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As MS achieves wonderfulness by adding rounded icons and advertisements, one of their most used tools - windows explorer - continues to be trash. It's like it's just ignored with all the updates. One of my favorite "poorly implemented" features is search. Yes, I know there are better tools out there. So, I'm searching my dev drive for a particular file.... search is zipping along and displays file.zip. While the search is still running, I right mouse click on the file and select "open file location".
And the search aborts - going to that file. Why not launch another WE and keep the search going? NAh.
Fire up a search and change the sort order after completion - re-search.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I have just received a new craft knife from Amazon. As expected, they needed to verify my age as it is an age-restricted item in the UK.
My wife got to the delivery driver first - he asked her what her birth year was and then asked her to confirm her age was x - it isn't, it is x-1.
Then he tried me - he asked me what my birth year was and then asked me to confirm my age was y - it isn't, it is y-1.
I guess that their hand-held devices calculate age = this_year - birth_year.
Surely, every student learning computing is told that this only works correctly on 31st December and for the rest of the year it is just luck if it guesses correctly. At this time of year, it is wrong for 96.2% of the population. A company the size of Amazon that owns its own cloud platforms should have sufficient skilled staff not to allow such a simple Computing 101 error through their vigorous testing procedures.
I might mention this if I get a 'Rate the quality of your experience with the delivery of this item' request.
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Don't blame the driver - he's just following the on-screen instructions. Blame the idiot who wrote the app he's forced to use. 
(Of course, if he couldn't see the problem with the question and just tick "yes", that's another story...)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Richard Deeming wrote: Don't blame the driver
I didn't! He accepted that we were both over 18 (min age required for buying a knife) as the calculated (albeit wrong) ages were much greater than 18 and than was the only verification that he needed. The problem would have been if we were 17 year olds as the calculation would have erroneously said we could legally accept the knife as it said we were 18.Richard Deeming wrote: (Of course, if he couldn't see the problem with the question and just tick "yes", that's another story...)
I didn't even attempt to try to explain why the answer was wrong - delivery drivers have very tight schedules that do not include timeouts for lessons in basic algorithms. However, if Amazon send me a request to write a review, I will include this flaw and that there is the potential for a legal transgression in the review.
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And this is why we write unit tests...
Jeremy Falcon
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yes, I've heard the UK has a knife control problem 
But, just how big was the knife? You can die from injuries from a sharp pen knife. Just curious.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Today, a tester reported that they were unable to launch a couple of newer executables from one of our desktop apps. By 'unable to launch' I mean that instead of the called executable starting, it was opening a web browser stating that it couldn't find the file. (also some wonderful advice about possible mispelling and refresh) Every other executable in the menu worked correctly. 
My first thought was, 'silly tester, it works on my machine!' 
My next thought was, security/av interference? Nope, they start on a double-click. It's only a problem when started as a process.
So, two exe's that were failing to launch have one thing in common...the first part of the name which happens to be 'Mosaic'.
I changed the first letter in the filename, adjusted the calling app accordingly and sure enough, it worked.  
This just happened, so I'm still trying to figure out what exactly is going on. My guess is that 'Mosaic' in the filename is triggering a browser add-on to fire. I have customers using one of these 'modules' (the other is new) and have not had issues like this, though I don't know for sure if they were using the same OS environment as my tester. (Win11 w/latest patches) I don't have a Win11 system around (still on Win10) so I can't verify if this is a new behavior by design. Googling on the key terms isn't yielding anything useful. 
I'm already considering what it will take to change a filename that's been in production for a few years and installed on at least a dozen customer systems. Sure, I've got a process for it, but it's not fun. 
Edit: I've just had the same behaviour confirmed on another colleague's Win11 system. 'They hate cans!' (or just files starting with the letters mosaic! Damnit! 
Edit 2: After hands-on experimentation on my wife's Win11 laptop, I can confirm that there is an issue using ShellExecute to launch an executable with a filename starting with 'mosaic'. Doing so incorrectly starts a web browser with the message 'Hmmm, I can't find that file...Typo?'. It only happens on Win11 which is just now starting to be adopted by my users. Definitely weird.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
modified 3-Jan-23 9:43am.
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Depending on how the image for the new process is identified, it could depend on the CWD and $PATH.
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trønderen wrote: Depending on how the image for the new process is identified, it could depend on the CWD and $PATH.
It should be identified as a win32 executable with a handful of parameters added by the launcher which is calling with the full path and filename.
I've only been able to reproduce the issue on Win11. Changing the filename resolves the issue. I'm waiting for my wife to bring home her Win11 laptop so I can experiment with the issue more.
Again, the issue as I currently see it: with Win11 launching an executable as a process is doing something weird (starting a web browser) when the file name starts with 'Mosaic'. FWIW, the working directory is specified in the command and the executable is signed.
I could believe that some text in a filename might trigger an a/v action, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The file is where it's supposed to be, and runs fine manually. I'll know more later when I get my hands on a Win11 system and can test more thoroughly. I hate to change the filename as it accurately describes the product it interfaces with and what it does. 
I absolutely hate problems like this...no logical reason why changing the filename resolves the issue.
Thanks for the suggestions and reply!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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kmoorevs wrote: So, two exe's that were failing to launch have one thing in common...the first part of the name which happens to be 'Mosaic'. 
Theere's a list of exceptions in Windows for some executables; famously some sim that would not work in W95.
..but no. Just naming it won't trigger that.
kmoorevs wrote: I'm already considering what it will take to change a filename that's been in production for a few years and installed on at least a dozen customer systems
To a developer, that costs no time.
If it is that expensive to you, then hire a developer. Let me say that again; you're not fit for your position by your own words.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: To a developer, that costs no time.
If it is that expensive to you, then hire a developer. Let me say that again; you're not fit for your position by your own words.
Modifying the program is simple. Distributing it (and ensuring that everyone installed the fix) is less so, especially if no provision for online updates was built into the program.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: Modifying the program is simple. Distributing it (and ensuring that everyone installed the fix) is less so, especially if no provision for online updates was built into the program.
You don't play Warcraft?
If the client isn't up to date, you can't log in. It starts updating as soon as there's a connection, and only presents a login screen if it is up to date.
I disabled auto-updating on Windows ofcourse, but you can't do that with Warcraft. The game is more secure than the platform I'm running it on.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Your final comment looks pretty spiteful. Is there a need for your nastiness?
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Harsh, yes. No spite.
haughtonomous wrote: Is there a need for your nastiness?
Ofcourse there's no need for it.
..and there's no "off" switch either. I'm not going to explain the concept of a "launcher" executable. It's not like we're distributing software on floppy's.
Happy new year BTW.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: you're not fit for your position by your own words.
That was not fair.
Go install World of Warcraft. It will show you an easy fix.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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First, thank you for your constructive input! I really appreciate it! 
Eddy Vluggen wrote: ..but no. Just naming it won't trigger that.
and yet, it does...consistently. Changing the filename changes the behavior.
Second, regarding changing a filename, I never said it was expensive however to a developer (me) it does cost time and requires some planning to make it a seamless transition for my customers.
Third, your unfounded insult means nothing to me. My colleagues and paying clients would disagree with you.
Fourth, I might be hiring for a jr. position. Are you available?
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Long, long ago, a Microsoft operating system only looked at, I think, the first 8 characters of the filename to find a file. But that was long, long ago.
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Good reference to The Jerk!
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I thought someone might get it! Loved that movie! Good catch!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Huh! Horror story.
Paul Sanders.
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal.
Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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What is the full filename? I suspect it's something like mosaic:...
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You suspect correctly. They were both Mosaic... Simply adding a couple of letters in front fixes the issue. I can't explain it.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Could it be that Windows is looking for the name of the executable for reasons of competing browsers? You start the Mosaic browser and it intercepts that launch and shows you the "wonderful world" of IE/Edge.
Granted, Mosaic is about as old as the dirt the internet is made of, so...
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I suspect it's an app execution alias. These are used in Windows 10 and 11. For example, on Win 11, shell-executing "python" will launch the windows store on a default install.
These can be turned off in Apps & Features on the target machine.
Did you try shell executing the full path to the executable (rather than just the filename)?
Gee
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