[HN Gopher] MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names
___________________________________________________________________
MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device names
Author : tapoxi
Score : 388 points
Date : 2023-08-10 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (learn.microsoft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (learn.microsoft.com)
| [deleted]
| whalesalad wrote:
| Microsoft is going for the Guinness World Record for oldest tech
| debt. They are winning.
| nxobject wrote:
| Rivalled only by IBM... which makes for an interesting
| comparison; IBM for enterprise, and Microsoft for personal
| computing.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Unisys beats IBM for longest supported platforms.
| kentonv wrote:
| Circa 1998 I was a teenage Linux zealot who would attend LAN
| parties carrying a Linux box. It actually worked -- at the time,
| WINE practically existed to support Starcraft, Quake 2 could run
| natively, and that covered like 95% of what people were playing.
|
| One time I thought it would be funny to run a shell script that
| looped through every Windows share on the network and tried to
| open `CON/CON` on it, resulting in a prompt Blue Screen of Death
| for each machine.
|
| For some reason my friends did not think it was funny.
| madrox wrote:
| This brings back memories. Every LAN group had that one friend
| like you. I'm sure you made up for it if, like my BSD friend,
| you were handy with network troubleshooting and always brought
| spare CAT-5.
| kentonv wrote:
| Well eventually I just... provided all the machines... and
| the house... https://kentonshouse.com
| Mxrtxn wrote:
| This is really cool! Did you build a similar house?
| kentonv wrote:
| Not similar, I built _that_ house. (I 'm Kenton.)
|
| Or do you mean the new one, alluded to on the site? It's
| almost done... not ready to share yet. ;)
| rexreed wrote:
| Great site - I am reading all your posts about the LAN
| party house now. Do you have the real estate listing of
| the house when it was up for sale? I'm just curious as to
| where it was located - you mentioned a sliver of land,
| and I saw the asking price ($2M in Palo Alto) so I'm
| curious to see what it looked like from the outside and
| its location, if you don't mind sharing!
| deagle50 wrote:
| You're a gentleman and a scholar.
| cheerioty wrote:
| CAT-5, lucky you :) We still got zapped!
| EspressoGPT wrote:
| > Circa 1998 I was a teenage Linux zealot who would attend LAN
| parties carrying a Linux box.
|
| Arch, I suppose.
| g105b wrote:
| if it were arch you'd know already
| gerdesj wrote:
| Sorry, how remiss of me! On behalf of Archoles everywhere:
| "I use Arch actually" (and so does my wife).
| saalweachter wrote:
| Arch wasn't around in 1998.
|
| I'm going to put my money on Slackware.
| kentonv wrote:
| I think it was RedHat.
|
| I had tried Debian first but switched to RedHat pretty
| quickly afterwards.
|
| (Back then, RedHat had nothing to do with "enterprise", it
| was just the most polished Linux distro around. Ubuntu
| didn't exist yet.)
|
| (These days FWIW I use boring old Debian, and I'm not a
| zealot about it. It works for me. Use what works for you, I
| don't care. I have a separate machine for gaming and it
| runs Windows. I know Steam works pretty well on Linux these
| days but Windows is still less hassle for games.)
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Back when Redhat was the name of the enterprise releases
| and the open source releases.
| kentonv wrote:
| I think there was no separate enterprise release at the
| time. But could be misremembering.
| chungy wrote:
| Red Hat Linux 6.2E was the first "enterprise" release
| they made. Basically just standard RHL 6.2 but with long-
| term support. This release can be retroactively thought
| of as "RHEL 1"; The proper distribution that debuted as
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2 was based on Red Hat Linux 9,
| with the similar promise of long-term support. Future
| RHEL releases are carved out of Fedora releases, the
| spiritual successor to RHL.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| No you're right. If memory serves me well, I used to
| switch between Slackware 3, redhat 2 and Debian 1.2(?) at
| about that time. I never liked redhat, enjoyed Slackware
| but ended up not enjoying the lack of a package manager,
| so Debian did the trick a few years later. There was a
| single redhat release. These days, just like you, I use
| Debian.
| [deleted]
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| I used to love slackware, by far the best linux experience.
| It just worked well.
| vmlinuz wrote:
| I still do. It still does...
| saalweachter wrote:
| I started with Slackware and was happy with it, but must
| admit that is entirely because my Linux book from B&N
| came with Slackware on a CD.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Probably. I just remember installing from a dozen+ 3.5"
| floppies onto my pizzabox '386 and breathing a sigh of
| relief when it booted.
| mkl wrote:
| I think I needed 17 floppies ... and I could only
| scrounge up about 8, so I assumed it wouldn't need the
| earlier ones again and reused them for later parts. It
| worked! I didn't use Slackware much though, as I had no
| way to connect that machine to the internet, so it was
| really hard to learn how to do stuff.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I think I actually still have an "Introduction to
| Slackware Linux" book.
| xtracto wrote:
| Ooooh that brought me memories. At the time testing (around
| '98) all the nerdy rage was on testing the different
| distros such as Caldera, Debian, Corel, Mandrake. I
| remember at the same time compiling my first kernel in
| FreeBSD (ordered the CDs from WalnutCreek website! what a
| time). My parents where not amused that I broke the home PC
| several times installing this thing over Windows
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| I'd bet RedHat 5.2.
| timcambrant wrote:
| That was my first. Then Slackware 3.6. Both as cover CD:s
| of computer magazines because that download was too much
| to handle on 56k.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| Was that over IPX? I don't think I ever configured IPX on
| Linux. By the time I was using enough Linux to run Starcraft on
| Wine, it already supported IP.
| code_runner wrote:
| love this story very much. I had no idea WINE had been around
| for that long and was able to play starcraft etc. I have really
| great memories of playing starcraft with friends back in the
| day.... that game had enough staying power that we could all
| get into and out of in middle school and then again in college!
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| It's still being played heavily and professionally in Korea
| and there are many non Korean tournaments too.
|
| I watch pro matches everyday!
| RainaRelanah wrote:
| > heavily
|
| Sadly not the case, as much as I love ASL the scene has
| zero new blood. SC2 really killed the Brood War scene, and
| League of Legends really killed SC2. The days of packing an
| aircraft hanger with 30,000+ fans for OSL finals are long
| gone.
|
| I was invited to the Stormgate alpha, and while I can't say
| anything about it (NDA), I am hopeful it will bring new
| life into RTS esports.
| DoesntMatter22 wrote:
| It's still heavily played. There are tons of show matches
| and ASL which is good. There are newer players like Scan,
| and we had a couple new guys last season.
|
| Is it in it's heyday? No. Is it still fantastic? Yeah.
|
| KESPA killed Brood War primarily because Blizzard forced
| them to. Then KESPA itself died.
|
| Lots of great BW still being played no question about
| that
| vitaflo wrote:
| IvOry just qualified for ASL. That's definitely new
| blood.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Ah, good times. Lim yo han!! (Aka slayers boxers ? Right
| ?). As a Terran player, I was in such awe. And then came
| Flash (lee young ho), the GOAT. I watched every one of his
| games. StarCraft 2 never came close to the accidental
| perfection that SC1 is.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Wine is nearly as old as linux. First released in 1993.
|
| I had some awkward conversations with my parents as a teenage
| nerd looking into "winehq". They didn't believe me that it
| had nothing to do with alcohol.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Your parent being concerned about you browsing something
| about wine?
|
| You're definitely not be French/European. Here our parents
| give us wine :) American?
| cogman10 wrote:
| mormon family.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Thanks, Mormons are some of the most nicest and chill
| Americans I've met in Europe. Had no idea alcohol is
| taboo.
| astrange wrote:
| They're also good at getting security clearances since
| they never do anything, so those might've been CIA
| agents.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> They're also good at getting security clearances since
| they never do anything_
|
| I never understood why you should mass deny security
| clearances to people who like to "party".
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| They don't want people who might have done something
| embarrassing in their past, because foreign adversaries
| might try to blackmail them with that.
| saghm wrote:
| Even today, Blizzard games tend to run pretty easily on
| Wine. I always attributed it to them using a fairly old
| tech stack, but maybe it's the reverse and Wine development
| has just continued to go above and beyond for those games.
| kcb wrote:
| I know WoW is aware that's it's running in Wine. There
| are some setting greyed out in game with a message of not
| compatible when running in Wine.
| lokar wrote:
| Just imagine the deep commitment to tech debt that results in
| this
| yellow_lead wrote:
| One man's tech debt is another man's API stability
| [deleted]
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| One man's API stability is another man's perpetual nightmare,
| especially if the API is bad. Things have to change to get
| better, and if systems are designed in a way which prevents
| API improvements, then you will just have perma-crap
| software.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The notion that change is always good/better is false, and
| change for the sake of change is terrible.
| xp84 wrote:
| This seems an odd place to be making this argument though.
| Of all the things that you might do if you had carte
| blanche to break all backcompat in Windows, you'd really
| pick these reserved words? like, how important is it to
| make a file named just con or prn? Or a Teams channel or
| Sharepoint group for that matter? I'd be aiming more for
| something like the backslash as path separator, or
| eliminating all system dependencies on drive letters. (I
| know NTFS can mount elsewhere, but too much stuff uses and
| assumes drive letters.)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > perma-crap software
|
| Yeah, we are talking about Microsoft here.
|
| I guess some people will pop-up from nowhere and disagree
| with your rationale, but it is flawless. Everybody loves
| the stability anyway.
| [deleted]
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| General tip for structuring user data. Try to treat it as obscure
| blobs, whenever possible.. Imagine it's encrypted so it's not
| even printable/human readable.
|
| > forms, CON, CONIN$, CONOUT$, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1
| to LPT9, desktop.ini, _vti_
|
| If they have to restrict those because some user input is going
| straight into their FS, then they mucked up. Probably should have
| been given a safe ID (perhaps uuid4, perhaps something more like
| a digest of the channel name instead of using the user input
| directly.
|
| For me it's a smell when someone says "You cannot use these
| characters". I automatically think "Why not? You're not using
| this unencoded or plaintext, right?" eg passwords, or usernames,
| or content that will show up on a webpage like a comment or such.
|
| This all being said, perhaps it's just an easter egg gone
| sideways... Perhaps they were just trying to have a bit of fun :)
| m00dy wrote:
| I can't be the only one thinking that generally MS Team is
| offering probably worst experience in the messaging market.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Slack is working hard on catching up but Teams is definitely
| the leader in suckiness right now.
| ilyt wrote:
| It's absolute fucking garbage when it comes to text chat. It
| boggles my mind that they had so many examples on how to do it
| right and fucked it up so badly
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I honestly think they should fire every single PM on that
| team. Like literally just keep the engineers and give them no
| more direction than make it better and designers need to
| approve any UI changes.
|
| That's it.
| uraji wrote:
| you are not
| graypegg wrote:
| If this IS a case where the title of a channel is used as a
| SharePoint folder, I'm surprised there isn't some standard way to
| escape specifically these strings? I know it would break
| compatibility for applications that rely on these magic device
| files, but SharePoint should NEVER actually want to speak to
| COM1. Weird to me it isn't handled already in SharePoint!
| Kwpolska wrote:
| SharePoint can sync with your filesystem on Windows, and
| Windows/Win32 doesn't support those names for backwards
| compatibility.
| lol768 wrote:
| Does this imply it's writing a file to the fs for its internal
| storage, with the name matching the channel's name instead of a
| channel ID?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I think it only implies they worry about people cutting and
| pasting channel names into other things like random powershell
| scripts.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Not necessarily - it could mean that at some point they believe
| they'll need to create folder or file with the same name as a
| team, and they don't wanna have to deal with weird collisions.
|
| It's been a while since I've used Teams+Sharepoint, but I
| vaguely remember being able to have a Sharepoint workspace per
| team channel, and then being able to mount those workspaces as
| a shared/network drive. Stuff that might end up in the
| workspace is like... shared/uploaded files or something?
| i_am_jl wrote:
| It's been a while since I've used Teams+Sharepoint, but I
| vaguely remember being able to have a Sharepoint workspace
| per team channel, and then being able to mount those
| workspaces as a shared/network drive. Stuff that might end up
| in the workspace is like... shared/uploaded files or
| something?
|
| This is correct. Every channel is backed by a Sharepoint
| folder (maybe this is configurable?) that contains stuff like
| uploaded images, videos, recordings and transcripts of
| meetings, etc.
| Roark66 wrote:
| It's hilarious on Linux you need chrome to use teams for
| screen sharing / video to work, and Firefox for sharepoint
| file sharing to properly work.
|
| If someone shares a file on a channel, you can open it in
| chrome. But you can't share any files yourself, because
| either the upload button doesn't work or when it does it
| looks like you shared the file in the chat for a split
| second then it dissapears.
| ant6n wrote:
| This%20is%20what%20escape%20sequences%20are%20for.
| kevincox wrote:
| If these folders are user-visible (for example browsable in
| SharePoint) then this leads to a bad user experience. The
| downside of restricting channel names needs to be weighed
| against the downside of needing to escape the SharePoint
| folder names.
| randomdata wrote:
| Could be someone taking DRY a bit too seriously, using
| validation code that is shared with places where the names do
| matter.
| markstos wrote:
| Yes. Or something equally head-scratching.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| It's bad, ok... But honestly what's the goal? To let people name
| _anything_ , including the name of a channel, anything they like,
| like, say: "rm -rf /*"
|
| Wait, I've got better: that rm -rf, but written "fr- mr" with RLO
| left/right overrides.
|
| Surely that is something to aim for because nothing shall ever go
| wrong?
|
| Thankfully having a file named _https://example.org_ is illegal
| in Linux (and Windows too right?).
|
| Seriously: is this a problem of you? And if it's a problem, where
| do you draw the line?
|
| What about codepoint 0? What about Hangul fillers and RLO
| characters: do you think applications who refuse these do suck?
|
| There are, thankfully, limitation on what filenames can contain.
| And I think the restrictions aren't anywhere near restrictive
| enough. Same for usernames, same for channels, same for oh-so-
| many things.
|
| Does anyone really find it problematic that, say, Twitter only
| allows visible alphanumeric characters and underscore? (and 15
| chars max)
|
| This seems _very_ smart to me. I take that any day over longing
| for people being able to use poop emojis in their usernames and
| channels names.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| While you can't have a file named https://example.org you can
| absolutely have a path like that, as internal duplicate slashes
| are ignored and you can have a directory named "https:" with a
| file named "example.org"
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've found it better to use dd to wipe out data than an rf.
| aposm wrote:
| Another fun observation in that page - You can only have up to
| 20k max participants in a Teams live event. The footnote says you
| can do larger events with Microsoft Stream, but following that
| link says Stream live events are deprecated, and the alternative
| is Teams. Hmm...
| [deleted]
| red_hare wrote:
| Reminds me of the rumor that the reason it went "Windows 7", "8",
| "10" and skipped "9" is because the fear of a codebase that went:
| if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9")) { /* 95 and 98 */
| ... }
| fantyoon wrote:
| Is the Windows version ever exposed as a string in the Windows
| API? Seems strange in my mind, but I have no experience with
| Windows. On the one hand it sounds like something Microsoft
| would do for backwards compatibility, but on the other hand it
| seems like a weird API to provide.
|
| I found GetVersion[1] but that returns the version as two
| numbers.
|
| [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/win32/api/sysinfoa...
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| I don't know if the rumor is true, but even if Windows itself
| doesn't provide an API that looks like that (I also looked
| around real quick and didn't find anything), it's not
| unreasonable that there could be libraries that provide the
| version that way.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| The rumour is not true, despite reddit's insistence.
| Windows exposes it's version is a series of numbers, and
| even if it didn't, Windows 9 could have returned "Windows
| Nine", "Window v9" or loads of other things.
| IshKebab wrote:
| You're imagining that all developers do things properly. I've
| seen Bash code that used a regex to get the first two digits
| from `python --version`. Hopefully they'll never release a
| Python 3.10!
| 88913527 wrote:
| Perhaps not Windows APIs, but the concern would apply to User
| Agent strings.
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| conscion wrote:
| This is most likely due to those names not being allowed for
| files or folders in the Windows file system. MS Teams channels
| create a matching folder in SharePoint where file attachments are
| stored.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| Microsoft, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll
| build it on top of SharePoint."
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Every time, it seemed like it was going to be so easy and
| powerful. Each time, it turned out to be impossible to
| implement relatively vanilla functionality.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Is Teams built atop SharePoint, or does it just integrate
| with it?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Creating a new team makes a sharepoint group complete with
| calendars, a site, email addresses, and file folders.
| andix wrote:
| And matching Active Directory groups. It's kind of cool to use
| them, because it's a really easy way to let the users
| administrate access to resources without opening a support
| ticket.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I bet there is another vulnerability here, although they also
| seem to blacklist % and ..
| naikrovek wrote:
| most of those are the usual forbidden path and filename
| characters.
|
| % is used to surround environment variables for
| interpretation, for example.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > the usual forbidden path and filename characters.
|
| It's pretty irritating when files and folders on my Mac
| can't be uploaded to Teams due to this limitation. It's
| only forbidden for Windows users.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It's only forbidden for Windows users._
|
| I think the only character that Macs don't allow is the
| colon. AFAIK, everything else is fair game, even emojis.
|
| I just created a project with "e" in the title. I wonder
| if I'll be able to share that with my Windows coworkers
| on Teams.
| recursive wrote:
| Yes. NTFS has no problem with non-latin letters and
| emojis in file names.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| NTFS itself has not that many forbidden characters
| (though ':' is one of them, it denotes alternate stream).
|
| What people think about those CON, PRN, AUX, NUL etc are
| not _filesystem_ limitation.
|
| And while we are here - nor backslash, nor forward slash
| are used in NTFS. It can care less about what char do you
| use for a _directory separator_. Just be sure to update
| your APIs.
| nxobject wrote:
| NTFS on non-Windows systems aside, I wonder whether there
| are any "pure NT" environments you can access in Windows
| where you _can_ create and use these folders.
| bombcar wrote:
| You just need to come in below whatever layer notices
| them. I'm sure they've been used to smuggle viruses in,
| so the layer that blocks them may get lower and lower.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| You can do some stuff under Cygwin that's bothersome
| under explorer.exe, like delete files with really long
| pathnames.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I had to test it, but this is true. I just renamed my
| TODO.txt to [sobbing emoji].txt
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Linux treats filenames as bytes and only disallows the
| ascii slash and null. All other bytes are fair game.
| cesarb wrote:
| > [...] and only disallows the ascii slash and null. All
| other bytes are fair game.
|
| There's also the special treatment of "", ".", and ".."
| (that is, a file or directory name consisting entirely of
| zero, one, or two dots), and the convention that a name
| starting with a dot is hidden.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| ":"? Really? It's not 2001 anymore.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I guess you're criticizing Microsoft's NTFS, since it
| cannot use colons, either.
|
| CON:? Really? It's not 1974 anymore.
|
| People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
| lostlogin wrote:
| ? No it is not 1974, but not everything is better.
|
| Edit: argh, HN deleted the emoticon. Ironic.
| [deleted]
| duskwuff wrote:
| > I think the only character that Macs don't allow is the
| colon.
|
| Colon is allowed in the filesystem; it's displayed as a
| forward slash in the UI.
|
| (There's historical reasons they do this: Classic Mac OS
| used colon as a path separator.)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > AFAIK, everything else is fair game, even emojis
|
| FWIW, I generally expect emojis to be _more_ compatible
| than other symbols, because they have no legacy meanings
| - ex. (tm) has never been a path separator, or indeed
| anything else.
| veave wrote:
| (tm) is not an emoji. It's part of the "Letterlike
| Symbols" block.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Oops, good point. I think I'm going to leave it as-is on
| account of not knowing of any actual emoji that HN
| allows, but yes that is technically incorrect on my part.
| veave wrote:
| I think the confusion comes from the fact that some
| platforms render it as a drawing as if it was an emoji. I
| never understood why...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Speaking only for myself, the confusion comes purely from
| the fact that I think of all text as "ASCII" or "Unicode"
| (...or "something else that nobody should use in the
| modern era"), and I don't really distinguish within
| "valid unicode that isn't ascii".
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Main problem with "emojis" is that they live outside the
| basic multilingual plane, and so make bad utf-16 handling
| really obvious. This is a blessing in disguise, because
| it acts as a no-brown-m&ms thing, since it's more
| unarguably broken than not being able to use cuneiform,
| or musical symbols.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yeah, point; I probably should have said something more
| like "emoji shouldn't have alternative meanings, so they
| should work _if your unicode support is functional_
| (which is a big caveat). " On the bright side, yeah,
| emoji have been great at pushing things to handle unicode
| nicely and act as a... I dunno, natural fuzzing case?
| wizofaus wrote:
| The problems show up when that name gets stored in a
| VARCHAR column somewhere...
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Yes, and it was an absolutely horrible mistake in the
| other direction. If I give you a path
| "./something/example.txt" it could be a file called
| example.txt in a folder called something or it could be a
| single file called "something/example.txt".
| hn92726819 wrote:
| It looks like non-utf8 is not allowed:
| https://superuser.com/questions/204287/what-characters-
| are-f...
|
| Maybe it goes without saying, but for completeness, / is
| not allowed in filenames, and neither is null terminator
| (0x00 or \0) on mac either.
|
| On Linux, only / and null terminator are banned from
| filenames.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Sadly, you are not correct about slashes. They are
| allowed in filenames for Macs
| https://alexwlchan.net/2021/slashes/
| vtee44 wrote:
| It doesn't make sense tbh, it just causes confusion when
| someone is using terminal. Slashes in file names are
| forbidden everywhere except Mac, it needs to be changed
| in order to send it anywhere or use in some apps. But I
| think colon is used much more in names. I don't get why
| did they do that.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Based on this logic, do we ban everything that is banned
| somewhere? Surely we can aim higher than the lowest
| common denominator.
| vtee44 wrote:
| Slashes are used in paths, so most programs that aren't
| Mac-exclusive would use them to build a path to file. To
| make it work properly in cross-platform programs you'd
| need to write platform-specific code to handle that. It
| just adds complexity and possible errors. Even system
| terminal doesn't display it as slash and it doesn't work
| if you write slashes.
|
| For users of other platforms (at least 90% of desktop
| market) it would just display as slashes. Just not
| implementing this workaround would make it predictable
| when moving and using files.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Given the preponderance of 3 major operating systems, I'd
| think it's sensible for user-level applications to
| disallow creation of filenames that would cause problems
| on any of them. Except arguably that could even include
| using spaces or periods... obviously in an ideal world
| such restrictions wouldn't exist, but I'm not sure how to
| realistically push for such a world. E.g. my suggestion
| would be to reserve non-printable characters (below Ascii
| 32) for use as separators/delimiters in as many contexts
| where that's workable. Obviously some sort of convention
| would then need to exist as to how they were displayed
| and typed in, and I very much doubt I'll ever see it
| happen, but I'm sure it would solve a lot of mis-parsing
| bugs that show up with frustrating regularity.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Once I planned to share files between a Mac and a Win PC
| through a product synching folders but gave up very soon
| due to the constant errors and problems with file names
| worked in one but not in the other, dominantly filenames
| that I did not choose but received (e.g. link dragged
| from address bar to folder, but others too) but some I
| choose following some preexisting logic.
| Dwedit wrote:
| \\\?\GLOBALROOT\ anyone? Now you're opening devices from the
| NT object namespace rather than files.
|
| Bonus: You can create the file C:\con\con using NT Native API
| filesystem calls. Someone even made a video of installing
| Windows into C:\con\con, and the kernel-side stuff works
| beautifully, and the explorer shell side dies horribly.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| >the kernel-side stuff works beautifully, and the explorer
| shell side dies horribly.
|
| So, just like running Windows normally then? :D
| postmodest wrote:
| NT is Dave Cutler's best ideas for OS design, atop which
| Very Bad People piled the Win95 API and UX
| dustingetz wrote:
| AOL chat would bluescreen a Win95 box if someone sent a
| chat message like "}s\con\con" - }s was the directive to
| play a sound
| gadders wrote:
| I worked at a bank that had a windows-based trading system and
| for some reason created folders to hold the details of each
| book. There were issues when a trader decided to call a book
| "LPT1".
| boppo1 wrote:
| What is a 'book' in the context of trading?
| jll29 wrote:
| short for "orderbook" - the set of pending trades
| pertaining to a client account
| grumpyprole wrote:
| Just an old name for a portfolio of transactions
| 0x264 wrote:
| Set of related trades.
| whalesalad wrote:
| sharepoint has its claws in msft and it will forever be their
| achilles heel.
| bni wrote:
| MICROS~1
| hn8305823 wrote:
| How I read the headline: "some horrible $MS
| product I don't use does some horrible $MS-like thing"
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| I sort of get most of these - they're internal to various bits of
| Microsoft technology. 'CON' plus the ones ending in $ are
| internal device names dating back to MS-DOS, 'desktop.ini' is a
| magic file that Explorer uses, '_vti_' is something I've seen but
| can't remember what it was from.
|
| But 'forms'? Why is 'forms' a bad word?
| tbyehl wrote:
| _vti is the mortal enemy of anyone involved in web hosting
| during the mid-90s to early 2000s. Those are the server-side
| scripts and configuration for FrontPage, originally developed
| by Vermeer Technologies Incorporated.
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| Thank you! That was bugging me, but now that you mentioned
| FrontPage I clearly recall all of the _vti stuff.
| monitron wrote:
| I did some quick looking and it seems like SharePoint creates a
| hidden folder called "forms" to store, unsurprisingly, forms
| associated with a resource. Aren't polluted namespaces grand?
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| Ah, that makes some amount of sense.
|
| But... Why not just call it "_forms" or ".forms", which are
| already prohibited due to the first character?
| bradley13 wrote:
| So many of these limits seem arbitrary. Why 5? Why 500000? While
| they seem OK for most customers, why not make many of them
| MAXINT?
| Sakos wrote:
| That sounds crazy to me and I understand why Microsoft or any
| company wouldn't want to do that. It seems completely
| reasonable to me to set reasonable limits to avoid excessive
| resource usage or unforeseen/untested/unwanted performance
| limitations.
| xp84 wrote:
| Bingo. Everything has a limit and when you set it yourself
| you're moving the "how many x can I make?" answer from the
| "unknown" column to the "known _and testable_ " column.
|
| Imagine if you add a feature tomorrow that, on startup, has
| to run something in linear time with the number of channels
| you have. If the upper bound were essentially undefined (and
| not practically testable if it's max int(32)) it could be
| that in practice your new feature makes it so that getting
| above 23,456 channels effectively disables the server due to
| a timeout in a critical part of startup. But if you've
| defined that channel limit, you can be confident that a
| feature like that either does or does not break things, even
| when at your channel limit, because you can test that.
| alkonaut wrote:
| If I ever do anything where I let people name things it's rarely
| a good idea to NOT lock it down with some restrictions. "Minimum
| length", "Maximum lenght" at least, but anyone who has programmed
| windows machines for any length of time might also have the scars
| to remember to do "is a valid file name" too.
|
| Having to escape everything or replace names with stable guids is
| not a good relpacement for storing \whatever\logs\channelname or
| whatever the need may be. Especially for systems that are hard
| bound to windows filesystems or Sharepoint to begin with.
|
| I bet there are apps on other OS:es where you CAN name things a
| "\0" sequence or "/" and for each such app I imagine there are
| people who regret making that possible.
| owlninja wrote:
| Words: forms, CON, CONIN$, CONOUT$, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1 to COM9,
| LPT1 to LPT9, desktop.ini, _vti_
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I was about to say "Which is essentially leaking the existence
| of something terrible inside. They should be embarrassed to say
| something like this in public. Like saying you can't have %s or
| $PS1. Why the hell not? What are you doing with this user-
| supplied input?"
|
| But maybe it's more about what everyone else might do with a
| channel name. Ie they might cut & paste it anywhere, and I
| guess windows users aren't expected to escape their own strings
| when pasted into cmd or powershell or wsl.
| tapoxi wrote:
| I thought this as well but there's plenty of dangerous
| commands that aren't escaped here. I'm assuming it's a
| limitation of it actually writing something to the
| filesystem, hopefully your own (with the desktop app) and not
| one in Azure.
| vel0city wrote:
| > What are you doing with this user-supplied input?
|
| Creating Sharepoint shares which can be mounted as network
| shares in Windows where these filenames are not allowed?
| cueo wrote:
| > I was about to say
|
| Yet you said it twice[1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37076913
| dharmab wrote:
| The Something Terrible in this case is early DOS which did
| not have separate folders. So the device files were in the
| same namespace as the user's files, so the user couldn't name
| a file CON or LPT1. These are preserved for backwards
| compatibility. To this day you can write a program that
| writes to a CON file in any folder, and the program will
| print the write to console.
| xp84 wrote:
| Another interesting aspect of this, which I remember
| specifically from reading MS-DOS manuals in the 90s as a
| kid (I was an incredibly fun 12 year old) is that this
| choice was an intentional one done in the name of
| flexibility. These device names were correctly written with
| a colon, but you are allowed to omit the colons. For
| instance:
|
| copy con lpt1
|
| And
|
| copy con: lpt1:
|
| were interchangeable. If they'd chosen to not save users
| keystrokes and force colons when referencing devices, I'm
| not positive, but I think it would have eliminated the need
| for many of these reserved words in file names in general.
|
| Also, side note, the "copy con outputfilename.txt" idiom is
| one that I still can't ever remember how to do the
| equivalent on UNIX/Linux!
| gnosek wrote:
| > Also, side note, the "copy con outputfilename.txt"
| idiom is one that I still can't ever remember how to do
| the equivalent on UNIX/Linux!
|
| cat > outputfilename.txt
| ChrisSD wrote:
| This has actually changed a bit in the last few years. In
| Windows 11 writing to `.\CON` will write to the file but
| writing to `CON` will still write to the console.
| transitorykris wrote:
| In the mid-90s there was a fun and short period of time where
| IRC clients like mIRC could be set to auto-receive files
| through DCC.. and would happily write to names like LPT1 (which
| of course would just write the data directly to the recipient's
| printer)
| grishka wrote:
| Also, send a COM1 file containing "+++ATH" to someone you
| dislike to see them disconnect. I just made this up but it
| _should_ work, right?
| zten wrote:
| For the absolute worst modems, I believe you could just
| send that in a PING on IRC and their client would write the
| string back and hang up
| Ekaros wrote:
| Now I actually wonder were there ever any machines that had
| LPT9, COM9 I could barely see.
| tssva wrote:
| Back in the day many of my clients had Windows NT/2000
| machines running RAS or RRAS with multi-port serial cards
| connected to modems for employee remote access. Usually these
| would be 8 or 16 serial ports per card with multiple cards
| installed per server.
| [deleted]
| blueflow wrote:
| You can reassign real device to any of these names
| Ekaros wrote:
| Reassign and actually use all of them are different things.
| fredoralive wrote:
| If you do embedded stuff you can easily get above COM100 if
| you're doing something like testing (if a USB to serial
| converter has a serial number, it gets a unique COM port).
| Although I don't think these high numbers have any effect on
| the file system, just the legacy low numbered ones DOS could
| have.
| zaxomi wrote:
| MSDOS 3.3 had COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, LPT1, LPT2, and LPT3.
| LPT4-9 and COM5-9 was not part of MSDOS.
| olyjohn wrote:
| IIRC those were mapped to specific I/O and IRQ Ports back
| in the day. COM1: I/O port 0x3F8, IRQ 4
| COM2: I/O port 0x2F8, IRQ 3 COM3: I/O port 0x3E8, IRQ
| 4 COM4: I/O port 0x2E8, IRQ 3
|
| I also remember, there was a while where there was no IRQ
| sharing. So some machines couldn't use all the COM ports
| available. Or you'd add in like a modem, and would have to
| disable the onboard COM port if it was using the same IRQ.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Pretty soon we'll need historians to explain this to younger
| generations.
|
| Maybe alongside the school of computer science at universities
| we'll have a school of computer archeology and a school of
| computer ethics where we'll be taught not to use negative
| reinforcement for AI training...
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I was about to say "Which is essentially leaking the existence of
| something terrible inside. They should be embarrassed to say
| something like this in public. Like saying you can't have %s or
| $PS1. Why the hell not? What are you doing with this user-
| supplied input?"
|
| But maybe it's more about what everyone else might do with a
| channel name. Ie they might cut & paste it anywhere, and I guess
| windows users aren't expected to escape their own strings when
| pasted into cmd or powershell or wsl.
|
| The teams code itself can probably handle it just fine, but maybe
| not all the unknown janky random things out there that might
| handle channel names.
|
| Other people have pointed out the SharePoint folders associated
| with the channels. Not sure I would excuse that myself since it's
| easy enough to just escape or modify or encode to create a safe
| version for the directory, but maybe it's important elsewhere for
| the channel name and the directory name to be identical. Within
| one app you could simply encode and decode both the channel name
| and directory name the same way and totally hide the encoding
| from the user, but if the directory is used outside of the app,
| then it would look bad with URL encoding or something that
| everything else will just display as it is, not decoded.
|
| So the directory has to be safe for everything else, and so the
| channel name has to be the same.
|
| Essentially choosing to have these limits rather than have
| directory names that look ugly sometimes. It's ultimately not
| even a safety or breakage thing, just a cosmetic thing. All
| directories will always look natural and good, because they don't
| allow anything that would have needed to be encoded.
| paulddraper wrote:
| AWS has character restrictions on virtually everything.
|
| The _message bodies_ of SQS messages has restrictions on which
| whitespace characters can be used.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| I noticed this recently too. We set up alerts on cloud watch
| logs and I tried to put an emoji in the alert message, which
| delivers to an SNS topic, which goes to an email. And
| cloudformation complained loudly that there was an
| unsupported character in the alarm message.
| naikrovek wrote:
| they're SharePoint limits, man. Teams is backed by SharePoint
| and it's not a secret, nor is it embarrassing.
| recursive wrote:
| > nor is it embarrassing
|
| I worked on a sharepoint project once. Let's just say I'm not
| putting it on my resume these days.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| I avoid putting stuff on my resume that I don't want to
| work on again. I just pretend to re-learn Sharepoint for
| every new job I have
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| It used to change so frequently that I didn't have to
| pretend.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > nor is it embarrassing
|
| Isn't it? The folders work fine on a Mac.
|
| Teams is not a things of beauty, and is rough as all hell for
| daily users.
| kbenson wrote:
| It isn't. Services have limitations, it's nothing new. This
| isn't about the portion of the app running on Mac, or Linux
| for that matter, this is because the app is backed by a
| service that has a name limitation and that bubbles up
| through teams names.
|
| In the end it's no different than if some service doesn't
| allow all numeric names or names to start with numerals or
| be too short, of which there are plenty of constraints on
| plenty of services.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I think I expect more from my tools than you. I have a
| fair idea why the behaviour is there, I just don't accept
| that it's ok.
|
| There are problems large and small throughout the app and
| it really feels like someone went 'close enough' and
| called it done.
| santoshalper wrote:
| And SharePoint itself is backed by the Windows Filesystem,
| which respects a lot of old DOS stuff for backwards
| compatibility.
| thefz wrote:
| > essentially leaking the existence of something terrible
| inside
|
| It's just a restriction imposed on SharePoint folder names
| bubbling up. Nothing fancy.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Or the terribleness falls one down very fancy?
| gadders wrote:
| It goes lower than that. Try creating a directory called
| "LPT1" in DOS
| BasedAnon wrote:
| i was going to write a bunch of suggestions for solving the
| problem but then i remembered i hate microsoft
| [deleted]
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I at least upvoted. This is the most level headed and sane
| reaction to this article.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Name checks out.
| eastbound wrote:
| Those should obviously be UUIDs. Labels and titles should be
| a simple changeable, internationalizable attribute.
|
| Like usernames. You don't use usernames as primary keys for
| anything, do you? What happens when people marry?
| merb wrote:
| > Like usernames. You don't use usernames as primary keys
| for anything, do you? What happens when people marry?
|
| well it's extremly painful to rename the primary mail
| address or the UPN when it comes to microsoft 365 and
| active directory, especially in a hybrid environment. of
| course you can change upn's but it's definitly some kind of
| "primary key" for a user. in fact most systems at least use
| a UPN
| jdwithit wrote:
| Extremely relatable post. I worked someplace that had a
| policy of absolutely never changing your Active Directory
| username because it was the primary key in like a dozen
| internal systems. Someone finally made a massive stink
| about it to HR when their name had legally changed but IT
| was forcing them to use their old name (and they were
| absolutely right to complain. It was a ridiculous policy
| only in place due to terrible architecture). They still
| defaulted to telling people no but they did at least
| document all the highly tedious manual steps necessary to
| change the name in all affected systems if (when) another
| employee refused to take no for an answer.
|
| Was certainly a great lesson in schema design, among other
| things.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > You don't use usernames as primary keys for anything, do
| you?
|
| HAHAHAHHHAAHAHA
|
| Seen this so many times I literally laughed out loud.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > You don't use usernames as primary keys for anything, do
| you?
|
| Sure you do. Saves doing joins all over the place just to
| get someone's username. Makes hand writing SQL easier.
|
| Apply head to desk.
| hardware2win wrote:
| And what happens when you sync sharepoint to your windows
| files?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| I too love folders with 200 UUID subfolders in them as well
| as URLs with 14 different UUIDs.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I guess windows users aren't expected to escape their own
| strings
|
| Eh... When did the users of any kind of system start to fit
| that expectation? And what is that utopia system?
| m3047 wrote:
| > leaking the existence of something terrible inside
|
| If you should get the opportunity to look at a raw (DNS)
| NXDOMAIN passive DNS (PDNS) feed there's a lot of plain
| brokenness, but the nuggets can be truly alarming. This is what
| happens when translating between naming services: naming
| services typically have application domains, and names in one
| context are interpreted differently in another. Bobby Tables is
| well known, but how about that special file "-rf"? Was a time
| when the happy path for Active Directory essentially trusted
| DNS domain names implicitly for things like file shares. Sounds
| ok until you realize executable files might be on those
| "drives".
|
| (Honestly I don't find the string "MS-DOS" anywhere in that
| document.) (Edit: Did find the reference to e.g. CON, LPT1...)
| [deleted]
| m3047 wrote:
| Looking at the list of characters and character ranges the
| omission of 7F is curious.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Try creating a value in a SharePoint choice column that has ;#
| in it, and you might not be so certain this isn't being done
| because MS don't trust their own code.
| jcims wrote:
| I can't send a text from Google Voice to my phone that has the
| domain 'united.com' in it. It just gets lost in the ether.
| glonq wrote:
| I'm old[school], so if I'm at the windows command prompt and need
| to bust out a quick batch file or script I will do "copy con
| foo.bat" instead of using notepad or vscode. Old habits die hard!
| xp84 wrote:
| Same! I know there are one or more ways to do this in a
| Unix/Linux shell, but despite being off Windows for almost 20
| years I haven't memorized it. I miss it though!
| ok123456 wrote:
| Use CP/M device names instead, I guess.
| xg15 wrote:
| MS Teams _channel names_ can 't contain device names*
|
| Still incredibly sad, but not as insane as if you couldn't use
| the names inside a chat.
| air7 wrote:
| This backwards compatibility chain reminds me of the age old tale
| of how rockets are the width of two horses... (1)
|
| (1) http://astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html
| [deleted]
| bmitc wrote:
| That was fun.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| hahaha, that's great. thanks for sharing
| mordae wrote:
| This is pure gold. Thanks, you made my day! :-)
|
| Also, you might be interested in this:
| https://youtu.be/1NqRbBvujHY?t=2236
| Nzen wrote:
| While I enjoyed rewatching the latter half of episode 2 of
| season 1 of James Burke's _Connections_ tv series, I don 't
| see how the invention of the cloud chamber (which you start
| the video at) is relevant to standards for rail, horses, or
| rockets. What's the connection ?
| msla wrote:
| It's a dumb joke with no basis in fact.
| naikrovek wrote:
| I would love to know who fabricated this myth and decided to
| just tell the story as if it were fact.
| prpl wrote:
| Similar reason why many telescope mirrors are exactly 8m
| across.
| failuser wrote:
| This is a classic joke, but settling on a common gauge was
| really difficult, it was not just copying some old Roman
| standard. There were even riots when different railways started
| to standardize because common rail gauge meant you can move
| through the town without engaging with the local economy, see
| Erie gauge war. Russia still has a wider gauge than Europe and
| Australia has 3 different ones.
| jmount wrote:
| I rode a train in Spain where the train changed gauge at a
| station!
| elnezah wrote:
| Spain has a peculiar train gauge. When you cross the border
| with France, the train slows down and gauge change happens
| on the fly.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| They also have to change sides: https://www.reddit.com/r/
| MapPorn/comments/29i4hq/side_where_...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Thanks for the anecdote that was interesting. I think the
| Erie gauge war demonstrates that people feel entitled to any
| advantage of circumstances that they have profited from in
| the past as if such were their property even when the actual
| matter are issue is in fact others property.
| joncrane wrote:
| This is precisely what large companies in the US do, they
| gain an advantage, then when the advantage is threatened,
| they use every tool at their disposal, including political
| lobbying, to keep their advantage.
|
| This is done under the guise of preserving shareholder
| value.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| I've seen this happen with planned bypasses of small towns,
| either through individuals fighting CPOs for their land, or
| people in the town opposing planning permission notices.
| (there's a few I can think of where the council's current
| plan involves waiting for certain people to die, since
| that's less effort overall)
|
| Usually such bypasses are great for these towns, as it
| removes most of the articulated road shipping that needs to
| pass through there, and generally makes it a nicer place to
| be.
| bombcar wrote:
| It depends on the town, it can also kill or relocate it.
| The town in Pixar's Cars is realistically depicted in
| that way.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| I've come across an apocryphal tale in the U.S. west
| describing why certain towns and cities have main streets
| that are the width required to fully turn a wagon pulled by x
| number of horses.
|
| Likewise, in the Canadian House Of Parliament, the width
| between the Prime Minister's desk and that of the Leader Of
| The Opposition is said to be that of two swords raised, tip
| to tip, based on the British House Of Commons tradition that
| they must remain ''two swords and one inch apart.''
| bombcar wrote:
| Even today size of streets in many cities is determined by
| the space needed to either turn a fire truck or have two
| fire trucks pass.
| [deleted]
| Svip wrote:
| The Romans did not use war chariots, since they are basically
| useless in combat. They only used chariots for sports in the
| hippodrome.
| r0b1n wrote:
| They used chariots not only in the hippodrome, also for
| processions and other "shows".
|
| But Roman warfare was a no-nonsense kind of affair, so no
| chariots. https://acoup.blog describes this really well.
| joncrane wrote:
| The chariots in this example were more for transport and
| logistics, not battle.
| masklinn wrote:
| Chariots are not "useless in combat", but they are very
| expensive to field and only work in pretty narrow
| circumstances: wide, open, and relatively solid areas (aka
| not bogs).
|
| These circumstances were not a thing for Roman legions until
| they reached spain at least, possibly North Africa and the
| Middle East. As a result they were not part of Roman war
| doctrines.
|
| On the other hand they were very much part of bronze-age
| Egyptian and Hittite armies.
|
| An other factor to their lack of appeal tho may have been
| improvements in horse riding technique and gear, as well as
| training. Riders can also be heavily armed, but have less
| travel restriction, and you can field a warrior per horse
| rather than need two horses and a driver per.
| anthk wrote:
| Spain is mountainous as hell; a chariout outside the
| Castille plains and Madrid would be scrap.
|
| Get a height map of Spain and you can obviously see that a
| chariot trying to ride at Picos de Europa would be a
| nightmare.
| chx wrote:
| tale it is
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| Snopes is not a good reference to cite, they have changed
| many artlcles based on research they missed. They tend to
| just want to get a page up when a topic is popular, then
| research it later.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| I mean, correcting factual errors is pretty good trait for
| a fact-checking site, right?
| asynchronous wrote:
| Kind of a garbage article because coincidence or not they are
| similar widths.
| dymk wrote:
| It being a coincidence versus causal is entirely what makes
| it interesting or not
| msla wrote:
| People actually still think this dumb joke is true?
| ilyt wrote:
| Well, there is no real way to disprove it and there is no
| solid proof where it actually came from.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Ahahaha, I love this! I love how this new fandango thing harkens
| back to the earliest days of MS-DOS when it ran on a 086 or 286,
| back in the early (very early) 90s.
|
| Have to respect MS' backwards compatibility fanaticism.
| Impossibly as if a native port of MS Teams would be created for
| MS-DOS 3.1 (hahahaha). When more plausibly the MS Teams servers
| run on an ancient crazy proprietary MS-DOS 3.1 mainframe (still
| implausible, but hey).
|
| I know that this device name restriction also applies to Windows
| file names, so it's not _that_ surprising (if you are inclined to
| be _less_ fun than possible), but if you like fun, you can
| pretend the former.
|
| Relevant frag link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/microsoftteams/limits-spec...
| mikestew wrote:
| _earliest days of MS-DOS when it ran on a 086 or 286, back in
| the early (very early) 90s._
|
| About a decade off: MS-DOS was running on 8086 in the early
| 80s.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Oh my god. Well i didn't receive my first one until the 90s.
| And i grew up thinking i was middle class, my oh my.
| dustymcp wrote:
| depending on your country they might not have been
| availible before
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Agree BC is a laundable goal and appreciate their efforts.
| Though I do wish it didn't include limiting passwords to
| obscenely short lengths or absurd subsets of characters.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Yeah those 8+3 file names sure birthed some _creative_
| abbreviations. Necessity, mother, all that
| glonq wrote:
| Whenever I create a filename that is long or has spaces, I
| still pause and worry "okay, what might break if I do
| this", even though such concerns probably died a couple
| decades ago.
|
| Actually _scripts breaking if files or paths have a space
| in them_ seems to be a thorn in the side of dev /ops/it
| folks that never goes away, does it?
| ChrisSD wrote:
| On Unix perhaps. Windows forced IT folks to deal with the
| issue by having folders like "Program Files". Even the
| user's folder used to be in "Documents and Settings" (but
| they backed down from that eventually and now it's just
| "Users").
| xp84 wrote:
| This was actually genius, though it was/is so annoying
| typing these verbose paths
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > but they backed down from that eventually
|
| Only because they were started to hit MAX_PATH there:
| C:\Users\Johnathan Aparecido da
| Silva\AppData\Local\ASUS\ASUS System Control
| Interface\AsusSoftwareManager C:\Documents and
| Settings\Johnathan Aparecido da
| Silva\AppData\Local\ASUS\ASUS System Control
| Interface\AsusSoftwareManager
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| To this date one needs to be careful with executing
| applications and spaces in the path.
|
| For example: D:\test>dir ...
| 08/10/2023 09:29 AM <DIR> .
| 08/10/2023 09:30 AM <DIR> Foo Bar
| 08/10/2023 09:35 AM 79 Foo.bat
| ... D:\test>dir "Foo Bar" ...
| 08/10/2023 09:30 AM <DIR> .
| 08/10/2023 09:29 AM <DIR> ..
| 08/10/2023 09:35 AM 79 Foo.bat
| ... D:\test>type Foo.bat
| @echo off echo Executable: %0 echo Path
| to executable: %~dp0 echo Params: %*
| D:\test>type "Foo Bar\Foo.bat" @echo off
| echo Executable: %0 echo Path to executable:
| %~dp0 echo Params: %*
| D:\test>Foo.bat hello Executable: Foo.bat
| Path to executable: D:\test\ Params: hello
| D:\test>Foo Bar\Foo.bat hello Executable: Foo
| Path to executable: D:\test\ Params: Bar\Foo.bat
| hello D:\test>"Foo Bar\Foo.bat" hello
| Executable: "Foo Bar\Foo.bat" Path to executable:
| D:\test\Foo Bar\ Params: hello
| D:\test>
|
| Mess up the quotes and you're executing something one
| level up.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Unix shell scripts will break when filenames/paths have
| spaces if variable expansions are not quoted, resulting
| in word splitting and filename expansion (globbing). This
| is something that is drilled into learners by all good
| teachers, e.g., https://mywiki.wooledge.org/Quotes#When_S
| hould_You_Quote.3F
| queuebert wrote:
| Brevity forces thought, which I prefer to "Putting a
| Sentence in a File Name.docx".
|
| FORTRAN originally had the same limitation for function
| names, and that lead to some classics such as GEMM and
| SAXPY.
| pluijzer wrote:
| Very loosely related, but I really dislike the excepted
| design pattern for that cases where functions names are
| something like
| AssertThatOnePlusOneIsReturnAlwaysTwoAndNeverFive. It
| looks ridiculous, smells like a hack, and I cannot think
| of any reason why giving a description of the test
| couldn't be handled by the testing framework in a more
| graceful way.
| prepend wrote:
| Me too, I prefer function names like "assert_that_one_plu
| s_one_is_return_always_two_and_never_five."
|
| All kidding aside, but I gave up on this argument because
| I think people either get it or don't and aside from
| trying a little conversation or something with guidance
| it's a "can't fix stupid" situation.
|
| People usually want to explain why it's so important and
| that's worse than suffering their long function name.
|
| I think it's better to just accept ridiculous than to try
| to get consensus on what's ridiculous and a spiral of
| wasted time.
|
| The upside is that it doesn't matter any more since long
| function names are supported and work. And autocomplete
| means it's just as easy to use as "ATOPOIRA" or whatever
| madness they would name it with some restrictions.
| xp84 wrote:
| When it comes to file names, I disagree that brevity
| serves a useful purpose. I name my files like I'm an
| Amazon reseller so that I'm sure to find it with Search
| later no matter which detail I remember. "Budget
| Spreadsheet (worked on with Jane) with projections with
| and without buying a new Tesla Model Y or Chevy Chevrolet
| Bolt - 2023 2024 2025.xlsx" that's my idea of a file
| name.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| If it floats your boat, you do you my dude.
|
| But that being said, you're the reason why file systems
| are abstracted away more and more with all file system
| queries force fed through some kind of search engine.
| djbusby wrote:
| Those two are obviously GetExtendedMemoryMap and
| Saxophone.
| mepian wrote:
| This is such a Microsoft thing to do. DOS compatibility will
| haunt us for the rest of this century at least.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Sometimes I wish we had fresh clean slate OS.
|
| Not the baggage of DOS or Unix... Something modern and sensible
| without insanity of either system.
| reginaldo wrote:
| I hear GNU Hurd will hit 1.0 any day now[1] :) /s
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036851
| joncrane wrote:
| TempleOS may be the closest we'll get for the foreseeable
| future.
| ilyt wrote:
| It would just grow quirks like that over time, just like
| every system before did.
|
| It's impossible to make all the right decisions at the
| beginning any big project that never get changed.
| mseepgood wrote:
| Sometimes, I wish other software products took compatibility
| as seriously as Microsoft does.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| The baggage of Unix is gold. The baggage of DOS is manure.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Like everything being text? Pictures? Structured data?
| dicytea wrote:
| By the time it's mature, you'll wish for another one. That
| is, if you're even alive by the time that happens.
| wvenable wrote:
| You need to clean slate the entire world because everything
| is interconnected. If , for example, you want files to be
| more than streams of bytes then you basically have to re-
| invent the Internet as well.
|
| The older I get, the more I realize that we don't need a
| clean slate OS. If you pick any modern OS right now, the most
| annoying parts are never the parts that were from 30 years
| ago; it's almost always the newest thing.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| The opposite is true. You can convert anything to anything
| at the boundary. The beauty of looser coupling
| wvenable wrote:
| You can't convert anything to anything at the boundary
| and still have full interoperability. An example is
| resource forks on classic MacOS -- they never played nice
| with an Internet that assumes that files are only a flat
| stream of bytes.
| TillE wrote:
| Google's Fuchsia is still the best bet for a genuinely new OS
| that may at least find a niche.
|
| Capability-based microkernels have been exciting research
| projects for decades, and Google has apparently made one that
| achieves acceptable performance, which was a significant
| challenge.
| rado wrote:
| Haiku? (if finished)
| jjgreen wrote:
| To convey one's mood.
|
| In seventeen syllables.
|
| Is very diffic.
|
| _John Cooper Clarke_
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Some of those limits look unreal to me. Do they really limit you
| to 200 people in a private channel?
| acheron wrote:
| I actually laughed out loud at that headline. Fantastic.
|
| AFAIK those still can't be used as file system names, so I'm
| assuming it's related to that.
|
| Tim Paterson's Revenge.
| wizofaus wrote:
| The only thing defensible there is that channel names can't end
| with a period - the same should be true of all URLs. Kids
| especially when told to type in a URL will put the period/full
| stop after it in the instructions they're reading from then
| wonder why it doesn't work...if it simply wasn't allowed browsers
| could just strip it off.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Similarly, when drafting some sort of communication (email,
| documentation, etc.) one might have a URL as the last "word" of
| a sentence (or comma-delimited clause, etc.) and apply typical
| rules of grammar that say not to use a space between the last
| "word" and the subsequent punctuation. Then upon saving (or
| upon viewing, or sometimes upon hitting the space bar,
| depending on implementation) the automatic linkification kicks
| in, and in my experience enough of them aggressively trim such
| punctuation (period, comma, etc.) before setting the href that
| people can get away without thinking about this, but some
| linkification functions end up keeping it, yielding a 404 error
| when clicked. High-usage products like email clients and chat
| apps tend to aggressively trim, while lower quality products
| like ticketing systems tend not to, as far as I can tell.
| Roark66 wrote:
| Why is it that most "chat/conference" apps become horrible sooner
| or later? I still remember when teams used to be an OK app. It
| even had a Linux desktop client. I remember when slack was
| actually fast, I remember Skype out being more reliable to make
| phone calls than my mobile/cell service. Today slack is extremely
| slow if you add few organisations to it (but at least you can add
| more than one). Teams has deprecated their Linux desktop client
| and the only way to use it on Linux is via chrome, but wait, if
| you use it as part of office365/sharepoint you need to use
| Firefox for "some" sharepoint links. So essentially you need 2
| browsers at all times. Chrome for teams (screen sharing and
| video), Firefox for some sharepoint links.
| nxobject wrote:
| I think part of it is the constant drive to add features -
| sure, we can do chat and video! But, what if we put background
| blurring in there? Crap, Zoom has polls, we'll have to add
| polls now... well, shoot, if we're cranking out features like
| this and iterating quickly, we might as well use Electron.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Because believe it or not, a chat/conference is the most easy
| gateway to an "everything app" just like with WeChat. Afterall,
| a chat/conference app is a microcosm of the "internet".
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share audio
| clips too.
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share video
| clips too.
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share live
| video too.
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share money
| too.
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share
| conference meetings too.
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share
| calendar invites too.
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share food
| delivery requests too.
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share gaming
| sessions too.
|
| Your chat app is great but imagine if we can send/share X too.
|
| There is no limit on X. The internet is about sharing X. a chat
| app is about sharing X. There is no bound to how much it can
| grow really.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| That's why I'm not enthusiastic about Musk's vision for X...
| akira2501 wrote:
| Instant Message Chat + Anything Else isn't actually a model
| for anything useful. It's a gross kitchen sink with chunks of
| forgotten meals clogging up the drain. The insult is these
| companies have nothing other than "productivity tool" as a
| label to slap on the side of this fetid and entirely
| unproductive mess.
| h2odragon wrote:
| "every program expands until it can read email... make that
| netnews..."
| cwkoss wrote:
| > Why is it that most "chat/conference" apps become horrible
| sooner or later?
|
| To 'become' horrible there has to have been a period where it
| wasn't. AFAIK that doesn't apply to teams, lol
| prepend wrote:
| The key is to be terrible and simple from the beginning. IRC
| works just as poorly today as 30 years ago.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Which is why its usage has declined ever more and more thanks
| to Discord, which is a pain in itself. Freenode's collapse in
| particular pushed a lot of people to just say "fuck it" to
| IRC in general.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Although, at least what works today works tomorrow on IRC.
| Same cannot be claimed from MS Teams or Discord ...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Freenode collapsing had everything to do with humanity
| being terrible and nothing to do with IRC itself.
|
| Given similar people, similar collapses can happen to
| Discord or any other communication medium of your choice.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| I think it is already killed by telegram even before
| discord emerges. The only thing you can't do on other IM
| other than IRC is having a really big chatroom that
| contains thousands of people. But it is no longer the case
| after telegram.
|
| BTW, i think an irc bot is a good target if you are
| starting to learn writing a network program. The protocol
| is really simple(don't need complex xml parser...etc) yet
| requires all technique you need to write a proper client.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| IRC is so trivial that hosting your own is easy. Telegram
| is awesome but it's still centralized.
| graphviz wrote:
| The market rewards features and integration, not performance,
| as long as an app is usable. Developers devel... I mean
| features features features.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's easier to add things than fix annoyances.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Wait, the MS Teams desktop app is deprecated? Never got any
| message about that ... Guess I might soon be forced to use
| double the evil, in Chrome and Teams in Chrome? Wow, the world
| becomes more dystopian by the day. Perhaps I should quit my job
| when I am forced to use Chrome. Well gonna use the desktop app
| for as long as I can. They will probably never fix their broken
| shit app, so that one can use it from any browser.
| evouga wrote:
| Because after your lean, highly-productive startup team creates
| the app that everyone loves, you get a bunch of funding and
| hire thousands of extraneous software developers and then have
| to find something for them to do.
| db48x wrote:
| Thousands of engineers and managers and product designers who
| can only get promoted if they look successful, and who can
| only look successful if they can add features.
| duxup wrote:
| The app that does everything always seems to stink.
|
| It's no coincidence that my favorite note taking app is ...
| Apple's Notes App. I've used other apps but I've found that all
| that heft from all the extra features makes it more of a hassle
| for me in the end.
|
| I get how it happens, even my current employer / small team are
| looking into internal documentation routes and ... oh man the
| list of things people want just goes on and I fear leads to
| some beastly solution.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Entreprise wishes i guess? Just look at all the group policies
| for windows update..
| prepend wrote:
| Teams is so weird, " Number of org-wide teams allowed in a
| tenant" is limited to 25.
|
| So my company can only have 25 "general" teams.
|
| I think it would be neat to learn the rationale behind some of
| these settings.
| terom wrote:
| The 52 limit seems small, but at least you can have 500,0003
| teams in Microsoft 365 Office organization - 1.25E17 should be
| plenty, that's around 15M teams per person on the planet;)
|
| Perhaps they should rethink the use of numbered superscripts
| for notes in that table....
| rejectfinite wrote:
| You want the ENTIRE company to be auto added to more than 25
| teams?
| ratg13 wrote:
| Probably to protect people from their own ignorance.
|
| If you are participating in 25 teams, it's likely already too
| many, general or not.
|
| Having to navigate 25 teams that are full of stuff doesn't
| concern you sounds like an absolute nightmare.
|
| You'd burn out everyone in the organization with a setup like
| this.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And this is about organization wide teams, meaning those
| teams that people are automatically joined in, with up to
| 10000 members... So probably something you want to steer
| people away from.
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