Mister_Snuggles

I remember calling MS support, vaguely related to this project.

For example, if the Edmonton office needed to send a welcome letter to a new client, the flow might look like this:

1. Create a new file based on X:\Templates\EdmontonLetterhead.dot

2. Insert the contents of X:\Templates\A01-ClientOnboarding.doc

3. Fill in fields. Usually stuff like client name, caseworker name, etc.

4. Click the links in the file (e.g., there'd be a link to X:\Templates\EdmontonContactNumbers.doc), printing each document and deleting the link from the final document.

5. Save the file to the client's folder (e.g., S:\Clients\000123-Jane Smith).

6. Print a copy for the paper file, a copy to mail out, and an envelope.

We called Microsoft Support because when changes were made to the template documents it would update the links to relative paths. These don't work with our flow because the document either isn't saved, or is saved on a different network drive.

Microsoft Support wasn't able to help us. They understood exactly what we were doing, exactly what the problem is, but they weren't able to fix it. That's just how Word works, it didn't have a setting to force absolute links.

I ended up writing another VB6 program, using OLE Automation to get Word to do the work, which opened each document, saved it to a local drive (which turned the relative links into absolute links), then copied it back to the shared drive.

It was amazingly easy to interact with other apps via OLE Automation (aka, COM Automation).

About 25 years ago I wrote a program that would look for requests (in the form of XML files) from the custom software on our Solaris system, then based on the contents of the request it would fire up Word, load up the appropriate letterhead and body template, fill in the required information (e.g., client name/address, caseworker name, etc), print two copies (one for the file, one with an envelope to send out), and store the completed document in the client's folder on the fileserver.

This program saved an incredible amount of time and let the office typing pool concentrate on typing dictated letters instead of filling out templates.

Without the magic of OLE Automation letting me use Word programmatically from my application, creating this would have been basically impossible.

I'm surprised that Canada doesn't seem to be talking about doing this.

We've already got a strong payment processing brand with Interac, it's used daily for millions of debit transactions, and supports all the features you'd expect (in Canada) from a payment card (tap, chip&pin). There's also the MasterCard Debit and Visa Debit branding which seem to bridge debit transactions to the MasterCard and Visa networks. And there's already Interac-capable terminals basically everywhere that Visa and MC are accepted.

My thought is that Interac should launch a credit card brand called "Interac Credit". The actual credit would be via the banks, just like it is with Visa and MC. Interac already has the relationships with merchants and banks to make this happen, and it has the mindshare with consumers to make it successful.

Running two Lenovo ThinkVision displays off of my work MacBook Pro.

On the MBP built-in display, the upper-left and upper-right corners are rounded. I believe this is due to the shape of the display. The bottom corners are not rounded.

On the external displays, the corners are all square.

> - If you are thinking of ZFS/TrueNAS because of the scrubbing functionality, RAID1 + BTRFS also have scrubbing.

In my experience, BTRFS is to be avoided. It's the only FS that I've lost data to.

Honestly, the big thing that the Pi has is the support and mindshare. Compared to many equivalents (e.g., the Banana Pi) you'll find much better documentation and have a much more polished experience with a Raspberry Pi.

The only question, for me anyway, is how much value I put on that experience and whether the increased cost is worth it.

Worked issued me a Windows Mobile based Palm Treo (probably a 700wx), but I'm honestly not sure. It was decidedly not great, but mostly did the job. It was eventually replaced by a Blackberry of some kind which worked a lot better.

I had a number of PalmPilots over the years, I loved those little devices! I also remember using a keyboard dock with one of them to take notes during meetings.

I'm pretty sure I had a PalmPilot Professional, a Palm V, and a Tungsten T (which slid open). The Palm V was easily my favourite, it was a very good looking device that worked very well. In comparison, the Tungsten T was somewhat clunky.

What DNS features are you missing? Is this a weird UXG limitation?

I have a UCG-Ultra and was able to set up DNS just the way I wanted. My needs aren't extreme, but I was able to set up a wildcard entry (*.apps.domain -> 192.168.x.y) and fixed addresses and DNS names for various hosts.

The configuration is in a non-obvious place now and has moved around a bit over time. Currently it hides in Settings > Policy Engine > DNS. It shows entries that come from the per-host fixed IP/Local DNS configuration (you can't edit these here) and you can create new entries here (like my wildcard or some other random entry).

Rather than regulating features, I'd start with a dependency list.

So a smart plug might have a list saying:

- Functionality requires 2.4GHz WiFi, Internet access, access to whatever.vendor.com, and a vendor.com account.

- Provisioning requires the above plus BLE and Vendor's app.

A smart washing machine might be more complex:

- Express wash requires nothing special.

- Regular wash requires 2.4GHz WiFi, Internet access, access to whatever.vendor.com, and a vendor.com account.

- Heavy Duty wash requires the above plus a vendor-supplied detergent cartridge.

How does this prevent a random application from making an HTTPS request to a random hard-coded IP address? Similarly, how does this prevent an application from making an HTTPS request to a generic host (e.g., api.example.com)?

This is what DoH looks like from outside the application. You can't really tell that it's DoH since it's just an HTTPS connection, which is kind of the whole point of it.

To play devil's advocate, shoving everything into HTTP/HTTPS also allowed a ton of innovation.

Would video streaming sites (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) ever have gotten off the ground if they had to go to IANA to get a port number assigned, then wait for browsers to support the new protocol that runs over the new port, etc? Probably not to be honest. Or maybe browsers would just let JavaScript connect to any port, which would be terrifying from a security standpoint.

I'm firmly convinced that shoving everything into HTTP/HTTPS was a mistake. But I'm also willing to acknowledge that it's probably the least-worst solution to a bunch of problems.

I can see a future where Chrome will use the system resolver for everything except Google's advertising domains, and those name resolutions will be impossible to block because they're going to a Google IP that may also serve services you want. Maybe Chrome would get called out for this change and they'd back it off.

But I doubt that a smart TV that does this would get called out, and even if they were the response would likely be "Oh, that model is three months old and we don't do firmware updates, sorry."