Smith's Statements on Stuff

Setting up an 8.0.2 messaging pilot and RSS feeds weren't working - when you tried to add on you get a "server returned error :0" style message.
The customer has a web proxy so added the FQDN of the proxy server to the location document (basic tab > click the beanie hat!), still didn't work.
Sulked a bit - read lots of forum entries and technotes that said use FQDN, felt rebellious, changed the FQDN to IP Address of the proxy and hey presto - we have RSS feeds! (And yes, the machine could resolve and ping the proxy's FQDN!).

Why can't the proxy settings be detected from the O/S? I don't have to use proxy settings in the embedded browser to view web pages, is it too much to ask for some consistency?

Grrrr.