Re: [NF] Big Brother has arrived?
I shopped around for a woodworking router bit last week and this week it seems like every site I visit has an ad for that specific bit, and each offer tends to be just a tad bit less than the previous one. Anyway, I encouraged them because I just bought the bit. What cracks me up is when I buy something through Amazon and then for the next month Amazon tries to sell me the same thing again. I wonder how much they paid the genius who came up with that feature? Maybe it's the same person who programmed the Visa card security system to call me and tell me they suddenly suspect fraud involving three monthly recurring purchases that they've paid for several years Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130221204934.01fe9...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Government Software Controls
A while ago I mentioned that government medical billing software has inadequate controls to protect against fraudulent or invalid billing attempts. I wasn't exaggerating. TIME has a massive article this week on the entire medical-pharmaceutical-billing-industrial complex, with great praise for Medicare: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/print/ Search, in particular, for $1.5 Billion A Day Was barely [NF], going [OT]... Problem being, of course, that nobody is willing to fix this problem by forcing providers to offer necessary services for reasonable prices, thereby cutting their predatory profit margins. That would be socialism. They're only willing to cut what is paid for services--which results not in more reasonable prices for necessary services, but simply in people going without necessary services. And yup, it's [OT]. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130224202924.01fc9...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: A VERY Strange Error!
My best understanding of this when it happens is somehow VFP's file handle to the SCT is invalid; how or why is a mystery. You may see a TMP file in the VFP temp files (SYS(2023) location which is the under the hood backup of the SCT but in general your only option at this point is the 3 finger salute. As SCT is also the file extension for some VB stuff, they can also be flagged for scanning/quarantine by AV software, in which case you might also find something there. I used to get these a lot with scx forms in VFP 6, and sometimes in VFP 7. In VFP 9 (SP 1) I only get it when visually editing a report frx. When it happens, I have to shut down VFP, and everything I've done in the report since the last save is lost, but the report is intact and will re-open just fine. Some people will say they've never seen this; others will say it happens frequently. It happens to me enough with reports that I will save every 2-3 minutes when working with them. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130225201701.01fb0...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: VFP Metro Interface
Hey Dave - regarding this older posting of yours. I'm curious to know if you have made more progress on implementing Metro style interfaces in VFP - since, we (at my day job) - have this App that we are looking to run on a Tablet - and I MUST give it a proper Overhaul ASAP! -- If you are going to rewrite the app for display purposes why not put it in a language that can do HTML5 for your presentation layer? Then Metro is easy to accomplish today as well as any new presentation type of the future. Always DEEP pockets with you, Mr. Softie. ;-) When all you have is a 10-man logging crew with yarder, processor, and a fleet of trucks, everything looks like a forest. Makes it hard to see the trees. :) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130226201243.01fc2...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Screen Res. Design Monitor Sizes...
So - what do you all think? Design screen sizes at something like 1280x700??? And, what if some users at one of our client companies have smaller screens? They will Totally have their database system screens get chopped off - and I think that would SUCK! I still design everything to be full screen or smaller at a resolution of 640 x 480. (Actually, a full size child form in my framework is 588 x 376 so it can fit inside my custom top-level main window, with room for the vestigial Office 97 vertical toolbar, since that was still ubiquitous when I designed the framework.) There are lots of people who can't deal with tiny type at high resolutions, even on big screens. Not only people with visual disabilities, but also ordinary middle-aged people with less than 20/20 vision with or without glasses. And the built-in Windows enlarging stuff isn't as convenient as actually being able to see the entire form all at once, but large enough. It's an accessibility/ease-of-use issue. Everybody oughtta have ... by now.. and everybody oughtta know how to...[use this or that generic work-around for inconvenient stuff] by now just annoys users. Why annoy them when, with a bit of extra work, we can make them actually enjoy using our software? My framework also includes resizing code built into all of the visual controls (I did it before anchors came out), and it will resize the font as well as the dimensions of controls. I don't think it always produces a pretty result but at modest levels of resizing it looks quite good. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130305210054.020ea...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: What kind of moron sends data in an Excel with hidden columns?
Had i looked and the top of the columns and seen that it went from F to H, then yeah, but who the hell checks for that? I definitely feel your pain. I had the same scenario and I wrote an import routine that depended on the existence of column letters in a defined order from left to right. Not only did they hide columns, they moved them around. And the formatting of different cells in the same column was variable. And they wrote little text notes in some cells in date columns. And they added new columns and changed the purpose and content of the columns. And they were too busy to fix these things so I had to rewrite my already extremely fragile import code to try to deal with this. Job security, I guess. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130320202610.01fc3...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Microsoft's new graphics look (retro)
You're not alone. Here's a link to the Nielsen Norman Group (Usability gurus) review of the design: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/windows-8-disappointing-usability/ --- Jakob Nielsens Alertbox: November 19, 2012 Windows 8 Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users Summary: Hidden features, reduced discoverability, cognitive overhead from dual environments, and reduced power from a single-window UI and low information density. Too bad. --- Now if they would just improve the usability of that website by using a color for the left-column links that a human being can actually distinguish from a white background Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130321212527.02012...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Opening Excel file wants to do 'SaveAs'
... and I seriously doubt that the tribal knowledge of SaveAs will be passed on to the next one... Save As is not only an obscurity, it's apparently a terrible burden for most people. Try telling people to use it to produce standard .doc files instead of .docx abominations in newer versions of Office and listen to them kvetch. No!! Absolutely not! Instead of asking me to make an extra keystroke, why don't you spend $300+ to get a new version of Office?! Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130321212716.0200d...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] A tale of two supports
More recently I bought a US Robotics USB NAS adapter. I had a problem with and decided to make sure I had the latest firmware. I found the product support page which offered downloads of manuals etc but no mention anywhere of firmware. No phone number to call and no e-mail address but an online means of sending a message requesting help. I sent a message asking from where I could download a firmware update. I got an automated response saying I would get a reply within 1 business day. Sure enough I got a reply which referred me to the product support page I had already visited. US Robotics 0/10 Welcome to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. http://www.sput.nl/~rob/sirius.html Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130327202635.01fc5...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
VFP 9 SP 1. I know this has been discussed somewhere but can't really find anything germane. If anyone can refer me to sources that would be great. My system has a routine called by ON SHUTDOWN that does many things, like closing windows (which can force data saves in some cases), logging the user out, and backing up data. This can take considerable time--several minutes if the backup runs when the user is the last user to log out. A problem sometimes arises if the user shuts down my software and then, pretty soon thereafter, shuts down the computer. As I understand it, there is supposed to be some level of respect from Windows for running applications such that they are allowed to finish before Windows shuts down. But once in a while, in the course of my ON SHUTDOWN routine, a procedure that tries to open a table on the network will encounter VFP Error 1 (File does not exist.) My error log indicates that VFP is searching for this table, which exists on the server on a mapped drive, in CURDIR(), where it should not be. I am guessing this is because Windows has killed the mapped drive and VFP's internal path search has fallen back on CURDIR(). My error handler causes a crash at this point because it begins a process that eventually calls the ON SHUTDOWN routine..again, which means I now have an error occurring in the context of my error handler, with predictable ugly results. I have long suspected that something like this was happening on occasion but today for the first time I actually got a user to admit she shut down Windows while my software was trying to shut itself down, and I got error log data that describes what happened. So.. I could undertake a very lengthy and painful analysis of my shutdown path and error handler and try to find a better way to detect this particular condition and handle it gracefully. But before I do that, I'd like to get as much information as possible about: 1. What Windows is *supposed* to do when it is shut down while a program is still running, 2. What Windows *actually does* in that scenario, 3. What VFP is *supposed* to do if it is still running when Windows starts yanking its resources away during an OS shutdown, and 4. What VFP *actually does* in that scenario. Thanks for any help. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130401105105.01c61...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
Thanks Tracy. In your error routine, you could check the Stack to determine if you were in the ShutDown process. Yes, my error log gets everything from ASTACKINFO(). So I know it's in my application's shut down process when this happens. What I don't know, unless a user tells me, is whether: A. The user shut the program down and went on to do other things on the computer, or B. The user shut the program down and then immediately shut Windows down, or C. The user shut Windows down without first shutting my program down. Users frequently do not report these crashes to me. I only find out about them if somebody can't log into the system because the semaphore file the system creates to keep people from logging in during the auto-backup process doesn't get deleted because the system crashed. Since your data is stored on a server, and you want to make a backup. Perhaps you can send a request to the server machine through a Windows Service. If the machine that is hosting the data is not Windows, I'm not sure where to point you. Perhaps just an http request. Most likely something could be spun up even in apache to archive the databases. I use a Linux server for the data and I have redundant backup processes: an automatic one that backs up everything on that server to a removable drive on another server at zero dark thirty daily, and a manual one that I do every day where I copy the data to a thumb drive. The automatic on-logout backup just copies the data from one folder to another on the same server. I could eliminate it, and have been thinking about doing so because as the amount of data stored increases, it takes longer and longer. But.. It's not only the backup process that figures in here. The problem can occur during the process that updates my login/logout audit table, or while saving data displayed in windows that are being closed. I've seen File does not exist errors, with VFP looking in CURDIR() for files that are on the network share, occasionally during both of these processes, which are also called by my ON SHUTDOWN routine. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130401131448.01c76...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
Why not override the power switch? They're using the correct method to shut down the computer--StartShut Down. And I don't imagine you really intend for me to keep Windows workstation machines running indefinitely. *L* Even high-powered Win 7 boxes clog up with cruft within 72 hours or less. p.s. I hate the new gmail reply system They fell in love with outlook I guess. I hate gmail in general. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130401133814.01c81...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
I'm assuming that it is the client machine and not the server you want to prevent shutting down. As part of your closing routine you could ask the user if they want to close the machine when the application finishes. If they answer yes then call shutdown.exe at the end of your shutdown routine so that the user is not tempted to close the machine down themselves so that they can go home. I like this idea. Even if I get rid of the auto-backup routine, it decreases the likelihood that the user will shut down the OS before my application exits. But.. what happens if the user shuts down Windows, which calls my ON SHUTDOWN routine, which asks the user what to do? What happens to that modal Messagebox if there's no response from the user? Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130401222146.01fac...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
This thread has been bothering me, because it seems to me that depending on the user waiting for the backup AFTER he quits the program is just an accident looking to happen. I think John has the right idea here. Do NOT close windows etc and start the backup. Instead, start the backup and post a Humongous great warning window threatening death and dismembership to anyone who goes home before it finishes. Actually, I might look for a different way around it - I hate doing backups as part of either startup or shutdown. But if you have to, it's safer to make the user part of the process. Yeah, as the time it takes to do the backup grows, the better the option to discard the on-shutdown backup looks. But as I said elsewhere, this problem is not isolated within the backup process. It can occur in any of several processes that try to access tables on the network share, all of which are called from my ON SHUTDOWN routine. These include processes to save data and to write to my audit table as the user logs out. The idea of offering the user the option to have my app shut down Windows on its way out is appealing. But it's not 100%. So the question remains: As I understand it, Windows is *supposed* to respect an application's exit process during shutdown, and VFP's ON SHUTDOWN procedure is *supposed* to be able to execute undisturbed in that scenario. Is there anything I can do to ensure that it does so? Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130401222444.01fbe...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
The other suggestion I really liked here was the idea of running the backup process on the server, rather than tying up the local machine copying files from one folder on the server to another folder on the server. There's any number of mechanisms you could use to do this: Yup. I have a network-wide backup system actually. On Linux servers, cron jobs copy data to the main drive of the backup server (also a Linux box) in the wee hours, and then another cron job copies the data from that main drive to a removable drive, and the removables are swapped out daily. On Windows servers Cobian Backup copies the data to the backup server, where it is also handled by cron jobs. For the data handled by the application of which I speak, I also do a manual copy to a thumb drive which I take offsite. This auto-backup feature of my application pre-dates all this. And my application comes with a separate utilities program that enables administrators to force people out of the system and back up the data. But the application is used by a couple of other organizations besides mine. The people at those organizations, bless 'em, have not got a clue. They would undoubtedly do nothing about backup if my app didn't do it for them. So it's kinda/sorta still useful. As people keep missing, the VFP Error No. 1 problem does NOT only occur during the backup. There are several process that access tables that run during my ON SHUTDOWN procedure, including saving the currently-displayed record, and writing to an audit table to indicate the user logged out at such-and-such time. These processes, which don't take very long, occur BEFORE the backup (the backup is the last thing, and only occurs if the user is the last person to log out of the system). But I guess what you're saying is that I have to expect errors even in these processes if the user doesn't follow instructions regarding how to shut down the system? There is nothing I can do to defend against that? Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130402092714.01c7f...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
Thanks for the suggestions everybody. What have you learned, Ken? I probably should never have uttered the word backup because, although it was only one of the several processes I mentioned in my original message, most people got focused on that instead of the core of the problem, which is: ANY process that accesses a table on a network share that runs within ON SHUTDOWN is vulnerable to that share being disconnected, even if the process takes a very brief period of time. Essentially, I can test for the availability of resources before each such access, and/or throw away errors that occur during that period, so that the shutdown proceeds in an orderly fashion. But I cannot guarantee that everything will go the way I want. I don't think anybody seriously intended to tell me that I can't or shouldn't try to save data or write to an audit table during ON SHUTDOWN. But if you did, how can I accomplish those necessary and brief tasks when the user shuts down the system? Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130402112536.01c82...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
Define what audit functionality is. Can that be done as user is working within the app, or is this a User ABC started @ and ended @ on this date? Yes, I write an entry to the audit table indicating user ABC logged out at such and such datetime. I will probably be adding more audit functionality, and that will probably include something indicating that a user saved a record, which can occur automatically when the user shuts down. Could that logged in status stops ABC from logging in on another machine? If that is true then you need to get that done first. I have a separate table that just tracks who is currently logged in. This is used to determine whether everybody is logged out so that backups or other maintenance tasks can be done. During shutdown the user's record in that table is simply deleted. (Even if I get rid of auto-backup-on-shutdown, I will still need this table for use with the separate maintenance utility program, which has the ability to force everybody to log out.) I am thinking I can do this stuff after the user has agreed to quit but before ON SHUTDOWN is called. I would still want to attempt to run those processes if the program is being shut down due to an error condition, but would have to accept that they might not all run, and should implement more testing for resources and TRY...CATCH stuff. I could set a flag indicating the processes were completed before ON SHUTDOWN so they won't be run twice. I also liked the suggestion that I ask users if they want my application to shut down Windows after closing. How do people feel about this approach? Thanks. Ken Dibble ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130402122323.01c78...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
Check the _SCREEN.ReleaseType property. It may assist in knowing if a shutdown is happening, though it may behave the same if the user clicked the X in the upper right of the window. VFP 9 is required to be able to capture the Windows event WM_QUERYENDSESSION, and the BindEvent of the _SCREEN object could cause unexpected behaviors. When the Windows event happens, currently running code stops to run the event handler. The use of SYS(2336) would help when you are doing something that should not be broken. These times should be very limited in time. I have used the SYS(2336) when I run a select ... to screen noconsole and want to see the _TALLY results. Either of these could give you a clue to do an abbreviated shutdown, or you could popup a screen that is a Top-Level screen and use the BindEvent to know the user shutdown the computer after they closed your application, while you are running your long procedure. Ah, thanks! I will test these. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130402132052.01c7b...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
Look at that, Calvin blogged about this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/calvin_hsia/archive/2005/01/24/359713.aspx Amazing! When this message came in, I had just finished reading Doug Hennig's white paper on binding Windows events, and had concluded that WM_POWERBROADCAST was probably what I needed, and was starting to look around for a code example. Serendipity! Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130403103500.01c80...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Options to Prevent Crashes When User Shuts Down Computer
At 11:52 AM 4/3/2013 -0400, you wrote: Ken Dibble wrote on 2013-04-03: Look at that, Calvin blogged about this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/calvin_hsia/archive/2005/01/24/359713.aspx Amazing! When this message came in, I had just finished reading Doug Hennig's white paper on binding Windows events, and had concluded that WM_POWERBROADCAST was probably what I needed, and was starting to look around for a code example. Serendipity! I like the WM_QUERYENDSESSION. I sent you a small project I put together using it. With Windows Vista and higher, the use of ShutdownBlockReasonCreate and ShutdownBlockReasonDestroy allows the user to see why the program is not allowing the computer to shutdown. Yes, even better. I received your email and responded there. Thanks for all your help! Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130403120616.01c7d...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Unbearable Lightness/Heaviness of Arrays
This may be a question for Christof or someone with similar deep knowledge of how VFP works. I use arrays a LOT. I DIMENSION, ASCAN(), ADEL(), and ASORT() them, and consult their ALEN()s constantly. I iterate through them and perform actions on their elements repeatedly. Sometimes I even AINS() them. I'm thinking it would be wise to create a class that encapsulates this stuff and clean out all my duplicated use of those commands and functions. It certainly would put an end to unexpected Array dimensions invalid errors when I forget to check an ALEN() somewhere. I think the class would have an array property, and methods to carry out those functions on it. Whenever I need an array I'd instanciate the class, if necessary ADDOBJECTing it to another object. I can easily see how to do this. My question is, what is the weight of having potentially several dozen instances of this array object hanging around in memory, even if, for some of them, I will only need one or two of the object's capabilities? Is this a bigger drain on resources than just duplicating array manipulation code whenever I need it? I'm thinking that I remember hearing that VFP only really stores one instance of a class's structure in memory no matter how many times it's instanciated in code, then uses reference counters and maybe some kind of diff function to keep track of the values of the class properties associated with each instance. If that's true, maybe this isn't something to worry about. I know that the answer is Test it and find out. Writing a test of this proposition will probably take longer than creating the class, and creating the class will take a while, considering all the stuff I want in it. So if it wouldn't take someone very long to answer this question, I would sure appreciate it. Thanks. Yours in Keeping VFP Something to Talk About, Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130404222940.01fbb...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Unbearable Lightness/Heaviness of Arrays
You'll experience a reduction in performance albeit a small one for two reasons. Every access to the array now has to first resolve the object reference, which takes some time. More noticeably, though, is replacing direct array function calls with a user defined method. A method call takes some time, because VFP has to create a new stack level. I think this is the sticking point. Simple, non-redundant code seems like a good goal, but I've already got enough slow spots in my framework. I don't want to slow down anything further. Especially since I use arrays a lot. The reason, by the way, for most of my recent questions is that I'm working through my current 5 year plan, first item of which is to repair and optimize my framework based on everything I've learned since I first built it back in 2004. I eventually plan to port to another language, such as Python, but before I do that I'd like to have my ducks in a row so I'm not repeating dumb mistakes in a language I won't understand nearly as well as I do VFP. My guess is that the biggest issue is something you haven't mentioned at all: Array properties cannot be passed by reference. So any code that currently passes the array to another function or method has to be rewritten to use the array property. That's either an all or nothing approach by replacing the array in the called method with an object reference, or involves a lot of conditional code based on whether the parameter is an array or an object with the array. Yes. I had already mapped out a bunch of methods to handle array manipulations so there would not be much need for callers to manipulate the array directly. I was toying with CopyTo() and CopyFrom() methods that would wrap ACOPY(). But as you suggest above, all of this would simply slow things down further. I could create a library of procedures to be made available in SET PROCEDURE.. ADDITIVE to handle common tasks that take a few lines of code, such as adding a new row. This is kind of what Thierry is referring to. This would eliminate the overhead of a class but would still require a new stack level for each call. Ah well. It was a cool idea. Thanks to all who responded. This is the fun stuff. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130405120710.01fd5...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Unbearable Lightness/Heaviness of Arrays
As Ted always says, you need to test in your environment to determine the best tradeoff between performance and maintainability. Are you deploying applications in a real-time environment? Are you working with large arrays inside loops with 1000s of iterations? Then performance overhead is critical and wrapping native VFP functions inside your own wrappers may hurt more than help. OTOH, if wrappers can make your framework code easier to use and maintain, the benefits may outweigh the potential performance decrease. Yes. However, testing in my environment can't be done very easily. Artificial tests won't really demonstrate the problem; I'd have to revise the framework and then run it in real life situations to see the effect. That would take a lot of time--time that might end up having been spent for no gain. There are other optimizations I can make more easily I think. I know there are places where I iterate arrays to search for things when I could use ASCAN(), for example. I used to have this discussion with a non-VFP developer who worked for me for a few years. He was always going on about compiled vs. interpreted languages. If you're a human using a computer and it responds to you within a reasonable amount of time when you click something, who cares if it's using a few extra cycles to get there; it's not perceptible to you. If speed is that crucial to what you do you're writing C or whatever the current equivalent of machine code is these days; not VFP. There's a lot going on when my most-used window opens, because I use metadata extensively to construct the GUI, on top of which a lot of actual data has to be pulled in and displayed. This can take a very perceptible long time. In some situations even after the window is opened, retrieving or saving a recordset takes quite a long time. There are lots of reasons for this, and I will be looking hard at all of them as I work through this optimizing process, but some of it is due to my extensive use of arrays. Slowing down access to them is probably not the way to go then. Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130405141452.01ffe...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Unbearable Lightness/Heaviness of Arrays
Probably not. :-) Although if you're staying in the warm comfortable VFP zone it might be worth the time to refactor the array stuff to use cursors. As Christof mentioned, VFP is way faster with data (no surprise there) than arrays. Well I won't be in VFP forever. I work a 35-hour week. IT is about 80% of my job, and about 60% of that is programming. So stuff takes time. My plan is: 1. Approximately 1 year to optimize and refactor the framework, then the application. 2. Approximately 1 year to convert it to a non-VFP back-end by subclassing my data layer. 3. 1-2 years to produce a (most-likely feature-limited) web version. 4. 1-2 years to port the full desktop version to a different language. Also, I don't like cursors for this kind of stuff because they can't really be encapsulated (unless you go with a bunch of separate data sessions, which introduces its own set of problems), and that makes them, for me, hard to keep track of. I do manipulate cursors extensively for data that doesn't have to hang around in memory--complex reports, stuff like that. I can retrieve them, play with them, output them, close them and forget them. And it looks like I will be able to use Dabo to do that kind of thing when I get to that point, which is a good thing--if Dabo is still around then. *LOL* Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130405151412.01fe8...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Unbearable Lightness/Heaviness of Arrays
You wrote that you were going to re-cook your framework one more time to knock off the rust in the areas that needed a tweaking so you could then port it to the new language. I would just say that the amount of time you focus on VFP tweaks will not pan out across other languages. I would only focus on putting that framework together to take advantage of whatever language you choose and not be a knock off of VFP. the things you take for granted with VFP in processing don't work the same in other languages. Some things that you thought were the bomb in VFP are only fair in others and yes things that are a PITA to code against are easy in others. YMMV. :) Yes, I know. But certain programming constructs and patterns are applicable across languages. And I am way beyond the typical VFP intermixed GUI/biz/data RAD style of programming. My data classes, for example, already wrap a bunch of idiosyncratic VFP stuff in more generic-style methods. And I've coded my own system for detecting and resolving update conflicts that has nothing to do with VFP buffering. When I designed the framework I already had in mind moving to other back ends. In addition to removing errors and inefficient mistakes, this process will include refactoring to reorganize things in a more logical and flexible way, in order to take advantage of what I've learned about programming in general over the years. I think the result will generalize well, and will not lead me into the path of error when I start porting it over. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130405153049.01faf...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: WTF??? File Is Not Open!
That Error Msg above in the Subject (the WTF was not actually thrown by VFP) - it KEEPS happening when I try to compile this App. FYI - I'm building an EXE. At the Very End of trying to build the EXE - it gives me this error. But, of course, the Error doesn't mean anything - and it doesn't give me anymore hint as to what the Error is - with nothing specific about it in the Error Log. Its making Impossible to properly get work done - since - at this point - when I get the Error - I know it doesn't create the EXE correctly (as I just found it DOES create an EXE - but, it comes up with Nasty Errors when I just tried to run it). And, I end up trying to close everything down in my current VFP session. Then Re-Opening the Proj - the Re-compiling the EXE. But, of course, that's NUTS - and is WASTING a Lot of time! Sometimes - even THAT does not work - and I completely Get out of VFP - then go back in - and finally I can compile correctly. But, again - LOTS of wasted time. First, VFP won't be able to compile an app unless all of its components have been removed from memory. VFP doesn't do that very well on its own just because you've ended an editing session with some file. If you're compiling a complex project you need to either issue RELEASE ALL and CLEAR ALL before compiling, or do as I do--shut down VFP and restart it in order to compile with a clean slate. Second, File is not open usually occurs as a result of corruption to a report file or, less often, an scx form, when you try to save it after editing. If you get that error under those circumstances, you have lost all the edits you've made since the last save and you have no option but to close the file without saving. I haven't seen it in the context of compiling an application but if it still occurs after you've followed the above steps to ensure that nothing remains in memory before compiling, then I would guess you have a corrupted file. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130409110112.01c74...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: WTF??? File Is Not Open!
And - understand - much of what I'm doing now is small changes and fixes trying to compile run a test after each. So - keep on trying to Close VFP Re-Open, well - that's kinda NUTS - and is REALLY Gonna KILL Me in trying to make progress today... Sometimes even CLOSE ALL, RELEASE ALL and CLEAR ALL won't even do it. VFP's ability to clean itself up reliably deteriorated with each release from VFP 7 to VFP 9. And in my experience, the problem is worst with VFP 9 on Win 7. It takes me ten seconds to shut down and restart VFP. That doesn't seem like much of a problem to me. If you're expecting to have, and keep, a bunch of stuff open in VFP while compiling a project, that's not a realistic expectation. VFP can't compile properly with anything that the project needs still in memory. That includes VFP base classes that are used by something you have open that isn't part of the project you're compiling. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130409113216.01c72...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: WTF??? File Is Not Open!
Sometimes even CLOSE ALL, RELEASE ALL and CLEAR ALL won't even do it. VFP's ability to clean itself up reliably deteriorated with each release from VFP 7 to VFP 9. And in my experience, the problem is worst with VFP 9 on Win 7. I do not know about it getting worse since I tend to use only a small part of VFP, but sometimes, VFP gets messed up in some way. This happens during debugging which is just when I want it to be resettable. I think one of the big culprits is class libraries. You've probably tested something, then opened a .prg class library and attempted to edit the code, and received a message Remove [something] from memory? This stuff is all supposed to be out of memory when whatever you tested reaches the end of its stack on the way out. And it certainly should not be in memory if what you tested concludes with the big three: CLOSE ALL CLEAR ALL RELEASE ALL. But this happens anyway. And I think that issue is related to why stuff won't compile until you issue those commands and sometimes not even then. Folks are right about using a separate instance of VFP to compile or debug. The reason I don't do that is because I get access denied if I have a project open in the first instance that the second instance tries to open again. (I know, I know, I should set my VFP IDE preferences to multi-user... Old habits die hard.) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130409140200.01c8e...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: WTF??? File Is Not Open!
You suggest testing by running only the PRG's - but, what about the required VCX's? And, I'm not running PRG's but most Forms... Not sure if this responds directly to this point, but: My framework has a test mode feature. My form baseclass contains code to set up the environment that a full application needs, called from the Load() event, so that I can test individual scx forms without starting from the Main program (which would, among other things, usually require me to log in to the application). There are also hook methods to add flexibility, and the ability to tell child forms that we're in test mode so they will run properly also. This took a long time to get working properly but now that I have it, it saves a huge amount of time when testing. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130409153052.01c8b...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: WTF??? File Is Not Open!
You don't need to run the form. I have the difficulty when I have a class in the baseclasslibrary.vcx being used by a commonui.vcx, which I have put on a form. The baseclasslibrary.vcx does not close. I'll get that if I open any of the libraries in the inheritance hierarchy of an object that I have open for editing. That I expect. What I don't think should happen, but have come to expect, is that any of that stuff should remain in memory after a test sequence's stack has run out. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130409153833.01c84...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Next challenge over lunchtime -- the neighbor bought a Mac!
It says that it is a kid's shirt. You need to grow up, man! Try: http://xkcd.com/627/ And I think that a T-shirt has been made for it. I have that one on the wall outside my office door. Doesn't do any good... Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130411204813.01fd3...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: WTF??? File Is Not Open!
Work with local project files and resources. Yeah. It almost sounds like something isn't giving up a file handle on his network share. Could be a connectivity problem on his network--bad cable, flaky NIC (flaky NICs can do all sorts of really weird things), bad switch port, etc.. If he copies everything to the local drive and compiles several times without error, that would have to be it, I think. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130415121301.01c83...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: WTF??? File Is Not Open!
What? You mean - copy the whole system down to my C: drive - instead of developing on the Network??? Which - if I do - will cause More headaches - if the Other Bozo here actually has to work on this system at the same time I am... 1. If the other bozo is actually working on it the same time you are, you can't compile it. VFP has to have exclusive access to the files to compile them. 2. If the other bozo and you are going to work on aspects of the same project at the same time, then you need a source control system, or you're going to end up with some very ugly surprises. 3. But no, just copy it down when you want to compile, and then copy the compiled file(s) back up. As others have said, you can do a lot of testing by running stuff in the IDE before an actual need to compile arises. 4. And see my response to Alan; the problem may be hardware-related and the only way you can find out is to compile it locally for a while and see if the problem recurs. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130415122652.01c77...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: WTF??? File Is Not Open!
4. re:HW - I don't know - doesn't seem like it should make sense. First of all - ALL the HW is Brand New - as of beginning of this Year! Second of all, ah - I don't know. Just doesn't seem like a HW to me. But, alas - I will never admit to be a Know-It-All, since I most assuredly do NOT! I've had NICs and switch ports fail within months of purchase. Heck, I've found bad ports on new switches the first time I tried to use them. Age is no guarantee of quality for hardware or humans. :) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130415124652.00bf6...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Using Grids / Fwd: Trouble with ProFox
My quick comment: I only use grids to DISPLAY data, not for any data-entry or data-edits. No way. I think I got burned on that long ago and said never again. Grids had a lot of flaky behavior back in VFP 6, when I got started with Foxpro. I agree with you that grids should never be used to edit data. Regardless of whether they *can* be used for that purpose, it's not good design. It's way too easy for a user who is not paying attention to edit the wrong row and mess things up. Most GUI design gurus will tell you, never use a control that displays multiple narrow rows of records to edit data. Controls that present data in that way should only be used as picklists. Pick a record and put its contents into individual editing controls. Press an ENTER button to clear the controls and update the list. Because of this design principle, and the flakiness of grids, and the fact that grids, even though they have been improved, still can't do some things that listboxes can do, I created a listbox class that does almost everything a grid can do. It has column header buttons that can be used to sort the list; individually resizeable columns; column lines that always run the full height of the list, optional horizontal lines between rows (a bit dicey, that one), full multi-select capabilty that works not only with the mouse but with the keyboard, and several other features. I always use arrays for the rowsource too, so the data displayed in the list can be fully encapsulated within the list control. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130419212635.02092...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
btw I have had *very* mixed results with OCR - particularly of scanned documents. I don't think there's such a thing as 100% accurate OCR; that's one of the caveats that need to be made known to people who get enthusiastic about document management systems. (Sadly, it's too late in my case; they already bought one, and I, no doubt, will be expected to compensate for its failings at some point down the line.) However, I have gotten pretty good results with good old Capture Perfect, the bundleware that comes with high-end Canon scanners. The results can be improved by increasing the scan resolution (with a sacrifice in ppm, of course). Also, the stuff made for blind people, such as OpenBook, works quite well for most things. Nothing is going to do a good job with handwriting though. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130422204041.01fa4...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Odd Error with CHRSAW()
I cannot reproduce the error. It is random. I'm unable to determine if CHRSAW() returned a different TYPE() or CHRSAW() expected a value. I suspect CHRSAW() may be returning a value other than Logical or .NULL.. You said 'users', implying it's happening on more than one machine. One assumes that CHRSAW() is implemented in a library, is there any possibility that there are corrupted/mismatched run-times on any of those machines? Do you use CHRSAW() in only one place or several? Are the errors all from one use? If so, you might throw a zero in there for one of the users to see if anything changes. My WAG: Weirdness with a wireless keyboard, or perhaps an intermittent short in the keyboard cord. If you want to find out what's going on, you could probably do: foo = .T./.F. Whichever will be harmless later on TRY foo = CHRSAW() CATCH * Log foo here. ENDTRY IF foo = [whatever] * Your code here ENDIF I'm sure that's obvious though. :) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130422204816.01fb6...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
btw I have had *very* mixed results with OCR - particularly of scanned documents. The font's make a very big difference. We were using OCR in the navy around 82. Only way we could get the best results was the OCR font. Something along the line of courier I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying OCR works better if you standardize the fonts in the documents to be scanned? If I could do that I probably would already have the documents in electronic format and wouldn't need to OCR them. The reason to use OCR, at least these days, is to scan printed documents in all kinds of fonts and formats, and get machine-readable text out of them. With Open Book, my blind wife can print out a crummy image-only PDF that she can't read, scan and OCR it, and get back about 95% text that she can read. (Many people don't understand that PDF documents are not accessible to people who use screen-reader software unless the text has been OCR'ed on its way into the PDF.) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130422205914.01fde...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
Just saying that we were using it in the military before it was cool. Back then, we would only accept messages that had been typed on a selectric typewriter with a OCR type ball. I'll bet it definitely helps if you work in a place where, when you give people orders, they follow them. :) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130422212103.01fe8...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
Having worked with Documents and Management of said docs. There are specific keys in the document that are captured in the scan. Think bar codes as ids for what type of doc. On top of that there should be other barcodes for what the doc pertains to. Granted this was for the court system where we had hundreds of standard docs on file in Word templates. The scanner picks up the entire image as well as the data off the barcodes, and in our case we knew where the text boxes on the form were and presented them to an operator on an input screen to see the doc and the text we were going to insert into the db. Granted our system was huge and not cheap at all. Huge, but also apparently homogeneous and fully controlled. My system will (it's only getting started), involve hundreds of types of documents whose formats are not controlled by us. They are provided by various contractual funding sources. They are not gonna put bar codes on them for us, nor will they permit us to alter them. On top of that, the main purpose of the system will be, at least for now, to archive hundreds of thousands of already-existing pieces of paper that only vaguely correspond to any uniform system. These pieces of paper all relate to a client in some fashion, so we may, perhaps, be able to generate paper showing bar codes tied to each client that can be interleaved with the other pieces of paper being scanned in order to cause the system to know where to put stuff, at least initially. It is unlikely that we will also be able to produce bar codes that will tell the system what kind of document each piece of paper is. Well, we could produce them, but consider the training cost and error rate involved in getting an operator to figure out when and how to use all of those things. We've hired a full-time person who is going to have to pick through all this stuff and figure it out, probably at a painfully slow pace. The system we're using is Treeno. It's already ugly... Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.2013042001.01fa4...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
SQL 2012 allows you to have what are called document stacks which effectively can hold the scanned images even though they aren't part of the database base data (.mdf file), it's the equivalent of holding them in a secret untouchable folder. Hm..sounds like a great way to take control of customers' data and only allow them to access it if they pay you for it. One of the reasons we went with the system we did was precisely to avoid that. The documents are to be stored as ordinary documents in ordinarily accessible locations so that if I want to stop using the document management software I will still have the documents. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130423111614.01c8e...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
Huge, but also apparently homogeneous and fully controlled. My system will (it's only getting started), involve hundreds of types of documents whose formats are not controlled by us. They are provided by various contractual funding sources. They are not gonna put bar codes on them for us, nor will they permit us to alter them. -- Well do these funding sources have a specific key, code, form # on them that is captured in the scan? That may be what you need. You may have to take each image from the scanners' output and render it as PDF to search within that? Just trying to help you come up with ideas. And I appreciate it. Some do have that kind of stuff, some don't. It's gonna be a nightmare. I told them it would be cheaper to just rent a storage locker, fill it with file cabinets, make copies of the paper documents, and store 'em there. Then they could only use document managment with new, electronic documents. But n... So then I told them that any commercial document management system for our needs would be like pounding in wire brads with a sledge hammer. I begged them to let me develop a system to route stuff scanned with a TWAIN scanner to a sensible storage hierarchy, but n... That would take too long, they said. So they bought this software last spring. I've had a server sitting, running, with the software on it, since last July. Not one document has yet been managed with it. We are just now at the point of having the first administrative training on this new system. I could have had a much simpler and cheaper system in place by now. Oh well... Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130423111912.01ca2...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
SQL 2012 allows you to have what are called document stacks which effectively can hold the scanned images even though they aren't part of the database base data (.mdf file), it's the equivalent of holding them in a secret untouchable folder. Hm..sounds like a great way to take control of customers' data and only allow them to access it if they pay you for it. One of the reasons we went with the system we did was precisely to avoid that. The documents are to be stored as ordinary documents in ordinarily accessible locations so that if I want to stop using the document management software I will still have the documents. The documents are available using standard SQL retrieval commands, it is just that they are unavailable for people who treat Windows Explorer with distain and like to move, delete or rename documents that may well be pointed to by the database i.e data fiddlers, who normally should know better. You can of course lock it down, as you can any database data if required. Thanks, Dave. I thought a document management system would ordinarily do a check-in/check-out thing with documents like source-control systems use, and that access to the actual document storage locations via Windows Explorer would only be available to users with suitable permissions. In my case, that would be *me*; nobody else would be able to get to those locations. They'll be on a server to which I have the password, and not shared out to the network. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130423113849.01c8f...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
What industry? Medical, Automotive sales? We're a Center for Independent Living. We provide some stuff that is defined as long-term care services, and a lot of other stuff that is loosely defined as social services. Some stuff is billable to Medicaid; some is not. But we aren't integrating billing for the most part. Worker time sheets will be included. 2 years ago the company I worked for did a DocManagement system for a medicare payment house. Mission was to identify all the miss coded to incomplete documents, tally what was wrong and message them back as to why they were not getting paid. This was for the SE Regional payment facility in Nashville. Oh yeah it would also post transactions into the payable system for quality paper submitted as well. :) You can do A LOT with document systems if you want to. We're not using this for work flow, just for archiving/backup purposes to address business continuity issues. We provide zillions of services under a bunch of different contracts, and the same person can be served by different people under different contracts. Everybody involved in serving the person has to be able to see at least a subset of that person's paperwork and contribute to it. We evaluate HIPAA requirements ourselves and do not necessarily subscribe to the standard CYA approach that most consultants advise. There is a lot of misinformation circulated out there about what you actually can and cannot do under HIPAA (and there are also state-level regulations to contend with on this point). We get the proper releases but, as is permitted by HIPAA and New York State, sharing information internally as needed to carry out critical functions is perfectly permissible and we do it regularly. In many many ways, our model does not correspond to the medical model and we intend to keep it that way, so we are not likely ever to use software to control how we handle information. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130423121233.01c9b...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Neat scanner system info and questions
What industry? Medical, Automotive sales? We're a Center for Independent Living. We provide some stuff that is defined as long-term care services, and a lot of other stuff that is loosely defined as social services. Some stuff is billable to Medicaid; some is not. But we aren't integrating billing for the most part. Worker time sheets will be included. Quite familiar with this when my mom was alive and in one. It's not a residential facility. We provide services to enable people to live as independently as possible in, preferably, their own homes. A brief explanation is here (it's not our agency but it's a good description): http://fvkasa.org/resources/files/cil.php But we go well beyond that, as we provide homecare services, a range of services for people with developmental disabilities of all ages, plus supported employment for people with different kinds of disabilities, specialized supports for people with brain injuries or who are elderly, and a lot more. We can help you find a place to live if you don't have one (say, if you want to leave an institutional setting or nursing facility), bring in physical modifications and assistive technology, arrange for attendant services (and, if you want, enable you to essentially run that service yourself), assist you to hook up with friends, neighbors, activities and jobs in the community, and do a bunch of other stuff, right where you already live. Are you going to just cross reference all docs to a specific guest? Like scan them in and drop them into a guests folder? I see a lot of manual work in this but for a round one and little funding this is as good as it gets. I didn't set this up so I may not have all the details correct but essentially: We have the system set up to key on individual clients. Within their folders there will be folders for various departments, as well as a common access folder. Access to departmental folders will be limited to department members. Access to the wider folder will cast a wider net. Within each folder will be a bunch of folders for document type (many of the same document-type folders will be found within each of the separate department folders), and individual documents will go into those folders. We haven't had the training yet so we aren't clear on the details of the scanning/input process. The system will work with bar codes; the salespeople keep pushing barcodes as the way to go. But as a matter of practical reality, combing through dead files and trying to pull up documents, separate them by barcode leaves by person, department, and document type, and feed them through a network copier that can't control the document management software directly is probably not going to work efficiently. The person doing the scanning is going to have to make judgement calls constantly and re-route stuff on the fly or in later sessions. Also, there will inevitably be OCR errors and somebody will have to edit the docs to fix them. Internal usage is one thing and HIPPA was really set up for proper presentation to others I thought. Yes it is but a lot of people don't understand that. Nor does HIPPA prevent the people who pay for medical services from seeing data that proves they got what they paid for. Nor does it prevent data from being subpoenaed by a court of law, and there are lots of other exceptions. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130423132138.01c8d...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
2) Younger people (or maybe it is most people) do not ask enough questions. I remember one case where the instructor said something on a Monday that seemingly contradicted something he had said the previous Wednesday. When I queried this, that triggered a five-minute flurry of him looking through his notes. Finally, he asked if he had covered four slides (showed them) on Friday. No, he had not, and when he did, the problem was solved. As far as I could see,no one else had twigged to the problem. Really, it often felt as if I was taking a different course from my classmates. I think kids who have never had to work for a living have a completely different attitude toward formal education. They sit there and consume it passively as they would a TV show. They don't know what it means to apply any knowledge in a work situation, so it doesn't occur to them to actually follow what is being presented in real time and think about how it will be used, step by step. It's not even a question of motivation or laziness. They simply don't have the necessary prerequisite experience to look at learning in that way. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130425201858.01fa3...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Review of My Application
If I want to have a form inside of another form's validation and set focus in the second form, I can not do so. Apparently, using LostFocus is a solution for this. I experimented a bit but then had to do something else. I gave up messing with all this and just went with what you would probably call front-end row validation. I don't use grids for data entry. It's too easy for users to edit the wrong row. They start working on row 3 and as their eyes move from left to right they slip down to row 4 and now you have a real problem. I use multi-column picklists to let users choose a record to edit. (Actually, I have a homemade list control class that is a lot nicer than a list control and a lot easier to use than a grid.) Users have to enter data into an editing control set (which may either be on the same design surface as the list or may pop up on a modal form or a different page of a pageframe), and then press an Enter button. All of the data in those controls then passes through a business object validation method. On the first failure the user gets a Data Entry Error message explaining what's wrong and what to do about it. The user can then correct the problem and press Enter again. (Users, I find, rarely make more than one error per record. One is enough to make them think more carefully for the duration. So this is just as efficient as stopping them in the middle of a textbox with Valid() = .F.) If everything passes validation, the list of records gets updated with the user's changes. The Enter button can trigger an actual save back to the database in some situations; in others it just updates the list and there's a separate button for the save. The VFP event sequence gets hinky in a lot of situations. It's okay for very simple problems but the more complex and layered a form gets, the less likely it is to work properly, or be flexible enough, all the time. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130425205218.01fab...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industrys Darkest Secr et : Its All About Age
At 04:14 PM 4/24/2013, you wrote: El 24/04/13 11:56, MB Software Solutions, LLC escribió: On 4/24/2013 7:31 AM, Alan Bourke wrote: clipped To an extent where despite being a country under an IMF bailout with high-ish unemployment, the Googles and Microsofts who have their European bases here often have to recruit people from outside the country because they can't find enough people from inside. Sounds like the USA. Employers can't find qualified workers here so hence the huge clamor to raise the H1B Visa cap every year. (Rot in hell, Carly Fiorina. What? I thought you people believed in capitalism and free market competition. Are you afraid to compete with foreigners? There is no excuse here, with an H1B they will be paying the same taxes and living expenses you are. What are you, socialists? Nah, they're populists. *LOL* Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130425210901.01f7a...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: primary or unique index
At the point where I generate the billing, the index I want in place would not allow an insert command to duplicate a billing for that student/class/session. I just assumed unique meant only 1 allowed per table. It's a common misunderstanding. CANDIDATE and PRIMARY keys only allow unique values. UNIQUE are an old remnant of a quirky FoxPro behavior and should NEVER be used. There's a difference between UNIQUE index in VFP and the SQL standard for a unique index. Here's the latter: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/487314/primary-key-or-unique-index Maybe that's what Gary is thinking of? Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130425211751.01fe7...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: Review of My Application
All of the data in those controls then passes through a business object validation method. Another benefit of this approach that you can't get with control-by-control field validation (at least not without a lot of baroque messing around), is that it enables you to handle sets of interrelated values that can't be completely validated until all of the values have been entered. If you don't do it this way you will find yourself repeating the same tests in multiple field validation methods. Here's a very simple example (if you have more than two interrelated values it gets much uglier much faster): Date1.Valid() If NOT EMPTY(Date2.Value) * Is Date2 Date1; if not, wrongo! ENDIF Date2.Valid() * Assumes we can't get here if Date1 is empty... If THIS.Value = Date1.Value * We already asked this, essentially, in Date1 but we have to do it again here... ENDIF Whereas, if we do it all at the same time all we have to do is: LOCAL DateOne, DateTwo, MyMessage DateOne = Date1.Value() DateTwo = Date2.Value() IF DateOne = DateTwo MyMessage = Date 2 must always be later than Date 1. ENDIF IF EMPTY(MyMessage) ** Other validations here ** ** ENDIF etc... IF NOT EMPTY(MyMessage) * Display the message. RETURN .F. ELSE RETURN .T. ENDIF There ya go. It's all in one place; no more digging through multiple controls to find and change validation rules. No more trying to figure out who's got focus now and who should get it next (including what you will have to do if you later decide to change the order in which data is entered). And if you want to add a second interface to enter some or all of the same data in a different scenario, perhaps even using different kinds of controls, you can use this same method to validate it all. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130425220725.01fdb...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Review of My Application
Very clear description, inspiring, thanks Thierry Nivelet Thanks, Thierry. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130426195537.01fa8...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
[NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
For those of you who administer email servers that communicate with the internet: Is it standard SMTP procedure to send a test email to a sender's address to verify that the address is valid? My email provider does this, and it causes continuous problems when a POP client is being used and it is set to hold messages on the server for a specified number of days. This is not a free email service; we have to pay for every MB of storage, so huge GMail-style mailboxes are not an option. Therefore, often the user's mailbox is full, and she/he is therefore not allowed to send email until s/he forces the server to partially or fully empty his/her mailbox. This, in my opinion, is an unfair and poor way to verify the sender's address. Surely it must be possible for an SMTP server to do sender-verify in a different way, such as by querying its own table of valid accounts. Would this still occur with IMAP? As I understand it, IMAP is a retrieval protocol, not a send protocol. But if an ISP offers IMAP, which, as I understand it, by default leaves messages on the server, then surely the ISP must anticipate that many mailboxes will be full and would have to use some other sender verification strategy. I am not asking for a referral to some other email service provider. I am trying to understand what the options are for sender verify and why people use them. Thanks for any information. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130429131822.01c7d...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
I am not asking for a referral to some other email service provider. Perhaps you should be. The problem is your service provider is using an arcane methodology and, as most service providers are supplying gigabytes for free as part of their service, perhaps it's time you reconsidered your mail system design. At the very least, a stern discussion with them to see if they can prevent their self-caused outages. I am trying to understand what the options are for sender verify and why people use them. As explained in the Wikipedia article, they're trying to verify that mail actually came from a real mailbox and not a made up fake spam one. However, I have a hard time understanding how this is filling up a mailbox until the storage capacity is pitifully low. POP is not designed to retain mail on the server. The retain for x days functionality was an after-thought and the implications not fully understood. It would probably make more sense to retain email in-house or with another server. You could put your own mail server in between the users and the internet, and retain mail there, but that may just be shifting the problem. Thanks Ted. Possibly the tech who explained this to me did not fully explain what he was doing. The test emails are not ever actually delivered, so there must be something further going on; perhaps they contain a code that causes them to be immediately tossed into the bit bucket. However, if the mailbox is full when they arrive, they are, naturally, bounced, and any rejection is then interpreted as sender verify failed. I would think that at the very least the thing should be able to read the actual text of the bounce message and verify the sender if the message contains over quota, since such a message indicates that the account exists, but the guy insisted that this is not possible. Maintaining the security and functionality of an email server that communicates with the internet is a headache I don't want or have time for. (We have an internal email server but that is not a significant security risk.) I'm a one-man IT department in an agency of nearly 100 computer users. I barely have time to do what I already have to do. :) Thanks, Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130429145507.01c93...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
Surely it must be possible for an SMTP server to do sender-verify in a different way, such as by querying its own table of valid accounts. It would be a boon for spammers. They would be able to send lot of tests to determine which E-mail addresses are valid. I don't see how they would not get the same results from such a set of tests no matter what method is used to verify senders. This is a test on the From address of a sender using SMTP, not a test on the To address of a recipient. If a spammer is going to send out a bunch of emails with randomly generated From addresses and keep the ones that don't get bounced, I don't see why it matters how the SMTP server decides which ones to bounce. Anyway, I think it would probably be better and faster for the SMTP server to read the bounce message and verify addresses for which the message contains over quota, since that's a valid existing address. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130429150543.01c9d...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
At 02:18 PM 4/29/2013 -0500, you wrote: One of the first steps in the connection and sending of email from server to server is to identify who the message is for (sender) and a response from the receiving server as to whether that person (address) is known to them. At that point, based on the receiver's response, the sender can abort the transaction. Look up the SMTP command RCPT TO. Example: RCPT TO: u...@domain.com If the user is known, the receiving server will respond with something like 250 OK - Recipient u...@domain.com So it should return 250 if the recipient exists, regardless of whether that mailbox is full? The provider's system didn't work this way originally. It didn't stop refusing to verify a sender whose mailbox was full until after they implemented a security update I think, in late 2011 or early 2012. According to the Wikipedia article linked by Ted, I think if the SMTP server attempts RCPT TO: and gets 250 back, it can stop the process at that point, thereby not delivering a message to the recipient, and can also refuse to send a bounce message back to the original sender in order to prevent a dictionary attack. However, my email client will always display the SMTP error in that case (550 Sender verify failed) which ought to be just as useful to a dictionary attacker that can directly read the error message. So it would seem that nothing really can be done within the realm of email sender verification to protect against such attacks as long as the SMTP server emits some kind of response to the original sender when a message doesn't go through for whatever reason--which, it seems to me, it must do in some manner. At least, in the case of my ISP, returning 550 ought to be just as valuable to a spammer as anything else it could return short of outright lying, in which case a legitimate sender would have a problem. The Wikipedia article implies that security (over) conscious mail admins may be misusing the protocols. However, I don't understand this well enough to develop a response for my provider. Can you (or anyone) perhaps suggest exactly what sequence of commands and responses I should ask my provider to use for sender verification? Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130429152447.01ca6...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
I might not be understanding your question, but I would test the provider's server using Telnet. I think you may not be (or I'm not understanding your explanations). My problem is this: I am u...@mydomain.net. That email address is managed by a company that I pay for the privilege. My desktop email client uses POP/SMTP. It is set to leave messages on the server for a certain number of days and then delete them. This so that the account can be accessed from more than one email client. Yes, I know IMAP can handle this differently but for now let us just assume that I continue to use POP/SMTP (as I had been using for well over a decade without problems until late 2010 or so). Now, the mailbox for u...@mydomain.net on the server is full. I can determine this by checking the webmail, or by trying to send a message to that account and receiving a mailbox over-quota bounce message. Now, while that mailbox is full, I try to SEND email FROM u...@mydomain.net to ANYBODY. The recipient is irrelevant. When I attempt to send the message, I do not receive a bounce-back email. I immediately get 550 Sender verify failed in my email client's error display. My mail provider says that he's using a callback procedure that involves trying to deliver an email to u...@mydomain.net. He says that if the server returns anything other than 250 OK, he sends back the 550 error. My complaint is that his server should be able to differentiate account does not exist from other possible sources of results other than 250, and if the account actually exists, then his server should allow me to send messages. If it will help, I've included a (lightly) edited transcript of my email conversation with the provider about this, below. Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org Here are the pertinent parts of the email conversation I had with the provider. If this makes sense to anyone, please let me know. (Actually, the provider's behavior first changed, to start sending 550 Sender Verify Failed if the sender's mailbox was full, in late 2010.) Me: People here frequently have full mailboxes; that situation gets rectified within a matter of days in the normal course of business. They should not have to be bothered by whether their mailbox is full at the moment they want to SEND an email to somebody else. So can you please turn this behavior off for STIC's email accounts? Provider: It is not possible to disable it on a per domain basis, and we are not going to disable it on the per server basis, sorry. It prevents soo much invalid / spam mail. The reason it fails is this,. the server does an SMTP callback to the mx for the domain and try to deliver a mail. Since the mailbox is full it gets fail. We are using totally different mail server software now, then before the move/upgrade hence the reason we cannot disable it. Your options are to either disable quotas on individual boxes, or make sure that people don't let their mailbox fill up. Me: IMO, a bad design, since it monitors an irrelevant state in order to make a decision about something completely different. Simply put, in real terms, full mailbox invalid sender. Mailbox exists == valid sender, but that is an entirely different thing. Provider: The problem is that you are looking at from the point of view that the MTA knows anything about the LDA, and they don't. MTA is the Mail Transfer Agent. The LDA is the Local Delivery agent. So when the MTA gets a message and it is looking to receive it. it looks at the MAIL FROM line. Once it gets that it issues the SMTP Callback to verify the existence of the account. It really doesn't even know that the account is local. So it issues the call back and it gets a temp failure code. The MTA only sees the temp failure code, it doesn't care about the english text after it, since that format of that is undefined and left up to the mail server to provide (and is optional at that). So the MTA now only knows that it tried to deliver a message to the sender and it failed with a 4XX error code, and didn't get a 2XX (250 normally) , so it will reject the message with the failure code, and text. Normally the sending mail server will see this as temp failure and try again at a later time, but in the case of an MUA (Mail user agent) like Outlook or thunderbird, it just fails right away and doesn't really retry later. Does that make more sense? Me: I understand what you're describing. But the old system apparently didn't do things that way, so therefore it cannot be necessary to do things that way. It would seem that either: whatever the MTA's callback request talks to is looking at the wrong thing, since the MTA is trying to find out whether the account is valid, not whether the mailbox is full, or There should be a different call in the SMTP spec to determine specifically whether an account is valid regardless of the state of the mailbox
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
At 03:41 PM 4/29/2013 -0500, you wrote: I think that your explanation (below) is clear. Why, in the name of all that is normal, would the email service provider that you use test YOUR account for being full when YOU send an email? Or to ask it another way, what is the logic for doing that? Are they assuming that if your email inbox is full that you are not going to send anything? That's just nuts. Or, again, am I misunderstanding? In your info, below, you identified yourself as u...@mydomain.net. If you try to send me an email using your account u...@mydomain.net, then I would only expect MY email address to be an issue in a perfect world. Now, almost any self-respecting email service provider (your service provider that you pay for the privilege) will test the sender/sending address (u...@mydomain.net) to be both a valid address and an address that they are responsible for. H.maybe that is why he is attempting to use a call back procedure... Okay, so you say that this only happens when your inbox has reached the arbitrary limit the service provider has set. The service provider says that if they don't get a 250 (all okay) then they refuse to let you send. Curious. I would say that the service provider is using a very odd, and obviously unworkable, method to determine if you are one of their customers. Why would they not, instead, maintain a database of customers email addresses and validate against that? Sorry, but I'm going to have to cast my vote for another provider...or you're going to have to poke them until they revise their methods. I think you also said that something changed recently, so obviously they are not anti-change. This all makes me wonder if they actually have control of the email server they are selling you service from...there are a lot of resellers out there that just handle the human-customer-seller interaction and buy the service at a discount from the actual computer owner-operator. Hm... that could be. That might be why, as the provider said, the MTA and LDA don't really know each other. I did the following: telnet mail.mydomain.org 220 ehlo test.com 250 mail from:overfullexistingmail...@mydomain.org 250 OK So at that point my provider could have sent the email on to my intended recipient with full confidence that I am a valid user. However, if I try to send email from that same account using my POP/SMTP client, I get 550 Sender verify failed. This is, of course, verified email, which requires the SMTP conversation to do a few more things, including sending the account address and a password. So I would guess the verification occurs on the account/password check, before we even get to MAIL FROM: Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130429164700.01c95...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
No...the telnet test is no different than the communications that takes place between your email client software program and the email server at mydomain.org. The process, the responses, everything is the same...assuming you are using the same port in your telnet testing. Did you actually send telnet mail.mydomain.org 25 or telnet mail.mydomain.rg smtp ? Without the port info, the telnet app will default to port 23...which won't work for SMTP. Yes, I sent the port. However, if I don't tell my POP client to save my email password, it will ask for my password when I attempt to send an email. I see that with both Eudora and Thunderbird. What is being done with that password then, that isn't being done with Telnet? Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130429214320.02056...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
Try to work completely through the telnet test and send yourself an email Hello World and see what happens. And yeah, I'm very aware of what a pain in the butt sending email via telnet isone little typo and you have to start over. Okay. So after following the same Telnet steps I do: recpt to:myotheremailaddr...@mydomain.com 550 verification failed for myoverquotaacco...@mydomain.com 550 mailbox quota exceeded 550 sender verify failed My provider seems to indicate that after accepting the rcpt to: command he issues his callback to myoverquotaacco...@mydomain.com, and if this generates something other than 250, he sends 550 back to me. He further explains that quota exceeded is a temporary error in the 400 range, and that if his callback returns a number in the 400 range he will issue 550 back to me. So now I'm reading the (painful) SMTP return code reference. There does seem to be general agreement on the range of available return codes, but somewhat less than general agreement on what they mean. There doesn't seem to be a 400-range error specifically for mailbox quota exceeded. The closest one is in RFC 2821 is 452 - Requested action not taken - insufficient system storage; that is, according to one more detailed reference (http://www.hosteng.com/faqfiles/SMTP%20Server%20Status%20Codes%20and%20Errors.pdf) there is insufficient disk space at the host for myoverquotaacco...@mydomain.com, which may mean that the entire host server is full, or all of the space allocated for my domain is full, or just that my mailbox is full. Or it may mean that the SMTP server is out of memory, or that its limit on concurrent connections has been reached. This would not seem to be a clear indication that my account is valid; it only would appear to demonstrate that my domain is valid. However, there is also 552, for which the RFC 2821 legend is Requested mail actions aborted - exceeded storage allocation. The above-cited reference PDF says this means The user's mailbox has reached its maximum allowed size. But neither RFC 2821, nor another reference at http://www.authsmtp.com/faqs/faq-25.html, is willing to go so far in specifying the meaning of this code, which on its face would only seem to mean that the condition defined in 452--or whichever of the several possibilities listed there--is not temporary but permanent. My provider says that anything after the number is undefined and not required. So I guess the pertinent questions now are: Is there a real difference, other than temporary vs permanent, between 452 and 552? Then, if the answer is, Yes, 452 is insufficient disk space or RAM or connections for presumably temporary reasons and 552 is always mailbox quota exceeded, a permanent condition until the user takes action to rectify it, then why doesn't the provider's callback return 552 instead of some number in the 400 range? And if the callback does in fact return 552, could not the provider then conclude that the account is valid? And, lastly, how does any of this inform my provider, who hosts many domains, that my domain not only exists, but is a domain that he hosts and for which he should provide SMTP service? Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130429214901.0202c...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
Maintaining the security and functionality of an email server that communicates with the internet is a headache I don't want or have time for. (We have an internal email server but that is not a significant security risk.) I'm a one-man IT department in an agency of nearly 100 computer users. I barely have time to do what I already have to do. :) No, that wasn't my suggestion. I was suggesting you maintain a server in-house that communicates ONLY with the mail provider you contract with. Retain all email in-house, and clear out the POP provider. But, on reflection, that probably won't work if you have mail users outside of the office (or using outside access, like smartphones or tablets) to access shared email ids. So, Never Mind, as Emily Litella would say. Right. My in-house server would still have to be open to the internet. I've done waaay more than my share of Litella /Litella here over the years. :) So thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130429223325.0206b...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
Your client needs the password to authenticate. The Telnet procedure should also be asking for a password It doesn't. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430090825.024b5...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
At 05:34 AM 4/30/2013 -0500, you wrote: As you have found, the SMTP protocol is a set of guidelines that...some are adhered to closely, some not so much. Error codes is one of the not so much areas. At this point, all I can say for sure is that your provider is choosing to disallow your sending outbound messages via SMTP when your inbox is full (your account has reached disk storage quota) as you have proven. I find that choice, by them, to be arbitrary and pointless. I just don't see the connection. Do they want more $$$ for a larger quota? Are you getting so much email in your inbox that it fills up that quickly? I would consider getting a free Gmail account and using that for some of your message reply-to addresses or something. In my opinion, you aren't doing any thing wrong unless not cleaning out your inbox more often is to be considered a mistake on your part. Grrr.. I hate ambiguity. *LOL* Our business deals in HIPAA-related information. I won't use any data-mining email provider for such business. In fact, I won't use any data-mining email provider for anything except a spam drop, on general principles. So the dilemma that faces me is: The currrent service is a PITA but it is really, really, REALLY cheap. I think we pay $600 a year for up to 150 addresses plus web hosting. Total storage space is 2 GB, of which we are using a bit over half at any given time. I don't think there are any providers out there who can even come close to that rate, and if they did, they probably would impose restrictions on me like only using IMAP or not allowing concurrent connections to the same mailbox or not allowing standard POP/SMTP ports or other things that this provider doesn't do and which, at the very least, would cost me many many hours of reconfiguration time. Ah well. Thanks very much for all your help. Someone--I'm very sorry, I received it at home where the account does empty my mailbox, so I don't have it here this morning and I don't remember your name, but thank you!--suggested using a different SMTP server, and that may turn out to be an option that I can use. If anyone else has any other thoughts, I'm very interested. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430091150.024b7...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
I thought most email servers blocked telnet these days? That's what I thought, too. I was surprised that I was able to run the tests. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430092513.01ca4...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
At 10:55 AM 4/30/2013 -0500, you wrote: The administrator of the mail server has the authority to set email quotas on a per user basis. In my system, which runs Fedora, Postfix, Dbmail, and PostgreSQL, setting the quota to 0 allows a user to have an unlimited amount of space on the mail server for emails. Otherwise, quotas on each user account is set to some reasonable amount of server disk space. Once a user hits his quota limit, the user is required to clean up his emails in order to continue using his email account on the mail server. You might talk to your administrator to see if he/she would remove quotas on your email account(s) by setting them to zero, or raise the quota limit on the account(s) over quota. I have administrative access to set quotas; I can use CPanel to do that for my domain. I do set quotas on most accounts as we have limited space, for each megabyte of which we have to pay. It is better to cause one mailbox to overflow than to potentially flood the entire domain space allocation and bring all email access to a screaming halt. Several accounts are departmental; intended for access by all department members. Therefore they have to be set to retain email on the server for some number of days to ensure that all users can download them. Other accounts are used by the same person on multiple clients at multiple locations; all but one of those locations must retain email for some number of days. In that particular scenario (single user, multiple locations), webmail could be used, but I have yet to see a webmail interface that isn't slow, clunky, and somewhat error-ridden, even when used on a high-bandwidth service. Fat-client email applications are just faster, more flexible, and more reliable. Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430121041.01c96...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
I know when an account goes over quota, when a user informs me his account isn't working, and I check his quota status, and see its over limit. I then ask the user to clean up his emails to free up disk space, or in some situations, I up that users quota. Some accounts are set to unlimited emails. Do you know exactly the account(s) causing the problem? Yes I do, though many users really have trouble following the simple directions I provide on how to clean up their boxes. I try to get them to do it but there is a persistent percentage who will mess it up. And if they're using multiple accounts on Thunderbird (which happens if they work part-time for more than one department), they will also sometimes do it for the wrong account. *sigh* So sometimes I just go into the webmail and clean it myself, and if there's a persistent problem with one account I will increase the quota. Last December, a few people who correspond with us unleashed viruses on their machines and/or had their Yahoo email accounts hacked (Yahoo email really, really, really sucks), and suddenly the daily influx of spam messages across all accounts in my domain went from about 400 to about 4000, and the influx of malware went from near zero to a couple dozen. Since then over-quota situations have increased significantly. It's one thing if a user can't *receive* email for a day or two until I can get around to dealing with it. It's another if that user can't *send* email when the mailbox is full due to the email provider's insane method of verifying users. That's what prompted this whole thread. So I'm giving serious thought to using another SMTP address. My email hosting provider is not the same as my connectivity provider; the connectivity provider may have an SMTP server I can use, so I'm looking into that. Thanks. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430125926.01ca0...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
So I'm giving serious thought to using another SMTP address. My email hosting provider is not the same as my connectivity provider; the connectivity provider may have an SMTP server I can use, so I'm looking into that. SMTP is the protocol, (eg Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), and the email address is the username, followed by a @, followed by the domain name. The outgoing SMTP server is the server that delivers emails going out from the email client and the SMTP incoming server is the server that has all the email accounts, (eg inbox and other folders). In my situation the SMTP incoming and outgoing servers are one and the same, but they can be completely different computers with different IPs. That's the first time I've heard of using SMTP for incoming. We use POP3 to retrieve incoming emails, and SMTP to send emails. Yes, I shouldn't have said address. The email host provider assigns a separate name to the SMTP server based on the domain name, ie.: mail.MyDomain.org. However, this may be an alias pointing to a centralized server and not really a separate server instance, I don't know. I'm not sure having a separate server to deliver emails would solve your problem. if an email was sent by a user, whose account was over quota, to be delivered by a separate outgoing server, any reply from a recipient would fail, due to quota limits, and the user whose account was over quota might not be notified of the problem. LOL You have a point there. I'll have to think about that. From what I've gather from reading the threads, you're currently running on an ISP mail server that services accounts under multiple domains, (eg a single mail server servicing multiple domains), and you can administer your own domain with the HTML interface provided by your ISP. You might consider setting up another domain with your ISP devoted strictly for email services. Well the only other thing done with the domain is web hosting. I would hate to have to propagate email address or web URL changes out to everybody who uses them now. I think that would be way too disruptive. Of course, there's always early retirement... *LOL* Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430150055.01ca2...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Standard Email Sender Verification Procedures
Would your issues be resolved if you set up a robot process to Email notification to your users when their box is X percent full? The Email could supply the full details of what they need to do to avoid having their Email service disrupted. I don't know if such a solution is possible in your environment but thought I'd pass on the idea. - Joe Hm... that sounds like fun! And it kinda/sorta sounds like something that could be cobbled together to run as a script as a Linux Cron job. Clearly I can talk to the SMTP server to send a warning message. But can I talk to CPanel to find out a) mailbox quota and b) current usage? Maybe I'll do a little research on it. Thanks! Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430200222.01fe4...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Are you ready to rumble?
The point is these people started out without a keyboard and it worked for them. Put one in front of them and they struggle a bit. Today's young professional doesn't really need a keyboard, they have been texting for at least 10 years. Not even today's young professional has been texting legal briefs, medical notes, personnel policy documents, or 300 line SQL SELECT queries with their thumbs. Texting is not suitable for jobs that require a lot of writing. Sending emails or messages, yes. Perhaps even adding sticky notes to a document. But writing the actual document--no way. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430203317.02050...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Are you ready to rumble?
Voice recognition should be fine in no time at all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ It's not just about dictating text and having the computer type it. That's going to be reasonably fast, once one has the computer trained to recognize one's voice. However, there are many things one can do on a computer via mouse and/or keyboard in much less time than it would take you to tell the computer how to do it using your voice. Various CAD and desktop publishing applications come to mind. And even if all we're talking about is dictating documents: Not everybody can dictate a coherent document. Different people have different preferred communication channels. Some people simply cannot collect and deliver their thoughts in a clear manner by speaking; they can only achieve that kind of clarity and organization by writing. I'm not talking about the mechanics of speech, I'm talking about what goes on in one's brain as we marshall our thoughts and prepare to send them out via speech or writing. Those are two different kinds of thought processes, and in most people, one of them works better than the other. And as I always say, hundreds of people talking to their computers in a cube farm isn't going to work. Voice recognition is never going to work as an all-purpose interface for a computer, just as the mouse won't work as an all-purpose interface for a computer (no matter how much Steve Jobs wanted it to), touch-screen won't work as an all-purpose interface for a computer, just as typing won't work as an all-purpose interface for a computer (command line fanbois back off; try doing CAD or photo editing with a command line). That being said, the keyboard/mouse combination remains the most efficient human/machine interface overall for a general-purpose computing machine. To the extent that we devolve into using many different special-purpose computing machines for specific purposes, all bets are off. But composing big documents and swatches of code will remain a very important purpose for the use of computing machines, and the keyboard will always be the most efficient way to do that. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430203740.01feb...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
At 06:05 PM 4/30/2013, you wrote: At 15:00 2013-04-30, Ed Leafe e...@leafe.com wrote: On Apr 29, 2013, at 4:45 PM, Ted Roche tedro...@gmail.com wrote: There is a perception in some tech circles that older programmers aren't able to keep pace with rapidly changing technology, and that they are discriminated against in the software field. But a new study from North Carolina State University indicates that the knowledge and skills of programmers actually improve over time and that older programmers know as much (or more) than their younger peers when it comes to recent software platforms. Ironic that this is quoted on a VFP list. ;-) Well, some of us, when we find something, we quit looking for it. +1 Until it gets taken away from us... Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130430205304.01fab...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
Well, some of us, when we find something, we quit looking for it. +1 Until it gets taken away from us... So something becomes too old when Microsoft says it is? Al No, it gets too old when people who drink the Microsoft koolaid, and who do things that we depend on, say it is. For example, I would still be running Windows 2000 today if I could get network-managed anti-virus software, and a version of Firefox that complies with modern AJAX-type requirements, to run on it. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130501201159.020d8...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [ADMIN] Donation Request
A Melanie quote! Dang, you beat me. I was gonna ask him which brand new key he was singing that in. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130501202416.020bc...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [ADMIN] Donation Request
And I'm in, putting you officially over the top... where I often can be found. :) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130501202852.02108...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: Are you ready to rumble?
User interfaces are very important. Personally, I find touchpads to be very awkward. Many of my mouse actions are point-and-click. With a mouse, it is simple. With a touchpad, I have to move my finger around and then move it around to click the button. (Due to my dry hands, clicking on the pad is not reliable. I have actually caused clicks on my touchpad when I was not touching the touchpad but had my finger just above.) Touchpads are demons from hell! The first thing I do when I get a laptop is disable tapping on the touchpad so I can keep it from doing something I don't want it to do long enough for me to jam a USB mouse into it. That is, when I deal with laptops at all, which I also hate... Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130501203646.01fd6...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
I wonder how much of the homeless problem comes down to mental health. I have to admit I have a hunch being homeless by choice could be a very satisfying path overall. I've had a few transient periods in my life and I tend to look back at them fondly even though they were hard at the time. I bet if you spend an hour talking with the guy who is homeless by choice and ask the right questions, you will find out that he is, indeed, mentally ill and unable to cope with the demands of maintaining the sort of self-organization that is necessary in order to keep a roof over one's head. Having worked in the disability services field for a very long time, I can tell you that probably 99% of the people who are chronically homeless have psychiatric or intellectual disabilities, or both. Those who are temporarily homeless (for a few months) are a different group. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130501204037.01f8d...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
I camped out one time for about 90 days on 30 acres in between contracts. Loved it But I also wonder about the girl in the video that looks like a druggie now. If she is, could that come from the destitution of having no way out when your job was sent offshore? For nearly ten years now I've been unable to find steady work. Used to think it was only me, but I've heard from many because of my work at KAAW that are experiencing the same. You might find this interesting--from the current issue of Atlantic Monthly: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/the-slacker-trap/309285/ Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130501204523.01fcc...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: ProFox List Statistics for April 2013
I sure don't touch it much. I have several VFP apps I wrote in back in the early 90s that are still in use. Every once in a while, one of those folks asks me a question, most likely something like I can't remember how to configure a workstation. I have my own billing/scheduling system I wrote 20+ years ago. I have one client (for which I do a project once per year) which I wrote in VFP. Other than that, I just don't touch it. You? It's my bread and butter. And about 5 or 6 times a year, I get stuck to the extent that I cry for help, and about 5 of those times get it. I help out when I can, as well, but usually several people have beaten me to the answer. (Or I don't know it!) Great resource. I would have said just about exactly the same thing--except that programming is only part of my more general IT job. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130501205302.02078...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: ProFox List Statistics for April 2013
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F3SHBB6 It will take you all of a minute to complete. I'll give it a few days and then post the results here. Done! Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130501205616.01fd1...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
Not sure it is funny or not. I've been told that the automotive manufacturers must support their products for 20 years which means keeping spare parts available. To me, that sounds like they are taking care of their customers. Whereas the software industry seems to want to force new products on their customers rather than maintain their existing products. Virgil is right. It's not a matter of technical feasibility, it's a matter of (missing) business ethics and necessary regulation to enforce them. In many US states, an auto mechanic can go to jail for telling a customer they need a repair that they don't in fact need. When was the last time any software manufacturer or vendor got jailed for telling a customer they need a software upgrade that they don't in fact need? If we applied the same laws to software as we do to cars in this area, we would quickly find that the software manufacturers would have no more trouble complying with them than the auto mechanics do. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502100910.01cab...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
At 09:18 AM 5/2/2013 -0500, you wrote: On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 8:56 AM, Kurt Wendt k...@isssusa.com wrote: Hey Stephen - I agree with Ken - in regards to the Stability. I used Win2000 Pro for Years on this one desktop of mine. And, when I would tell people what OS I was running - they looked at me like I had a 3rd Eye in the middle of my forehead! But, alas - I kept running W2K - because it was stable - and I was running the Pro version - because I was using 3D CG SW. And, because of this stability factor - I could see why Ken would like to still be running it. Vista was a Nightmare - causing problems on my laptop a LOT - and also making my wife's Dell PC desktop unstable from day one! -- M$ stated that it was unsafe on the web. XP was great. Vista was a drivers issue, 7 had that covered. 8 is user and lack of software issue. They are hoping to get that fixed. hehehehe But back to the point that it was unsafe on the web. First, that's completely bogus. The older an OS is, the SAFER it is on the web, because the vast majority of malware writers target the latest and greatest, and the junk that is dangerous to older OSes drops out of circulation. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that this claim is not a bald-faced lie concocted solely for marketing purposes. Who made it unsafe on the web? MS. Why should I be responsible for replacing a defective product? MS should have been held responsible for making it safe. When was the last time any auto manufacturer got away with telling people they have to junk their cars and buy new ones because they are unsafe? The problem is that the tech industry has been able to wave its flag of unbelievable technical complexity that you poor government officials don't understand for way too long. Because of this, they have been able to put out shoddy buggy stuff, and they have educated the public to expect and accept this. Although US common law establishes that no person can sign away their legal rights, one of which is that every product sold comes with an implied guarantee of usability, these people continue to get away with EULA clauses that absolve the manufacturers of liability for defects. And they are actually allowed to get away with requiring customers to pay them (for upgrades) to fix their defective products. So almost nobody complains to consumer protection agencies or their elected representatives about buggy software. Software is just like any other product. It can be regulated, and the manufacturers can comply with the regulations and still make a profit. Cars with defects are recalled and repaired for free. The same requirements can be applied to software. But software manufacturere certainly will not make any effort to make the products safer or longer-lasting, or accept responsiblity for their quality, unless and until they are forced to. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502103326.01ca5...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
Yeah - but, Ken - many times SW upgrades can be Free - and they were Done to fix a certain problem - as well as adding new capabilities. Where as - a Car FIX is NEVER Free - and is VERY Costly most times! Recalls for manufacturers' defects are free. A mechanic who deliberately puts a hole in your muffler with a claw hammer and tells you that you need a new one will be charged with fraud and go to jail. When was the last time anybody at MS went to jail for deliberately breaking a product in order to force people to buy a new one? Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502104636.01c8e...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
Yeah - but, Ken - many times SW upgrades can be Free - and they were Done to fix a certain problem - as well as adding new capabilities. Where as - a Car FIX is NEVER Free - and is VERY Costly most times! MS updates are free until they decide to stop offering them. However, many other very expensive software products do not come with free updates regardless of whether they include bug fixes. Try buying an expensive accounting package, for example, and then ask to get a bug fixed without having paid an arm and a leg for support. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502104901.01ca5...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
You wouldn't have any software companies because the market had too many barriers to enter and or endure. This is the standard whine of all business people. When the regulations come, they stay in business and continue to make a profit. It's completely bogus. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502105125.01cae...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
You wouldn't have any software companies because the market had too many barriers to enter and or endure. This is the standard whine of all business people. When the regulations come, they stay in business and continue to make a profit. It's completely bogus. What I said was your version would only allow a monopoly to survive. The items you are citing remind me of how the UAW has thousands of retired workers all of whom expect healthcare. That meant that each vehicle produced had 500+ fee for all of those foremer employees benefits. What happened to the auto manufacturing industry in the US was not inevitable. It was caused by people running those companies who were complacent and shortsighted. (In other words, the incompetence of specific individuals at very high levels, a recurring problem that no organization, public or private, ever handles well, and, in fact, rarely handles at all until after the organization is severely damaged.) They did not think they had to compete and they did not try. Then it was too late. It is not the fault of those UAW workers who negotiated contracts in good faith. Nor is it the fault of the government regulations regarding safety, quality, and longevity of vehicles. The software industry is no longer in its infancy. It is way past the point where it was new and fragile and needed special privileges to develop. It is a huge, mature industry and should be regulated as such. In general, European economies are far more regulated than the US and yet they have comparable standards of living and economic health. There is absolutely no question that we can regulate industry to a much greater extent to ensure quality, safety, and environmental protection (see throw-away electronic devices) than we do in this country without significant negative impact on the economy. It's just that right-wing corporate types control the government and won't permit it to happen. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502123042.01cc2...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
You wouldn't have any software companies because the market had too many barriers to enter and or endure. This is the standard whine of all business people. When the regulations come, they stay in business and continue to make a profit. It's completely bogus. I think that you are confusing your applications that are easy to apply an update to with all other software. Just because you think that it is correct to do it doesn't mean it is the proper thing to do. Do you have a vertical product or do you focus on a custom app one off type of work? Your statements sound like you do a custom app and never deal with them again. Instead of having a product with a lifecycle of X months that are a true upgrade over the former version. Correct in a business sense ethical in a moral sense. Business people will often do what is economically correct even when it is indisputably immoral. We can expect no better of them; that is why governments have to regulate them. My current product has been in use for about 5 years. I issue frequent updates that contain both minor feature improvements, and bug fixes, for free. Even when I eventually migrate it to a different language and/or back end, I will continue to fix defects in the older version, for free, as long as anyone uses it. That is the ethical thing to do. IMO, it is reasonable to ask the same of any manufacturer of any product. I am not in the for-profit world. Since I use either FOSS components or VFP (which has no licensing requirements for end-user applications), I will not even charge existing users for the completely new version when it becomes available, since it will not do anything significantly different from what the version they bought already does. I think it is unethical to try to collected added money when there is no real added value being provided. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502124027.01cc2...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
Correct in a business sense ethical in a moral sense. Interesting argument, but pretty clearly [OT]. Well..the argument about how to conduct a software business is marginally [NF], and I would submit that it is itself immoral to try to divorce the conduct of business from morality, but I take your point. I'll stop if they will. :) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502133747.01ca5...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
In general, European economies are far more regulated than the US and yet they have comparable standards of living and economic health. There is absolutely no question that we can regulate industry to a much greater extent to ensure quality, safety, and environmental protection (see throw-away electronic devices) than we do in this country without significant negative impact on the economy. It's just that right-wing corporate types control the government and won't permit it to happen. I thought the European markets were in shambles compared to the US? Stock markets/lending industry economy. The problems in Europe result from having pulled some local economies into the Euro before they were fully-functioning modern economies, not from the typical western European approach to regulation. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502134037.01cbb...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] The Tech Industry's Darkest Secret: It's All About Age
Some do, some don't. Those who leave the industry probably will not make a big noise about it. If we haven't heard about it, we've lived without them. Good riddance. Life is not about always having the next big thing. I think that you are confusing your applications that are easy to apply an update to with all other software. Just because you think that it is correct to do it doesn't mean it is the proper thing to do. Do you have a vertical product or do you focus on a custom app one off type of work? Your statements sound like you do a custom app and never deal with them again. Instead of having a product with a lifecycle of X months that are a true upgrade over the former version. Correct in a business sense ethical in a moral sense. Business people will often do what is economically correct even when it is indisputably immoral. We can expect no better of them; that is why governments have to regulate them. Sure we can expect it. Getting it is the issue. I would like to see some of them suffering for their immoral decisions. For me, expectation relates to predictability. If I cannot predict that something is likely to happen, then I cannot expect it. If we require it by law, then I can predict that it is likely to happen. My current product has been in use for about 5 years. I issue frequent updates that contain both minor feature improvements, and bug fixes, for free. Even when I eventually migrate it to a different language and/or back end, I will continue to fix defects in the older version, for free, as long as anyone uses it. That is the ethical thing to do. Nope. It may be *an* ethical thing to do. Another one would be making it clear that five years (say) after development ceases on a platform, there is no more support, but that licences continue in effect. Another one would be to give a special offer for people to change to the new version. I do not agree that there is ever a time limit after which a manufacturer's responsibility for defects that s/he he created ends. There is, IMO, a moral obligation to fix manufacturer's defects in products for which one has been paid until either all of them have been fixed or the product is no longer used. The other option would be to replace the product with one without defects, also for free. IMO, it is reasonable to ask the same of any manufacturer of any product. No, it is not. Technologies change, and some are no longer easily available. But I do think that many companies can do a lot better in this area. I am not in the for-profit world. Since I use either FOSS components or VFP (which has no licensing requirements for end-user applications), I will not even charge existing users for the completely new version when it becomes available, since it will not do anything significantly different from what the version they bought already does. I think it is unethical to try to collected added money when there is no real added value being provided. You have kept up with the versions and issues regarding them. This is a service for your customers who probably do not and may not know how to do so. Charging a reasonable amount is not out of line. Is your time totally worthless to you? No. But I am morally responsible for fixing manufacturer's defects for free because I took money for the product. I suppose I could return the money instead. :) I am not morally responsible to provide product enhancements for free but I choose to do so because I use them myself, and it costs me no more to distribute them to existing customers. If software wore out, I would agree that people should periodically have to pay for replacements that provide the same functionality. But software never wears out. It simply has the environmental rug pulled out from under it by other hardware and software manufacturers who are not adhering to their own moral responsibility to avoid forcing people to pay to replace things that don't actually wear out. My view on software, or any other product that does not wear out, is this: If you can't compete by actually offering new features that people really need or want, that is not my problem. You have no business trying to force people to pay you to keep what they already have. I detest software as a service as much as I detest the new business of music rental that has sprung up in recent years. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130502144013.01cb4...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author
[NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
They're being cagey about what's in it but it would be nice if they'd throw in the towel and return to a direct boot to a desktop with a Start button. http://www.zdnet.com/what-microsoft-is-now-saying-and-not-about-windows-blue-714960/ Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130508153120.01c92...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
For all the reports of Windows 8 being a failure, there are still more installations in use than OSX. So it's all relative. I suspect this release will see some sort of ability to work with a more traditional desktop. That would be good as by all reports it's faster and more stable even than Windows 7. In use or purchased and discarded? MS had a downgrade program where you could buy a Vista license and get XP. I did a lot of those before Win 7 came out. I'm sure MS reported them all as Vista adoptions. My white-box vendor can still sell me an ordinary Win 7 license, and even if it gets to the point of having to buy a downgrade from Windows 8 to get 7, I'll probably do that, at least until the issue of whether MS is going to make 8 usable for a typical business office multi-tasking environment gets cleared up. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130508202929.01f8e...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
Maybe the About Turn is they decided to get out of the OS business!!! :-) Well, one could only hope... Yeah..but then what can I run MS Office on? Can't do Apple; wy too expensive. I don't like the later versions of MS Office, but the reality is that .docx and xlsx are now the defacto standard, and although Open Office can open those documents, it doesn't handle formatting properly for anything more than the simplest examples, and it won't save in those formats. I live in a world where I'm contractually obligated to consume and produce .docx and .xlsx files daily in order to communicate with other organizations. If it was a different world, I'd have migrated most of our people to Linux years ago. If anybody in the open source world wants to really get serious about .docx/.xlsx interoperability, I'm waiting with open arms. I know you're kidding. :) Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130508203622.02058...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
There was something on BBC news that Microsoft has done an about turn. No details though Yeah, there is word that early versions have leaked and they have these capabilities. But MS is refusing to say anything about it right now. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130508204123.02058...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
I've installed Stardock's Start8 and ModernMix, which allow me to ignore the Modern part completely. At that point, it's quite usable. I've looked at the websites for both of those. It looks like you get a Start button, and the ability to run Metro apps in windows instead of full-screen, but it doesn't appear that it lets you boot to the desktop. I have lots of users here who regularly multi-task: They have a POP email client, web browser, Word, Excel and, sometimes, a database, accounting, billing or payroll program all open at the same time. I can see that ModernMix would make this easier if we have to upgrade software to a Metro-style app in the future. There's no way this could work if everything has to run full-screen. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130508211759.020fd...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
ModernMix makes it possible to run Metro apps in any of three ways: 1) Full-screen on the Metro screen, as designed. 2) A full-screen window on the Desktop, with min max buttons. 3) A half-screen window on the Desktop, resizable. Once running, you can switch between them as you wish. You can also create a shortcut on the desktop, so you don't have to go to Modern to start them. It works just fine, with one huge exception: there's really very little that's useful in the 'Modern' apps - they're simplified to fit on phones and small tablets. They're good for looking at pictures, starting music, and other kinds of things that kids do. Yes, that's what I've heard. I was kind of looking forward (if that's the right expression; maybe dreading would be better) to the day when everything has to be done in the Modern app style. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130508223448.01f29...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
The last sentence of that post is profoundly discouraging: Blue advances the Windows 8 vision, said Reller. It's all about mobile, touch, apps, the new dev platform and a highly personalized personal experience. It is all about pushing the marketing vision and not really saying anything of consequence while implying that we are. Too many companies have marketing departments seemingly made out of anti-matter. http://www.hhgproject.org/entries/siriuscyberneticscorp.html Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130509202724.01ad2...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
There was something on BBC news that Microsoft has done an about turn. No details though Yeah, there is word that early versions have leaked and they have these capabilities. But MS is refusing to say anything about it right now. I would be willing to cut Microsoft some slack if they were honest about it. Imagine: We screwed up. We still think Modern is useful, but since many people do not, we are going to give them back the UI they like. We will continue with Modern, but we are not going to drop the earlier and loved UI. I just made an apology this morning for something that I did that was, in retrospect, rather stupid. I felt good afterwards. I did not feel diminished. I feel very empowered as a result. There ya go, Gene--perpetuating the stereotypes about Canadians again. gdr Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130509202901.01a2f...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
I have lots of users here who regularly multi-task: They have a POP email client, web browser, Word, Excel and, sometimes, a database, accounting, billing or payroll program all open at the same time. I can see that ModernMix would make this easier if we have to upgrade software to a Metro-style app in the future. There's no way this could work if everything has to run full-screen. When do I not multitask? My main system (XP) usually has open a command window, a notes program, Agent (for USENET), Eudora (for E-mail), and Firefox. ATM, I also have Word and VFP open. Me too. These people I'm talking about are fiends about it... at any given moment they have all these windows open, and at least one desk drawer and one file cabinet drawer open, and a stack of file folders on their desk, and they're cutting and pasting between ALL of them! Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130509203005.01a89...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Japanese Ad for Windows 8
This is a 1-minute YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=eHhl78ximng I so wanna say something about that Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130509204345.01a30...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
Re: [NF] Japanese Ad for Windows 8
This is a 1-minute YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embeddedv=eHhl78ximng Okay. I think out of all the different things I could say about this, I like this one the best: People who prefer Windows 8 don't know their a$$ from a ping-pong paddle. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130510121718.01cab...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
RE: [NF] MS to Release Windows 8.1
All joking aside, a sincere apology can clear the air wonderfully. In my case, it literally* improved my eyesight. * Yes, literally. It actually happened. GuiltStressHypertensionVision problems, eh? Good for you! Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org ___ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/5.2.1.1.1.20130510135705.01caf...@pop-server.stny.rr.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
