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A fun fact is that the thumbprint text box in the certificate viewer in Windows starts with an invisible character. So if you have cert and just want to copy p

A fun fact is that the thumbprint text box in the certificate viewer in Windows starts with an invisible character. So if you have cert and just want to copy paste the thunbprint to some file or application which needs to load it, then copying the full thumbprint probably won't work. When I said fun I meant frustrating.

hinkley 9y ago
At one job I had to declare a moratorium on sending certain bits of information through Outlook because the number of people who needed help cutting and pasting it correctly was becoming a problem. Everything went into the wiki or config files that were checked in or used as attachments. And don’t get me started on Microsoft and their fucking smart quotes...
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  The "smart" in "smart quotes" mean that they hurt, not that they're intelligent.
twodave 9y ago
This. I used to maintain a software project that consisted of a few inter-communicating services on clients' windows machines (not just servers, but that would have been optimal). The most difficult part of making a sale was getting the implementation guys to correctly install these components, issue a self-signed key from the machine's local CA, and bind it to the local dns/ssl port. Not to mention most people don't even really understand how/why certificates work, so if they ran into the tiniest snag it was going to completely block progress until a developer could take a look. Barf. Working with certificates on Windows in general is error-prone and difficult to automate (this coming from someone who spent more than a decade developing in .NET).
shitloadofbooks 9y ago
I hate this so fucking much.
adzm 9y ago
I've dealt with zero width characters on Windows causing problems in a variety of situations; all appear to have originated by copying something from SharePoint or Lync / Skype4business. It was included in a SQL query, causing it to fail to parse. Another time, one ended up somehow getting into a database field which then created filesystem paths containing the character, which was a much trickier one to figure out.
- bmaupin 9y ago
  At one of my jobs we used SharePoint for documentation and I would constantly have issues with it inserting zero width characters, particularly when pasting into a terminal. I finally got tired of it and wrote a small Chrome plugin that copies text without those characters.

hinkley 9y ago

At one job I had to declare a moratorium on sending certain bits of information through Outlook because the number of people who needed help cutting and pasting it correctly was becoming a problem. Everything went into the wiki or config files that were checked in or used as attachments. And don’t get me started on Microsoft and their fucking smart quotes...

DonHopkins 9y ago
The "smart" in "smart quotes" mean that they hurt, not that they're intelligent.

twodave 9y ago

This. I used to maintain a software project that consisted of a few inter-communicating services on clients' windows machines (not just servers, but that would have been optimal). The most difficult part of making a sale was getting the implementation guys to correctly install these components, issue a self-signed key from the machine's local CA, and bind it to the local dns/ssl port. Not to mention most people don't even really understand how/why certificates work, so if they ran into the tiniest snag it was going to completely block progress until a developer could take a look. Barf. Working with certificates on Windows in general is error-prone and difficult to automate (this coming from someone who spent more than a decade developing in .NET).

shitloadofbooks 9y ago

I hate this so fucking much.

adzm 9y ago

I've dealt with zero width characters on Windows causing problems in a variety of situations; all appear to have originated by copying something from SharePoint or Lync / Skype4business. It was included in a SQL query, causing it to fail to parse. Another time, one ended up somehow getting into a database field which then created filesystem paths containing the character, which was a much trickier one to figure out.

bmaupin 9y ago
At one of my jobs we used SharePoint for documentation and I would constantly have issues with it inserting zero width characters, particularly when pasting into a terminal. I finally got tired of it and wrote a small Chrome plugin that copies text without those characters.