . in fact i don't support IE7 and i'm dropping support for ie8 soon since it's a piece of crap too.

now if YOUR clients can afford spending THREE TIMES the money in order to have an IE6.0 compatible version with half the features and 1/100th the speed, well fuck them.

Quit being all "business is like that" and start acting, stop tolerating pitiful skill-less IT professionals behind retarded policies, stop tolerating security experts that have NO hacking skills whatsoever and ffs stop supporting IE, you're only making "supporting IE" that much more important for everyone else.

In summary, if less people thought like you did, SAP would be dead and we would have something that actually works instead.

And besides, defending IE6 or corporate policies on tdwtf. nice troll.

¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:

And it could be worse... there were installers for stuff on OS X that didn't quote path names in shell scripts. And the default name of the hard drive volume is "Macintosh HD".

I have a bit of a hard time thinking of a situation in which you would want to install to "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/whatever" instead of to /whatever, since "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" is a symlink to / — though that probably doesn't mean nobody ever used it in a program …

I thought the Windows-vs-Linux flamewars died out like 10 years ago.

faffmatic:

At least POSIX doesn't use backslashes for path construction. Seriously, you have to be a special kind of idiot (Microsoft) to use backslashes to form a path, given that the backslash is also an escape character in many programs.

TTWTF. Seriously, you had to be a special kind of idiot to design a language that used in-band control signals.

It seems ordinary now, but back then there was a lot more familiarity with other models. Working for the phone company may be the explanation, but not an excuse.

Of course 'design' is the wrong word to describe the development of C, but we've been paying for it ever since.

MrDaniil:

You could've started DOOM at any level or am I misreading? I spent so much time passing DOOM2, that shit had 40 something levels! If I knew I could skip.... Or was this for DOOM only?

IDDQD

I assume that was rather common. I remember Duke Nukem 3D having a similar switch. You could start at any level in any of the 3 episodes. Of course you didn't have any of the weapons or other inventory items that you would've collected by playing through the previous levels. Perhaps this was primarily meant for development and debugging?

I can't believe people are this bad at reading documentation. The MSDN page explicitly states that the annoying behaviour only happens when the string for the executable is NULL.
In particular, the executable and arguments in a shortcut are stored separately. If you change the destination of a shortcut to something without quotes, and that exact string is a valid path (without arguments, like C:\Program Files\...\app.exe) then Windows will humour you and use it as the executable. (If it doesn't, Windows doesn't accept the path.) When you reopen the shortcut properties, the path will be quoted. Since the executable and argument are stored separately, the shortcut can never run C:\Program.exe. It's been that way since Windows 95 (I have it in a VM) so the story can never have happened like the article says.
And the same applies to the behaviour of cmd.exe (and command.com). It even applies when you use the DDE interface (topic: Progman|Progman execute: [AddItem(C:\Program Files\..\app.exe,Name)]).
The only way for this to happen is if an application calls CreateProcess in a buggy fashion, and it's silly to blame either Microsoft, the virus scanner or the launcher in the article for other people's mistakes.

Dani:

Mac allows all characters in file name, including / \ and even null character and the funny part is that it doesn't make problems if you use objc correctly.

Except that the Finder will prevent you from using a colon (:) in filenames. If you try to, it will tell you the filename contains illegal characters, helpfully not identifying which one(s) … However, if you include a colon in a filename you create via the terminal (say, "touch ~/Desktop/file:name") you will see it magically get changed into a / in any Cocoa (and, I suspect, Carbon) application that displays the filename. Naturally, this works the other way round, too: make a filename with a / in it in a GUI application, and ls in the terminal will show it with a colon instead.

This probably has something to do with OS ≤9 compatibility, where colons were path separators, but I can't quite work out the logic behind it.

Gurth:

I can't quite work out the logic behind it.

Simple. Since MacOS traditionally used : as a path separator, but the new Unix like kernel that underlies OS X uses /, path names have to be translated. Swapping : and / is a simple solution that makes sure : gets correctly interpreted as a path separator, while still allowing / in names like in the old days.

Ken B.:

DysgraphicProgrammer:

Linux allows spaces in file names.
Linux also has CaSeSeNsItIvE file names, and allows a large variety of special characters in file names. Which also cause problems.

For "fun", you can create a file named "-rf *". (Try removing it, without knowing the secret incantation.)

There may be some simpler versions of rm that would actually do that, but on a standard Linux system it does not behave in this way, because GNU rm is pretty smart.

$ ls -l

total 0

drwxrwxr-x 5 100 Apr 19 11:13 bar

drwxrwxr-x 5 100 Apr 19 11:13 baz

drwxrwxr-x 5 100 Apr 19 11:13 foo

-rw-rw-r-- 1   0 Apr 19 11:13 -rf *



$ rm -rf *

rm: invalid option -- ' '

Try `rm ./'-rf *'' to remove the file `-rf *'.

Try `rm --help' for more information.



$ rm -fr *

rm: invalid option -- ' '

Try `rm ./'-rf *'' to remove the file `-rf *'.

Try `rm --help' for more information.

It's simply not possible to screw a modern Linux desktop system up in this way.

L.:

M.:

L.:

Mad Bug:

Those that defend Microsoft have a valid point about backwards compatibility.
My argument is that Windows took a long time to be not junk as a result of that because DOS was garbage. A hobby OS bought at the last minute that was not fit for purpose.
It's up there with IE6.
The problem isn't how bad it is/was, but the fact that it has to break so much stuff in the future.

You can claim they need to do backwards compatibility, but it would be nice for them to build their foundations out of stone rather than straw. Though to be fair, we are talking history now, we just all wish history went a different way.

Backwards compatibility is overrated. I use chrome, it's not backwards compatible w/ IE6 and I couldn't care less.

Wow, thank you! You opened my eyes. YOU use Chrome and don't care about IE6 compatibility. That certainly changes things. Have you contacted Microsoft? Now they can finally tell all those billion-dollar corporations that are stuck using a 10-year-old web application that only works in IE6 to go fuck themselves.

Who cares about fail corporations with fail IT policies and fail web applications ?

Seriously, yes they can go fuck themselves, for just the price of their application maintenance they could have the front-end rewritten in pure clean html5/css3/js and all that requires is A FRIGGIN IT POLICY UPGRADE to chrome.

I don't just use chrome, I write webapps, not the kiddy iphone flavor either, and I don't support IE6 and never will . in fact i don't support IE7 and i'm dropping support for ie8 soon since it's a piece of crap too.

now if YOUR clients can afford spending THREE TIMES the money in order to have an IE6.0 compatible version with half the features and 1/100th the speed, well fuck them.

Quit being all "business is like that" and start acting, stop tolerating pitiful skill-less IT professionals behind retarded policies, stop tolerating security experts that have NO hacking skills whatsoever and ffs stop supporting IE, you're only making "supporting IE" that much more important for everyone else.

In summary, if less people thought like you did, SAP would be dead and we would have something that actually works instead.

And besides, defending IE6 or corporate policies on tdwtf. nice troll.

You sir, are a riot. Very well done. It reads like a novelization of "hackers".
[10/10]

What's funny here is that some people are in disbelief that shit hits the fan even if you don't understand it reading the software rules, code source, whatever...

I would love to have statistics about military IT equipment failing miserably, given those should have gone through enormous amount of automated / factual / theorical / manual / what-if's testing procedures !

And the real WTF is really how this antivirus thing behaved : man, just reading it and not being in this kind of business, it just feels like the guy responsible (as in : "i'm nearly the boss, pay me big bucks because you need me") for this should be emasculated with a spoon.

Yo Zero_Cool!

Now, that's such a bunch of masturbated "oh yeah bleeding edge is so cool" comments that I don't even understand you ever stated that you code something professionaly !

I work in IT business, big bucks (read: ok ? a new server for your application printing needs ? well, how many cores on this blade ?) or small ones (read : hey, where's that guy that solved our printer problem last week when we had this strange message "out of paper" ?).

And guess what : do you know what an AS400 is ? Have you noticed that some big businesses are using this over-dated thing to manage their business? Man, just go and tell them "fuck you, I'm gonna rewrite this in a coooool ruby-on-rails way with fancy UI and unpredictable process, without anything noticeable to your users, and wow just do it tomorrow!". I'm curious to see the result.

And don't forget : my english is under construction, please wait...

My Name:

Yo Zero_Cool!

Damn' I feel bad. It was not Zero_Cool, it was the guy responded to by Zero_cool!

My Name:

Yo Zero_Cool!

Now, that's such a bunch of masturbated "oh yeah bleeding edge is so cool" comments that I don't even understand you ever stated that you code something professionaly !

I work in IT business, big bucks (read: ok ? a new server for your application printing needs ? well, how many cores on this blade ?) or small ones (read : hey, where's that guy that solved our printer problem last week when we had this strange message "out of paper" ?).

And guess what : do you know what an AS400 is ? Have you noticed that some big businesses are using this over-dated thing to manage their business? Man, just go and tell them "fuck you, I'm gonna rewrite this in a coooool ruby-on-rails way with fancy UI and unpredictable process, without anything noticeable to your users, and wow just do it tomorrow!". I'm curious to see the result.

And don't forget : my english is under construction, please wait...

I'm so confused right now. Is this directed at me? I think that you are actually agreeing with me. Is this some kind of meta-troll?

Just to be sure: I don't agree with L. and I think he's a tool.

:D *knowing nod*

My Name:

Yo Zero_Cool!

Now, that's such a bunch of masturbated "oh yeah bleeding edge is so cool" comments that I don't even understand you ever stated that you code something professionaly !

I work in IT business, big bucks (read: ok ? a new server for your application printing needs ? well, how many cores on this blade ?) or small ones (read : hey, where's that guy that solved our printer problem last week when we had this strange message "out of paper" ?).

And guess what : do you know what an AS400 is ? Have you noticed that some big businesses are using this over-dated thing to manage their business? Man, just go and tell them "fuck you, I'm gonna rewrite this in a coooool ruby-on-rails way with fancy UI and unpredictable process, without anything noticeable to your users, and wow just do it tomorrow!". I'm curious to see the result.

And don't forget : my english is under construction, please wait...

You don't make big bucks, else you'd have your secretary posting instead of you.

Moving on, AS400 is not virtualized and thus totally worthless technology in this day and age.

Furthemore, coding the kind of apps you are referring to doesn't take more than a year, tweaking included - that's fast enough to replace craptastic technology that is an issue in so many ways, from expensive support outdated technolgies to more expensive support and infra for the same reason.

Last of all, fuck ruby, it's slower than anything ever created and shouldn't be used for anything because of that.

Obviously your experience in IT didn't teach you much since you don't know that ruby sucks and AS400 too and blades as well (bad perf/dollar ratio really, you can do cookie for the same density or better).

And yes, our job as IT professionals is to tell those business people to take our advice instead of taking stupid decisions on stuff they won't understand in a lifetime.

Dear L.


Holly crap, you made my day ! You just are THE man, the one that should be called as soon as a business need to upgrade something in less than a year. Yeah, hands down, we have a winner here.

L.:

... take our advice instead of taking stupid decisions on stuff they won't understand in a lifetime.

Business people understand money.

L: "Boss, we need to upgrade to Chrome"
Boss: "That will break applications X, Y and Z."
L: "Those are fail applications, they can go fuck themselves."
Boss: "But they are necessary to for our actual work which brings in several million dollars per year."
L: "Hmm okay, but don't worry, I can recode all of them in under a year."
Boss: "We don't have the budget to pay you to recode anything."
L: "It will pay for itself by reducing the price of the application maintenance."
Boss: "How much is application maintenance for IE6 compared to Chrome then? Have you analysed this?"
L: "Yes, it costs THREE TIMES more to have IE6 applications, and they run at 1/100th the speed."
Boss: "I would like to see those figures in detail."
L: "I'm not going to tolerate your pitiful skill-less policies. You're only making supporting IE6 that much more important for everyone else."
Boss: "I'm just failing to see how upgrading those applications would lead to any increase in productivity or profits. So, explain again, why do we need Chrome compatible apps?"
L: "I can't believe you're defending IE6. Nice troll."

W.:

L.:

... take our advice instead of taking stupid decisions on stuff they won't understand in a lifetime.

Business people understand money.

L: "Boss, we need to upgrade to Chrome"
Boss: "That will break applications X, Y and Z."
L: "Those are fail applications, they can go fuck themselves."
Boss: "But they are necessary to for our actual work which brings in several million dollars per year."
L: "Hmm okay, but don't worry, I can recode all of them in under a year."
Boss: "We don't have the budget to pay you to recode anything."
L: "It will pay for itself by reducing the price of the application maintenance."
Boss: "How much is application maintenance for IE6 compared to Chrome then? Have you analysed this?"
L: "Yes, it costs THREE TIMES more to have IE6 applications, and they run at 1/100th the speed."
Boss: "I would like to see those figures in detail."
L: "I'm not going to tolerate your pitiful skill-less policies. You're only making supporting IE6 that much more important for everyone else."
Boss: "I'm just failing to see how upgrading those applications would lead to any increase in productivity or profits. So, explain again, why do we need Chrome compatible apps?"
L: "I can't believe you're defending IE6. Nice troll."

Nice one :)

But that was almost a geoff answer -- if businesses understood the link between IT and money, they would surely take good decisions.

In order to push such a business case, the best solution is to come with a ppt presentation of marketing doom saying how new features will increase their productivity 4-fold while at the same time increasing agility and buzzwordiness . once they're sold on the features you can move in for the kill and push for the much needed technological change, supported by major security flaw analysis in order to prevent the business from backing out -- security makes them piss their pants anyway

Bonus points for presenting the green aspect (chrome is idle when IE is still choking on the intro js), the management factor (omg dashboards) and the useless but shiny( look it works on my gaIphone).

There are literally no reasons for a business not to switch unless they absolutely don't understand the whole idea, and that would be your fault for not being able to sell your damn idea.

There are also no dev costs so to speak, as simply removing the need for IE6 - and office - will enable a major drop in licensing AND support costs. Sure it'll take you a few years to get most of your crew on linux, but then you'll be free and actually able to hire experience support for the technologies you employ.

uns:

I thought the Windows-vs-Linux flamewars died out like 10 years ago.

Welcome back from maternity leave.

The RWTF is that Alex felt it necessary to give a detailed and mostly incorrect explanation of why command interpreters need special handling for space characters in pathnames.

floydnazi:

actually, it's called "In The Flesh?"

just saying....

Are there any queers in the forum tonight? Get 'em up against the wall!

(Appropriate username choice.)

uns:

I thought the Windows-vs-Linux flamewars died out like 10 years ago.

Those flamewars will never die. In fact, Linux fanboys are being trolled in the side bar to this very day.

PedanticCurmudgeon:

uns:

I thought the Windows-vs-Linux flamewars died out like 10 years ago.

Those flamewars will never die. In fact, Linux fanboys are fighting with Windows fanboys in the side bar to this very day.

FTFY.

L.:

M.:

L.:

Mad Bug:

Those that defend Microsoft have a valid point about backwards compatibility.
My argument is that Windows took a long time to be not junk as a result of that because DOS was garbage. A hobby OS bought at the last minute that was not fit for purpose.
It's up there with IE6.
The problem isn't how bad it is/was, but the fact that it has to break so much stuff in the future.

You can claim they need to do backwards compatibility, but it would be nice for them to build their foundations out of stone rather than straw. Though to be fair, we are talking history now, we just all wish history went a different way.

Backwards compatibility is overrated. I use chrome, it's not backwards compatible w/ IE6 and I couldn't care less.

Wow, thank you! You opened my eyes. YOU use Chrome and don't care about IE6 compatibility. That certainly changes things. Have you contacted Microsoft? Now they can finally tell all those billion-dollar corporations that are stuck using a 10-year-old web application that only works in IE6 to go fuck themselves.

Who cares about fail corporations with fail IT policies and fail web applications ?

Seriously, yes they can go fuck themselves, for just the price of their application maintenance they could have the front-end rewritten in pure clean html5/css3/js and all that requires is A FRIGGIN IT POLICY UPGRADE to chrome.

I don't just use chrome, I write webapps, not the kiddy iphone flavor either, and I don't support IE6 and never will . in fact i don't support IE7 and i'm dropping support for ie8 soon since it's a piece of crap too.

now if YOUR clients can afford spending THREE TIMES the money in order to have an IE6.0 compatible version with half the features and 1/100th the speed, well fuck them.

Quit being all "business is like that" and start acting, stop tolerating pitiful skill-less IT professionals behind retarded policies, stop tolerating security experts that have NO hacking skills whatsoever and ffs stop supporting IE, you're only making "supporting IE" that much more important for everyone else.

In summary, if less people thought like you did, SAP would be dead and we would have something that actually works instead.

And besides, defending IE6 or corporate policies on tdwtf. nice troll.

Actually I didn't mean that web applications should be IE6-compatible. I intended to say that, given that large companies are not going to update their old web apps anyway, Microsoft has no choice but to keep supporting it in newer versions of IE.

Ah, nothing like a bunch of Cheetos-covered IT nerds trying to out-nerd each other. Bravo, sirs. Bravo. You have certainly impressed us all.

Jockamo:

Ah, nothing like a bunch of Cheetos-covered IT nerds trying to out-nerd each other. Bravo, sirs. Bravo. You have certainly impressed us all.

Damn out of Cheeto's! I need a government subsidy to finance a never ending Cheeto supply for nerds everywhere while not increasing taxes.

M.:

Actually I didn't mean that web applications should be IE6-compatible. I intended to say that, given that large companies are not going to update their old web apps anyway, Microsoft has no choice but to keep supporting it in newer versions of IE.

Actually you did say that, L just can't read and comprehend at the same time.

He may as well have written PORMMG or something. I picked up on that too, although everyone did know what he really meant :)

GROMMP:

He may as well have written PORMMG or something. I picked up on that too, although everyone did know what he really meant :)

Or perhaps MMPORNG

Well, I'm pretty sure using it correctly is problem we're talking about... :)

Let's try this again...

Dani:

Mac allows all characters in file name, including / \ and even null character and the funny part is that it doesn't make problems if you use objc correctly.

Using the language correctly is the problem, and the apparently insurmountable hurdle for most of the coders featured here. :)

faffmatic:

At least POSIX doesn't use backslashes for path construction. Seriously, you have to be a special kind of idiot (Microsoft) to use backslashes to form a path, given that the backslash is also an escape character in many programs. Thus, each backslash turns into two backslashes, UNC paths turn into a turdified mess.

The backslashes in path names started in 1983 with MS-DOS 2.0, and POSIX started in 1988.

MS used backslashes because they were already using the CP/M convention of forward slashes for command line parameters, and MS-DOS was based on a CP/M clone. Someone thought Unix paths were a great idea but didn't want to make people change from using "DIR /A".

I bet you weren't even born yet in 1983. Now get off my lawn.

Gurth:

I have a bit of a hard time thinking of a situation in which you would want to install to "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/whatever" instead of to /whatever, since "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" is a symlink to / — though that probably doesn't mean nobody ever used it in a program …

Did you know that people with Macs actually use external hard drives (gasp!), so it's not uncommon to mount a bootable volume... which is likely to have a space in the volume name.

L.:

And besides, defending IE6 or corporate policies on tdwtf. nice troll.

One of my favorite troll tactics is the "call the other guy a troll" one. Bravo.

How do you exact make a launcher that replace itself?

uns:

I thought the Windows-vs-Linux flamewars died out like 10 years ago.

The war against MS will die the day MS dies.

For you backwards compatibility apologists "yeah we have to support turds today because we implemented a turd 25 years ago" perhaps the mistake was the original turd? Maybe? I'm not arguing against backwards compatibility. I'm suggesting a company that can't see a turd in its own hands doesn't deserve to be in this business.

"Oh yeah it had problems long ago but the most recent version fixed all that." -- MS fanboi, 1983, 1984, 1985... 2012...

"Other people do it too (wahhh)" yeah maybe, but it is still a turd.

"If we didn't sell turds someone else would" OK then I'd be opposed to the "someone else" wouldn't I? It's still a turd.

Ralph:

floydnazi:

Evan:

It's called "In The Flesh"!

actually, it's called "In The Flesh?"

just saying....

My favorite album was by a band called "De\|/o". Yes including the quotes.

I should be able to create that filename in Windows, right?

If ", \, |, and / characters were anywhere near as common as spaces, then yes, I'd say that a system that prevented you from using those is dumb.

(And I'd actually even say I'd prefer to see Windows allow at least " and | in names. \ and / are probably no good because of their use in directory separators -- but "this character is used for this other thing" makes that situation very different from "we're not going to let you use this character at all because we're lazy." And I wouldn't even be opposed to a system that used a different API for accessing files -- e.g. pass an array of ["a", "b", "c"] instead of "a/b/c" for specifying a file name -- thus even allowing you to use \ and / as well.)

I should never have to learn anything or follow any rules to use the most complicated piece of machinery ever built -- the only major invention that leverages your mind not your dumb brute strength.

I'm not saying you don't have to learn to use it. I'm saying that if there is a reasonable way to make that machine behave in a way that's more human-friendly, then those steps should be taken.

Program File This:

Interesting. Was not aware of this.

But ayup, at the CMD line I'm certainly able to replicate this under Windows 7. (copied notepad.exe to the root, renamed it program.exe and then tried to execute

Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe

Notepad came up and gave me a file not found error. VERY interesting.

FWIW, this is "correct" behavior. Incorrect behavior would be if you put an 'internet.exe' in 'program files\' and then ran that command, if it started that.

Evan:

If ", \, |, and / characters were anywhere near as common as spaces, then yes, I'd say that a system that prevented you from using those is dumb.

So now we're determining our design principles based on a popularity vote?

Evan:

(And I'd actually even say I'd prefer to see Windows allow at least " and | in names. \ and / are probably no good because of their use in directory separators

and spaces are used as keyword separators in the CLI, which every major OS including Windows has had for a very very long time, in most cases before the GUI. And before that, spaces were used as word separators for umm let me see know what maybe 10 thousand years? So you'll concede a directory delimiter -- very much an outgrowth of technology -- but not a word delimiter -- invented by those precious untrained humans to which all software design must bow?

This used to be a common problem in the Swedish version of Windows 9x. But then it manifested itself by popping up an explorer window with your program files. Because in the Swedish version C:\Program Files was called C:\Program.

every software development company that hardcodes root drives as "C:" into their programs should be shut down immediately and the responsible programmers should be burnt on a heap of "coding for beginners" books.

we don't have C: drives in our machines, and especially not in our terminal servers, and constantly experience e.g. drviver installers crash on that.
it's unbelievable how many companies don't seem to know about environment variables, even in 2012!!!