Tag: Microsoft

Losing my edge?

So I haven’t really been actively involved in the Microsoft/Windows development crowd in years (ever?). I have gone spelunking through the KB and the MSDN site on occasion and come back scarred and generally unhelped. It’s kind of a running gag with some folks in my circle that the difference between Linux and Microsoft forums is that one is a MMORPG with lots of flaming and camping and the other is more of a FPS set in a post-apocalyptic world with you as the sole living survivor.

But because I’m actually interested in using the Microsoft Edge browser and because I am becoming quite attached to my Surface 3, I’ve joined up with the Windows Insider program. I trade my skills as a beta tester and bug writer for early access to Windows 10 and related ecosystem updates. Maybe because Microsoft is actually engaging in proselytizing instead of assimilation or maybe because it’s comprised mostly of devs feeling out the work of other devs, the community forum is a rather enjoyable place to be.

Witness threads like this one. In a Linux distro forum reading a thread that started off with a generic out-loud bellyaching would require flame retardant long johns. But in the Insider community we see a well-positioned Insider (read: guessing a Microsoft employee or contractor) walk someone off a ledge and then engage in a fruitful dialog resulting in a serviceable solution for the OP.

I don’t know that this sort of bonhomie survives the masses–if it ever gets opened to them–but for the time being this is a help forum that is actually quite helpful. I’m also jonesing for updates because they’re near to having the browser plugin framework together…and the WWW without ad blocking is seriously painful.

Death by fire

Yet another reason for hating on Microsoft: NTLM. Specifically, that some folks insist on running SOAP services protected by NTLM. More particularly, SOAP services that are intended to be consumed by platforms other than Windows. And especially that no cross-platform scripting or programming language has native support for NTLM. With the coup de grace being that all of this sits on the corporate LAN–ostensibly shielded from those who would attack it by the full force of $COMPANY’s firewall.

So do I hate Microsoft or just the people who want to impose Microsoftian $FOO on an internal, polycultural ecosystem? Given that it is Monday and that the office is running at half capacity I’ll be generous and hate them both with equal fervor.

Oh, and by the way: Microsoft officially no longer supports NTLM because it is easily spoofed. So there’s that too.

Support site hell

  1. Go to Microsoft’s support page regarding VisualStudio 2013 Update 3
  2. Look for a link to download VisualStudio 2013 Update 3
  3. In lieu of finding said link, find a link “Download the latest Visual Studio 2013 update package now”
  4. Click that link
  5. Find yourself looking at the download page for VisualStudio 2013 Update 4
  6. Pray to the higher power of one’s choice that someone else managed to grab Update 3 and stash it somewhere
  7. Rejoice bemusedly when that proves to be the case
  8. Continue on with the rabbiting away in the Cube Farm unphased because this obviates crawling through Microsoft’s support site’s labyrinth of automated page generation hell with URLs that are impossible to game. This is the best possible outcome one can expect and is the harbinger of a good day.

Finally

Ding dong the witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead!

Windows Aero’s Shake “feature” [1] has to be the single most annoying GUI behavior I’ve ever run across. In fact it took more than a year to figure out why, sometimes, my desktop would immediately minimize every window except for one. Eventually I got fed up enough to employ DuckDuckGo [2] to find an explanation.

Turns out my usage habits have run headlong into Microsoft’s everything is a mobile app strategy. While on a phone a shake might be a useful gesture, it sucks for people like my when ported to the desktop. I have a habit of grabbing the chrome of the window I’m actively reading from. I also like to highlight text as I read it. All of this distracted clicking and dragging behavior while intently reading something gets interpreted by Aero as a desire to minimize every other freaking window on my desktop.

And for someone who has a great many windows open and positionally sorted, this goes beyond a rude interruption.

So I spent a few minutes after that looking for a way to disable this behavior via personal settings or the control panel or any other number of ways in which Microsoft scatters configuration across the operating system. All to no avail.

Today I did a bit more DuckDuckGoing [3] and discovered a registry entry that stops this insanity [4]. On the one hand–hooray! On the other, why is it that difficult to turn off a terribly unwelcome and intrusive behavior?

So endeth today’s sermon as to why Microsoft sucketh…in my humble opinion.

For what it’s worth, Apple isn’t any great shakes in this arena either.

[1] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/shake
[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+does+every+window+except+the+active+one+minimize
[3] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how%20to%20disable%20windows%20aero%20shake
[4] http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/disable-aero-shake-in-windows-7/

Automation

Trying to automate all the crap we have to do since corporate policy doesn’t allow static service account/password combos any longer. Hey, no problem, we could use RSA keys. Except, hey, Windows doesn’t do that. So now we’re spending $FOO on some stupid utility to manage, in bulk, Windows service account logons. And $FOO is cheaper than figuring all of that out on our own. Oh, and for some reason one of the bog standard VMs we’re issued isn’t responding to RPC even though the other fifty or so do.

Who knows why? It must be a party!

Oh hai! What about all of the *nix boxes that need their sandbox tokens refreshed? Cool, we could use SSH from the same Windows box to run commands as a user remotely. Of course, Microsoft forgot to roll in an SSH client into their operating system. Oops!

“No problem, use PuTTY,” they say. And then you figure out that PuTTY is an utter dick about handling RSA key files. No way! Who would have ever thought doing something completely routine on any other operating system would be such a turdgargle when it comes to Microsoft?

How to solve? Install a bash client on the Windows box and then just do stuff right. Yet another afternoon lost to the joys of Microsoft. When can my employer start billing Redmond for my time?

Major upgrades on instance transforms

Holy crap. The degree of dislike I have for Windows Installer service is already kind of pegged. An object lesson in overengineering for very little gain. Well, it could work awesomely if it wasn’t a backwater in Microsoftland and if the Microsoft supported authoring framework wasn’t an “open source” initiative that is completely understaffed.

Then there is the issue of instance transforms. Holy mother of god, these make vanilla installers look as attractive as your first crush. This is the way to kludge together support for upgrade installs of transformed installations that don’t unilaterally overwrite every other transformed installation on the target machine.

So—guess what I’ve been working on all day.

More cmd.exe help

So you’re in cmd.exe and you type ‘ls‘ expecting to get a directory listing. Instead cmd.exe gives you the finger. You give cmd.exe the finger back. Just then your boss walks by and sees you flipping off company property. Next thing you’re in her office having a discussion on appropriate workplace behavior. Having had enough of ‘The Man’ you flip off your boss.

Now you’re sitting at the bus stop waiting for the bus that will take about 90 minutes to get you home. Just about 7 minutes faster than if you walked. But it’s cold outside. No job, no car, no prospects. Life sucks. And then you learn that you could have been using DOSKEY to set up persistent aliases in cmd.exe.

Just one simple DOSKEY ls=dir later and it doesn’t matter which platform you’re on. Assuming you already set aliases in .bashrc for all of your bad cmd.exe habits that is.

Chin up, young squire! Now when you’re fired from your next job, at least it won’t be on cmd.exe’s account. You can thank me later.