• (cs)

    How can a guy like that make it to work in the morning without running over himself?

  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    Richard Nixon:
    ammoQ:
    Bus Raker:

    5th post i hope (my favorite number)


    Sorry pal, the first post somehow went astray, so your post is actually the 4th.


    Where's Gene when we need him to moderate? Your post is completely off-topic and adds nothing to the discussion. That's the metric we're using, isn't it? Or does Gene only delete posts from people he doesn't like.

    True, and I was reluctant to post it; but then, someone has to tell those kids "forget about FIRST POST, it will be deleted soon, you are just causing the mods a little bit of work". Anyway, if another moderator decided to delete my post (and this one too), I wouldn't be angry about that.
  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ

    Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket! If this came from the ".NET whiz", I'd love to see the code from the lesser minions....

    Nth!

  • Demarcus Cherish? (unregistered) in reply to James Brantly

    Does the SMTP spec even allow that?  In what form is the stream transmitted?  Binary?  Is the problem the MIME type?

  • (cs) in reply to Danny

    They actually moved to locust notes?  Woah.

  • Dazed (unregistered)

    I remember having to cobble something together with simulated keystrokes because there was no other way of doing it. Would have been on MS-DOS 3, IIRC. I guess this guy learnt his programming about then and spent most of the 90's doing Excel recorded macros ...

  • (cs) in reply to Demarcus Cherish?
    Anonymous:
    Does the SMTP spec even allow that?

    SMTP propably doesn't care how the message is being composed.
    In what form is the stream transmitted?  Binary?

    Uuencoded, I'd guess, just like any other binary content.

    Is the problem the MIME type?

    I see no reason why this should be a problem. All it takes is an attachStream(Stream s, string mimetype) method.
  • (cs)

    How to programmatically set a text box control to display "1".

    Step 1: Open MS Word....

    --Rank

  • (cs) in reply to R.Flowers

    R.Flowers:
    He sounds like an old-school VB programmer being reluctantly dragged in the .net world. (And before he knew VB, he was most comfortable putting .bat files together.)

    BAT Programmer, he is not! He would've scraped this from the 'net had he been.

    Google'd "bat file send mail" - http://www.paulsadowski.com/WSH/cmdmail.htm

    <FONT face="Courier New" size=2>@echo off & setlocal
    :: set the temp file location
    set tempmail=%temp%\tempmail.%random%.txt
    :: echo the basic headers to the temp file
    echo To: "Scripting Test" ^<[email protected]^> > %tempmail%
    echo From: "Me" ^<[email protected]^> >> %tempmail%
    echo Subject: Test2 >> %tempmail%
    :: echo the blank line that separates the header from the body text
    echo.>>%tempmail%
    :: echo the body text to the temp file
    echo First line of body text.>> %tempmail%
    echo Second line of body text.>> %tempmail%
    :: move the temp file to the mail pickup directory
    :: adjust this location for your system
    move %tempmail% c:\inetpub\mailroot\pickup
    set tempmail=
    endlocal</FONT>

  • (cs) in reply to neven

    neven:
    So wait, they tried all that before trying to write a SMTP class from scratch?

    You mean like some of the PHP code out there that uses fopen(...) to talk directly to an SMTP server..?

    Alex:
    SmtpMail class in System.Web.Mail

    Only Microsoft would lump a pre-HTTP protocol into a "Web" class...idjits...

  • Jeff (unregistered)

    <font face="Tahoma" size="2">What gets me is that with so many good programmers on this forum who tell others to RTFM, they don't listen to their own advice, no one has mentioned that System.Web.Mail is deprecated in .NET 2.0, you are now supposed to use System.Net.Mail.
    </font>

  • mrwiggles (unregistered)

    I defy the logic that states that because a third-party app is used to solve a problem created by an obvious WTF, the the third-party app is also a WTF.

    Is it possible that this application is quite useful in a reasonalby conceived process (that does not include an engineering staff with enough time/budget to write a home-grown solution for every process problem)?

    Perhaps ClickYes is a WTF (I don't know) but this ".net whiz" didn't prove it just 'cause he used it in his own WTF.

    *ClickSpellcheck*

    *ClickPost*

  • (cs) in reply to Jeff
    Anonymous:
    <font face="Tahoma" size="2">What gets me is that with so many good programmers on this forum who tell others to RTFM, they don't listen to their own advice, no one has mentioned that System.Web.Mail is deprecated in .NET 2.0, you are now supposed to use System.Net.Mail.
    </font>


    RTFT (read the fscking thread), System.Net.Mail has been mentioned at least 2 times.
  • (cs) in reply to mrwiggles
    Anonymous:

    I defy the logic that states that because a third-party app is used to solve a problem created by an obvious WTF, the the third-party app is also a WTF.

    Is it possible that this application is quite useful in a reasonalby conceived process (that does not include an engineering staff with enough time/budget to write a home-grown solution for every process problem)?

    Perhaps ClickYes is a WTF (I don't know) but this ".net whiz" didn't prove it just 'cause he used it in his own WTF.

    *ClickSpellcheck*

    *ClickPost*



    I agree, that's a good point.  I also had to use that app once for a simple Access/VBA app that sent out dozens of reports via emails through Outlook which one of the accountants ran from her workstation.  Once that security patch took effect in Outlook, there really seemed to be no way to avoid that prompt.  For a VBA app running on a work station sending emails through Outlook, that ClickYes app was pretty handy and pretty necessary.  At least back then, I haven't revisited that particular issue in years.

    Of course, for a .NET app running on a server, that's another story.
  • jbange (unregistered) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:

    True, but why do people keep posting "first post" when they are actually 2nd, since Alex is 1st all the time?


    It's actucally the same reason they try for "first post" on any other public forum: they're dumbasses. The very same sort of mindset that had us all listening to them say "I'm Rick James, bitch!" for a year and a half even though it was only funny that first time, when Dave Chapelle did it. They're like parrots who, rather than spouting something intelligible like "Polly want a cracker", merely parrot the punch line of a joke they didn't understand, but remember people were laughing..
  • bah (unregistered) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:

    True, but why do people keep posting "first post" when they are actually 2nd, since Alex is 1st all the time?


    Maybe Alex is 0th...
  • (cs) in reply to bah

    Anonymous:
    ammoQ:

    True, but why do people keep posting "first post" when they are actually 2nd, since Alex is 1st all the time?


    Maybe Alex is 0th...

    Alex is definitely first, not zeroth :).  That's why most pleebs post as "fist". :-|

  • Gabe (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    2004-12-02 13:29 -- Check in code that does the following: Programmatically execute outlook.exe and wait five seconds for it to load up. With the outlook process in the foreground, send the following keystroke combination to outlook: {ctrl+n}, [email protected], {tab}, {tab}, Some Subject Line, {tab}, The Message Body, {ctrl+enter}.Close the outlook process.

    ...

    2004-12-07 10:28 -- Check-in yet another attempt to automatically click yes.

    2004-12-07 16:22 -- Install, on the server, a newly purchased program called ClickYes that automatically clicks "Yes" to those dialogs.

    Maxim took it upon himself to improve this process. After a few minutes, he had checked in a new approach: the SmtpMail class in System.Web.Mail.

    What I don't understand is how somebody who is capable of finding, within 6 hours, a program to click "Yes" for him automatically, could not find out that .Net already has an SMTP class within the week that he spent on this.

  • (cs)

    Okay, I don't know .NET, and don't have time to wade through MSDN's voluminous docs to see whether they explicitly explain this.  Does the SmtpMail class leave a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder?  (If not, the obvious workaround is to BCC yourself; how severe an edge case would it take for that to fail?)

  • Pete (unregistered) in reply to eloj


    I had a guy do EXACTLY that!   Then he expected me to support it..

  • (cs)

    That should be one of my guys... really inventive and using completely wrong approach without bothering to spend a few minutes googling the right way to do stuff. Thanks God that not all of the people I work with are like this or I would have dies from a heartattack by now :)

  • Cthulhon (unregistered)

    I actually had to do something sort of like this for a final project in school.  We were required to use Java and the school servers blocked most ports, including SMTP, and we couldn't change it because of county policy.  The only way to send an e-mail was through Exchange, and the only Exchange package available for Java costs about $300 (J-Integra). There were two groups trying to do this; one group implemented a Java-to-COM-to-ActiveX-to-JScript-toActiveX-to-Outlook mess that got the job done after after the user had to click about 4 security dialogue 'Yes's, the other group (my group) hacked together a call to the Outlook executable with the /mailurl"mailto:..." command line switch and Java.Runtime.  Really, there was no decent way to do it short of implementing JNI, which we ended up not having time to do.  SO I could see how this might be slightly justified in some situations.  However, if this was in .NET (whcih I'm sure has Exchange functionality built-in) and SmtpMail did, in fact, work without port blocking issues, there is no excuse for this WTF.

  • (cs) in reply to Gabe
    Anonymous:
    What I don't understand is how somebody who is capable of finding, within 6 hours, a program to click "Yes" for him automatically, could not find out that .Net already has an SMTP class within the week that he spent on this.

    Simple.  He did not let himself get distracted from the immediate problem.  Once he decided that he needed a yes-clicker, nothing else would do.  Avoiding scope creep as an anti-pattern.

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko


  • (cs)

    OMG. I got to get me a gun, in case I ever meet someone like this.

    (joking, I think)

  • Josh (unregistered)

    System.Web.Mail has been defecated - you should now use System.Net.Mail in .NET 2.0.

     

  • (cs) in reply to Cthulhon

    Anonymous:
    I actually had to do something sort of like this for a final project in school.  We were required to use Java and the school servers blocked most ports, including SMTP, and we couldn't change it because of county policy.  The only way to send an e-mail was through Exchange

    How come then Exchange can send email through an SMTP server when the ports are blocked? Am I missing something?

  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    Bus Raker:

    5th post i hope (my favorite number)


    Sorry pal, the first post somehow went astray, so your post is actually the 4th.

    If a post is deleted, is it still a post?

    (Deep thoughts by Bus Raker)

  • (cs) in reply to Bus Raker
    Bus Raker:
    ammoQ:
    Bus Raker:

    5th post i hope (my favorite number)


    Sorry pal, the first post somehow went astray, so your post is actually the 4th.

    If a post is deleted, is it still a post?

    (Deep thoughts by Bus Raker)



    Definitely, since it is not really deleted, just moved to another forum, i.e. the "deleted posts" forum which is available only to moderators.
  • (cs) in reply to email

    Anonymous:
    I have never tried to send an email from my own code, and had no idea that some languages actually had build-in libraries for this stuff. That said... mmm.... trying to open an external GUI app and trying to enter stuff that way... that just seems like the wrong way to go...

    SendKeys is a WTF'ing dream.  It's handy for April Fool's Day jokes and that's all.  

  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    Richard Nixon:
    ammoQ:
    Bus Raker:

    5th post i hope (my favorite number)


    Sorry pal, the first post somehow went astray, so your post is actually the 4th.

    Where's Gene when we need him to moderate? Your post is completely off-topic and adds nothing to the discussion. That's the metric we're using, isn't it? Or does Gene only delete posts from people he doesn't like.

    Anyway, if another moderator decided to delete my post (and this one too), I wouldn't be angry about that.

    I have this theory that Alex is really Gene W in disguise.  Kind of like Higgins is really Robin Masters in Magnum PI. 

  • (cs) in reply to Albatross

    Albatross:
    They actually moved to locust notes?  Woah.

    Domino Lotus Script is my favorite code to develop in.

  • aniefer (unregistered)

    HELO,
    I used to telnet to port 25 and talk directly to the SMTP daemon to send out spoof mails for fun.  Surely its not that hard to code up if you wanted to reinvent the wheel.

    -Andrew

  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    Bus Raker:
    ammoQ:
    Bus Raker:

    5th post i hope (my favorite number)


    Sorry pal, the first post somehow went astray, so your post is actually the 4th.

    If a post is deleted, is it still a post?

    (Deep thoughts by Bus Raker)



    Definitely, since it is not really deleted, just moved to another forum, i.e. the "deleted posts" forum which is available only to moderators.

    Is a forum and forum if it's only available to one person?

    (Thoughts, piled higher and deeper)

    --Rank

  • Rehan (unregistered) in reply to Got enough wtfs of my own

    They have a ClickYes Pro too :)

  • WHUH (unregistered) in reply to pjsson
    pjsson:
    Anonymous:
    I want to know how anyone makes money on a product that clicks yes. Do they offer a ClickNo? ClickMaybe? ClickBrillant?

    It cost $39.90, see http://www.contextmagic.com/express-clickyes

    I think an ClickNo application is an unfilled market niche which probably could sell for much for than $39.90, since it's often harder to say no to things than yes.



    The fact that CheckYes exists is the WTF here... and there are two versions of it!!  CheckYes Express and CheckYes Pro. 

  • (cs) in reply to emurphy
    emurphy:
    Okay, I don't know .NET, and don't have time to wade through MSDN's voluminous docs to see whether they explicitly explain this.  Does the SmtpMail class leave a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder?  (If not, the obvious workaround is to BCC yourself; how severe an edge case would it take for that to fail?)
    The help-page cited above (waay up) strongly suggests that all it's doing is parcelling up your email and passing it along to your (remote) SMTP Server.

    Not a lot different than echoing similar lines to 'mail' in Unix, except that it doesn't go through your mailbox on the way out, so no copy would be saved unless you took specific steps.

    I'd just as likely pass the result over to a Python or Perl app to do the same thing.
  • safasfawfafafwa (unregistered) in reply to Rank Amateur
    Heh.
     
    What's really ironic is that System.Web.Mail is just a wrapper around CDONTS/CDOSYS.  Har har.
     
    System.Net.Mail is written from the ground up in managed code.
  • (cs) in reply to emurphy
    emurphy:
    Okay, I don't know .NET, and don't have time to wade through MSDN's voluminous docs to see whether they explicitly explain this.  Does the SmtpMail class leave a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder? 


    IMO it would be a WTF if it did. Some people might have Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird and Eudora installed. Into which "Sent Items" folder should .net put the copy? Some people might decide not to install any of those programs on a dedicated web server. Should sending mails from .net fail because not Outlook is installed?
  • (cs) in reply to aniefer

    Anonymous:
    HELO,
    I used to telnet to port 25 and talk directly to the SMTP daemon to send out spoof mails for fun.  Surely its not that hard to code up if you wanted to reinvent the wheel.

    -Andrew

    EHLO Anonymous,

    Talking to your SMTP server??? Nahhh... no challenge at all... what about writing your own SMTP server - querying DNSes and talking to recipients' SMTP servers is much more fun... NOW we're talking...

  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    Bus Raker:
    ammoQ:
    Bus Raker:

    5th post i hope (my favorite number)


    Sorry pal, the first post somehow went astray, so your post is actually the 4th.

    If a post is deleted, is it still a post?

    (Deep thoughts by Bus Raker)



    Definitely, since it is not really deleted, just moved to another forum, i.e. the "deleted posts" forum which is available only to moderators.

    So that's where all of Richard Nixon's posts go.

    On a seperate note, I am having a bitch of a time getting my System.Web.Mail to work through Groupwise .. seems the smtp ports have been blocked by our Net Admin.

    My solution is going to be have the program generate dynamic VBScript to open an IE application navigating to Gmail.  It will copy this file to the web server desktop and execute it remotely.  The VBScript will execute, opening an instance of IE at gmail.  Then it will use Sendkeys to enter my username and password into Gmail and send the contents to my home computer.  There will be a service on my home computer that detects incoming gmail.  When it detects the message it will create an FTP batch file on the local drive and execute it, FTPing a confirmation back to the application server.  At that point I will have the service with help of the 'ClickYes' application send the email to the recipient via Outlook.

    I am brilliant

  • (cs) in reply to Bus Raker
    Bus Raker:

    So that's where all of Richard Nixon's posts go.

    Alex made this ASP page so everyone can see what was deleted and by whom.

  • red_grant (unregistered) in reply to Volmarias

    That is common in IT departments that have nothing but MSCE monkeys with no real knowlege of how to do anything not in the manual.

    Where I work part-time while I finish up my degree, we had an inventory system called Track-it! installed.  They paid a hefty fee for it, and no one could figure out how to get it installed and running by the time their support contract was up.  My boss attempted to do it and gave up after two days.  Solution?  Buy the new version and the premium support option.

    After a week or so of calling support every 30 minutes, it's pretty much up and running.


  • (cs) in reply to emurphy

    emurphy:
    Okay, I don't know .NET, and don't have time to wade through MSDN's voluminous docs to see whether they explicitly explain this.  Does the SmtpMail class leave a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder?  (If not, the obvious workaround is to BCC yourself; how severe an edge case would it take for that to fail?)

     

    WTF man... asking to leave a copy in the user's Sent Items folder isn't any better than requesting to make upload and download speeds for ADSLs. Take a deep breath and spend a moment thinking before spitting something as stupid as that - if you need to keep a log file there are much better ways to do - last century people invented databases, or if you prefer - store them somewhere as files, use XML or whatever you like, but another application on user's machines - the least I can say about this approach is stupid..... and we're talking about a WEB application, not a desktop machine so spend a minute and think about it - HOW will users see this Sent Items folder? Hmmm? I guess you will give them the password for the remote desktop to the server, maybe? Totally compromising the security and providing a good source for problems - you can't be sure what people will do besides looking at the Sent Items folder.

    So your ignorance about "MSDN's voluminous docs" and using "inventive" workarounds will cause so much more trouble in the long term than spending a day or two googling the right solution...

    You said you don't know .NET, so what do you use? And since when are you working as a programmer?

  • (cs) in reply to nsimeonov
    nsimeonov:

    How come then Exchange can send email through an SMTP server when the ports are blocked? Am I missing something?



    Most likely the firewall had a rule setup that only the Exchange server can send traffic out over port 25.  Therefore you would need to relay through the Exchange server.  When I was a network adminstrator, I set my firewalls up this way to reduce the potential impact of viruses containing their own SMTP engines.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    2004-12-02 13:29 -- Check in code that does the following: Programmatically execute outlook.exe and wait five seconds for it to load up. 



    The real WTF is that he only allowed five seconds for Outlook to load.
  • (cs) in reply to lpope187
    lpope187:
    nsimeonov:

    How come then Exchange can send email through an SMTP server when the ports are blocked? Am I missing something?



    Most likely the firewall had a rule setup that only the Exchange server can send traffic out over port 25.  Therefore you would need to relay through the Exchange server.  When I was a network adminstrator, I set my firewalls up this way to reduce the potential impact of viruses containing their own SMTP engines.

     

    Unless it's a software firewall installed on each machine I don't see how you can determine the application if you have an "hardware" firewall device.

    But even if this is the case I don't see a problem to fix the firewall and allow a well-known application to send emails, than inventing workarounds like this.

    I admit that I did something similar about 10 years ago in the army, because I had to enter data in a really terrible application written in MS Access. It was hard to use it and to enter all of the data I had to open a couple of dialogs and enter specific pieces, most of them about the same as the previour record... So I wrote a small program to get everything at one page, key in the data (remembering the common data between records) and when I click yes it would do the keybd_event(...) magic waiting as much as neccessary to open each window while in this time I prepare the documents to enter the next record. So in this case it was very very helpful (increased our team's productivity more than 5 times) but in a real application it's totally unacceptable!

  • Dick Cheney (unregistered) in reply to Rehan
    Anonymous:
    They have a ClickYes Pro too :)


    The Pro version includes ClickFileNotFound.
  • perpendicular pronoun (unregistered)

    Wtf does the server have client software like outlook installed anyway?  I get the feeling this wtf is as much a result of misguided requirements as the programmers stupidity, I can just see some idiot down the line saying it HAS to be done through outlook.

  • safasfawfafafwa (unregistered) in reply to nsimeonov
    nsimeonov:
    lpope187:
    nsimeonov:

    How come then Exchange can send email through an SMTP server when the ports are blocked? Am I missing something?



    Most likely the firewall had a rule setup that only the Exchange server can send traffic out over port 25.  Therefore you would need to relay through the Exchange server.  When I was a network adminstrator, I set my firewalls up this way to reduce the potential impact of viruses containing their own SMTP engines.

     

    Unless it's a software firewall installed on each machine I don't see how you can determine the application if you have an "hardware" firewall device.

    Erm, you don't determine the application.  You set a firewall rule allowing an IP address, MAC address, computer name, whatever to send outbound traffic to port 25.

    Never seen a hardware firewall configuration before, eh?

  • (cs) in reply to safasfawfafafwa
    Anonymous:
    nsimeonov:
    Unless it's a software firewall installed on each machine I don't see how you can determine the application if you have an "hardware" firewall device.
    Erm, you don't determine the application.  You set a firewall rule allowing an IP address, MAC address, computer name, whatever to send outbound traffic to port 25.

    Never seen a hardware firewall configuration before, eh?

    Apparently not, but he seems to have figured it correctly anyway.  How about dropping the "Never heard of..." and trying something less grating like "Yes, it works like...".  We have not all done what you have, and vice versa.

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko

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