After rewriting VMBT to use Internet Explorer for its chat-view, I’ve discovered a few snags. The component is loaded in to the .NET via COM, and all content is added through the DOM. Using a web browser for this view opened a lot of possibilities. The most important one is JavaScript. With the JavaScript we also have access to methods exposed from .NET, which mean I can interact with the application in the “web site”. To make things a bit more simple, I loaded the jQuery framework to my component. This is when the trouble was starting.
For some reason IE couldn’t read the jquery.js-file from “file://c:\blabla\installationpath\data\jquery.js” unless the file was copied there and not “installed” by the installation software (Nullsoft Install System). At first I thought it might be due to some corruption, but after seeing the file was identical to the source file I understood it had to be an access problem. However, I was unable to verify this with the ACL-management provided by Windows, there were no differences between a copy that was working and one that wasn’t. It’s a really stupid problem, and I’ve still no solutions for it.
So to be able to debug this a bit further, I decided to throw in the latest Internet Explorer (8) with a bunch of updates etc. This failed miserably since now the whole problem disappeared altogether.
I can’t find any information about this problem, the IE-component doesn’t say anything when it can’t open files and it probably requires great, and unheard of, skills of managing Windows.
My best solution right now is to upgrade to the latest Internet Explorer if you haven’t already done so. (There isn’t really any good reason in this world to either USE the browser or for you to NOT upgrade it. So go upgrade it, and use Firefox instead :))
Finally the fact that the “cryptography” used in Brønnøysundregistrene has been broken has been made public. Digi.no has an article about it in Norwegian. The first time I came across this “cryptography” was a couple of years ago. Strange no-one else talked about it before now.
Anyway, the data being obfuscated is the national identity numbers for owners and contact persons in companies. There is no reason for that data being available, it has no use and is most likely a technical mishap :-)
UPDATE: I just got a call from some people at Brønnøysundregistrene, they asked me to remove this disclosure paragraph. So well, it’s gone. Sorry.
We came across this obfuscation when we were porting the database from Brønnøysund to another database system (MS Access doesn’t really scale, contrary to common belief..). Most fields were obfuscated, and the software for reading the database is useless :-)
They should have used Blowfish instead. That would at least take one Morris O’Brian to crack! Because Bruce Schneier has a backdoor in the encryption algorithm!
Finally I can try out the 3D-plugin for Sesam Maps. This is actually pretty cool. Got lots of nice pictures from Kristiansand too. View the town from different angles.rn
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rnrnVisit Sesam! (I can’t link anything because Safari 4 messes with some z-ordering in Wordpress so the link-dialog appears below the shadow or something.. stupid webbrowser.. also, the plugin doesn’t work anymore so I can’t really link something useful anyway :)
I’m currently writing a new application for the iPhone and iPod. The initial version will be norwegian-only, but I’ll probably put out an english international version later on. I need to see if the concept is allright and useful. Hopefully it will be available at the AppStore at low cost soon!
Also, I’ve got a new job and there’s lots of new things to be done.
Sesam has released a new service, copying some of the functionality of Google Street View. Only done in a really bad way, but hey, that’s allowed, it’s called beta.
The service works, kinda, got some flash-errors every now and then, don’t know why, don’t care.
Some other interesting thing, they picture the car too:
Okay, that’s probably not true, it will never be finished :-)
Anyway, I’ve done some minor changes to the CSS of my webbased DNS-admin tool for PowerDNS, makes it a little more presentable.
Tonight I’m working on some more features, like templates for adding generic records to zones etc., and I’m doing a few more GUI-changes. Hopefully it’s getting close to a public release, that would be pretty cool.
The tool itself is written in Perl using the Catalyst MVC-framework.
Slave in the IT-industry. Absorbed by technology, driven by innovations.