a7p’s

I solved my TAPI-problem using C#s excellent COM binding – BUT my solution does not work reliable. Recently I discovered this knowledge article - M$ recomends against using TAPI from managed code, which made me searching for another solution to invoke calls from a python script. TAPI handling is really really ugly if you do not want to dive into Windows COM-programming and using the older C-interface also is the opposit of fun.

TAPI SUCKS!

… and once again the Deutsche Post managed it to really annoy me. Their online-stamp-system uses PDFs with embedded JavaScript .. you have to click away about 5 warning messages, about remote connections, printing etc and you can print it only ONCE… of course you can print test pages from their PDF-JS-”Application” … I just hate it - it’s so stupid.

I just spend about an hour to print some stamps which I bought from the “Deutsche Post”.

• my PDF-Reader (evince) does not execute JavaScript (which I appreciate very much - it’s a f**king PDF-displayer, not a turing machine)
• the Deutsche Post java-webapplet successfully rebootet my computer twice and crashed my X-Server twice too. The problem only occurs when compiz is used - metacity runs flawless.
• After all this trouble suddenly I was not able to print one of my stamps, since it was “already printed” as the Acrobate Reader (but only the windows version - the linux version did not get that far) and the web-applet claimed. This was fixed in 10 secs by an online-chat-support-guy (I was really supprised).

After all this trouble something came two my mind: Why the hack do they all this to try to keep me from printing some sheet of paper twice? If this is, what their online-stamp-system is secured by, they’ve probably did not realize, how a computer works (these days) - we are not (yet?) living in a TCPA-World.

… my mother would be able to hack their system by simply using a copying machine.