Bet you never knew ...

Did you know you can enter URL's directly in the common dialog boxes in Windows?

When you open a file with any application that supports the standard "Common Dialog" interface in Windows (the one that shows your files in a miniaturized explorer-like view), you can copy and paste a URL. Want to try it? Right click on the pretty background picture of this blog, copy its location, and open it as a file using Microsoft Paint.

Go ahead, give it a try!

If you're as amazed as I was when I first tried it (completely by accident, mind you), just keep in mind that you're not actually opening the file directly from its location. What's happening is, the integrated Internet Explorer component of Windows is fetching the file for you, and storing it in a temporary location. When it finishes downloading, it then passes that temporary file to the program requesting you to choose the file. So if you modify it, of course you'll need to save it where you can find it. But - still - that's less work that you have to do!

An update has been released for this blog. Please click here to view it.

OMG! Yes, I got around to an update.

Today's topic? Mandatory software updates!

Nothing grates my nerves more than mandatory or automatic software updates. They consume system as well as network resources, and often for no other reason than a programmer forgot a line of code in some silly place.

Some software is better by actually "notifying" you of updates instead of nagging you or just outright performing the update, but it's really not a whole lot better in the long and short of things, it's still annoying as hell and I want to update on MY terms and MY schedule.

One big concern many of these software developers seem not to care for is the fact that many people, even today, are still on metered connections. Consuming network resources, no matter the cause, is a big deal. And they do so without asking you if it's okay to do so, first. And even if they do, if you say no, they'll nag you endlessly about it.

Okay, okay, yes, there are viable reasons to update software. Security is a big concern - I get that. I don't like some script kiddie on the other side of the world using my computer to hack into or shut down the FBI. Not cool, yo? Last thing I need is the super police busting down my door because I forgot to update Windows.

But on the other side of that, updates often introduce new vulnerabilities, themselves, and sometimes the trade-off is not much of a trade-off. That, added to the cost of system and network resources, makes automatic updates a pretty poor case, at best. That, and I come from an age when software updates came in floppy disk form, and were something you were actually excited about, rather than nagged about.

You know what would be neatest? When I stop using my computer, I have the option to update all my software at once, go to sleep and forget about it - it does all the restarting it needs to automatically - even better would be is if it starts up the programs I was using before it did that. It updates on my terms, my schedule, and caters to my own needs, and not to the needs of some software developer who forgot that my own time and resources can so often be constrained.