Case and point. I got a call from another office because somebody’s printer is not working. I travel to that office, and ultimately just delete and reinstall the printer. Open up Word, insert some test garbage, and print. Done.

I come to work the next day and have a call in that the printer is not working. Turns out that it is not working for some particular program that (unbeknownst to me) needs a particular batch file/hack to run when Windows boots so that it can print. (Didn’t need the hack when we were on Windows 98.) Oh, yeah, I made a small change to the printer name when I reinstalled it. We just need to change the printer name in the one-line batch file…

…which requires me to travel to that office again. Unless I can do it via remote. Windows XP has this thing called “Remote Assistance”. I can have the person on that computer send me a request, and I can then just click on a link and run her computer remotely and fix the file. Neat, huh?

Nope. The program works by sending the request file via email, and she gets an error saying that Outlook Express is not set up. She doesn’t use Outlook Express, she uses Outlook. I instruct her to go to Control Panel and change the default email program to Microsoft Outlook. She does so and tries the request again. Same error. I send her back to Control Panel, and the default has reverted to Outlook Express. What the Hell???

Some Google searching turns up the little tidbit that you cannot change your default email program unless you are an administrator, as it is a system-wide setting. Huh? So apparently in Windows XP, two different users with two different accounts on one computer can’t use different email programs? What kind of drunken half-wit prick thought that was a good idea? (I’m looking at you, Bill.) Naturally, Windows does allow you to change the setting, but then silently reverts it the moment your back is turned (i.e. you close the settings window). This is one of the worst kinds of software failures — when a program changes things silently. Microsoft programs do this all the time — I think it must be in the style manual:

Help the user by constantly making assumptions about what they really meant to do, and then silently change what they actually did to what the software assumes they meant. Remember, people are stupid and software is smart.

I realize that the remote request likely won’t work anyway because I’ll be remote-controlling a non-admin login. Huh.

I call the person at that office who has admin access. He’s not a techie, but I should be able to talk him through it. I don’t like doing this because he’s a busy man (runs that office), but if three minutes of his time can save me an hour of travel, that’s a win. I get him to log on as admin. He goes to the batch file and makes the change. Just to double-check we did it right I ask him to go into Printer settings and double-check what I named the printer when I reinstalled it last night. Error. Sorry, administrator does not have access to the printer because it can not be found.

Fuck it. Looks like I’m traveling. If I thought I could get away with it I would stop at an Apple store on the way and buy a Mini to replace this piece of shit. Unfortunately we have one critical app that is running on… wait for it… DOS. Don’t even get me started.

(Note: Post title from this.)

[Insta-update -- As I'm writing this, the user called me to say that she could print again. It appears that the fix worked despite the printer being "lost". Once again -- What the Sam Hill is going on with this broken-ass software?]

[Update: Alternate Title: "There's a Hole in the Bucket. Just Fucket."]

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From that link:

ZFS is not an incremental improvement to existing technology; it is a fundamentally new approach to data management. We’ve blown away 20 years of obsolete assumptions, [and] eliminated complexity at the source[...].

ZFS presents a pooled storage model that completely eliminates the concept of volumes and the associated problems of partitions, provisioning, wasted bandwidth and stranded storage. Thousands of filesystems can draw from a common storage pool, each one consuming only as much space as it actually needs. The combined I/O bandwidth of all devices in the pool is available to all filesystems at all times.

All operations are copy-on-write transactions, so the on-disk state is always valid. There is no need to fsck(1M) a ZFS filesystem, ever. Every block is checksummed to prevent silent data corruption, and the data is self-healing in replicated (mirrored or RAID) configurations. If one copy is damaged, ZFS will detect it and use another copy to repair it.

So… it’s self-healing and eliminates the idea of volumes, partitions, and the like. Is everything going to work like one giant RAID or something?

More importantly: to my knowledge Windows does not run on ZFS. What is this going to do to all those people who want to run Windows on their Macs? Whither Boot Camp?

The filesystem sounds like it has a lot of good things going for it, but I’m puzzled by some of its claims, and curious about the ramifications thereof. I can’t imagine that Apple would blow away a Mac’s ability to run Windows, as that seems to be a growing selling point, but Steve is sometimes known to do his users some short term damage in his relentless quest for long-term advancement.

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Interesting reading, and it makes me wonder just what the minds in Redmond are thinking. Still trying to control the world I guess. *sigh*

I especially like this bit:

“[O]ne important point that must be kept in mind when reading this document is that in order to work, Vista’s content protection must be able to violate the laws of physics, something that’s unlikely to happen no matter how much the content industry wishes it were possible.”

Microsoft got its lock on operating systems because they were there in the beginning (or close enough) that they were able to sink in their hooks from the start. The foolish thing they’re trying (over and over) to do now is to retroactively get a lock on media forms that have existed for years. Consumers do not respond well to draconian measures, and there will most certainly be a backlash if they insist with going forward with this.

The security holes weren’t damaging enough. Now they’re going to deliberately cripple Windows computers… which will just throw more and more angry former Windows users into the waiting arms of Apple.

Watta buncha maroons.

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Check out their Blue Screen of Death Screensaver.

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