Open-source/FOSS Tech ping...
Updates on one laptop took a couple of hours on Sunday. Updates on another blocked me from connecting at work - I finally got in with a temporary account. At least this old Win7 machine runs fine. Can’t say as much for the Win10 laptops.
” America’s controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency”
Controversial: a word meaning “people who hate America also hate this.”
I just went through another Microsoft experience this morning. Seems these things were rare when I first started in IT, but today take up just about all my time.
A staff member was having some issues with Outlook send-as permissions that I was unable to resolve. One of the solutions was to recreate the Outlook profile.
So, before I did her machine, I figured I’d do mine.
Turns out, I can’t create a new profile on my machine to duplicate my old one. There are two parts to this. Part 1 is Microsoft removed the ability to manually add an Exchange server profile in Outlook 2016. You can add every other type manually, except Exchange. You must use the Exchange autoconfigure feature to create the profile.
OK. Fine. So something I’ve done routinely for going on 25 years is now irrelevant because someone at Microsoft decided it should be that way.
But there’s a part 2. When Microsoft goes to check your email address that it gets from AD (or one that you put in) to get the autoconfig info, it checks O365 first, before it looks for a local server. And guess what. If you use your work email to create a Microsoft account, like to access VLSC for your corporate licensing, then that address gets comingled with the O365 universe.
So, under the default scenario and settings that Microsoft created, there is no way for me to recreate my previously-existing Outlook profile that points to my Exchange server account. Every attempt is redirected to an O365 account that I don’t have and a server which doesn’t have the correct autoconfig info that I can no longer adjust manually. I had to find an obscure registry entry that tells Outlook to forget O365 exists so that the whole process they forced me into would work as it’s supposed to.
It made me realize that when I first started in IT, if something was acting in a way that didn’t make sense, it was either because I had made an error in configuration, or there was a bug in the software.
Today, if something is acting in a way that doesn’t make sense, it’s nearly always traceable to some decision made in the bowels of Microsoft that is either for reasons counter to my needs or for reasons that are indecipherable. I spend way too much of my IT career of late cleaning up after messes Microsoft has made.
Sorry for the rant. Seems like a lifetime ago I was one of the first RedHat Certified Systems Engineers. I let it expire because nobody had a use for it back then. Fast forward to the post Windows 10 world and I’ve just started playing with Linux Mint on an old laptop. Looking promising. If I can’t get rid of MS at work, I can at least come home to a non-MS environment.
I know this is only peripherally relevant, but I needed to vent. And this sort of situation, day after day, year after year, is why, for me, it doesn’t matter how much navel gazing Microsoft does, I no longer care.
Tech Ping
Daughter bought me a new computer running Windows 10 for Christmas. Blue screen of death since January. Nothing is OK with Microsoft.
To see if anything is okay with Microsoft, just look at the current state of Win 10.
Microsoft was much more open then Apple over the years so why are they so apologetic?
I thought Open Source was initially aimed at generating one ever-improving version of Linux. Instead there are now a multitude of Linuxes. It was bad enough when there were two or three versions of Unix, but now there are dozens of boutique Linuxes. How is that an advancement?
The Open Source "community" is now overrun with SJWs. You aren't allowed to code unless you agree that transgendered men can compete against women in the Olympics. How is that a good thing?
Also, the Open Source community has always been a haven for Marxists who want everything to be free. It works well for the few evangelists who get to travel the world on someone else's dime, and for the true believers who are OK developing code just for fun. But what of those who want to make a living and get justly compensated?
Also, if no one gets paid for writing code, then the only way to make money is licensing. This leads to the creepy "you're only renting it" economy like where Tesla can deactivate a feature when the current owner sells the car to a new owner.
Open Source may have been a great idea, but it has devolved into an Open Sore.
I worked for Microsoft for a long time.
I can say for certain...
Steve Ballmer was a cancer.
And a stupid doofus.
Things got much better when he left.
Tell-all with president Brad Smith reveals Obama warned tech giants that a privacy reckoning was coming.
Yeah, just as Flynn!
WinDoze 10 is a cancer, a virulent metastazing cluster-frack.
A couple of years ago we switched our main apps from WinDoze to Linux with the Gnome desktop (KDE and others were considered and no, I am not interested in your preference). Many internal issues disappeared and performance increased. I now have 5 linux systems in my office and a single WinDoze 10 laptop that I keep around to do my income taxes (TurboTax doesn’t provide a linux variant) and some accounting.
Microsoft loves open source the same way that wolves love sheep.
Its called open source because it is free! Microsoft wants a piece of the action, but they have been The Blob of software. Right down to the original ms-dos vs pc-dos! I have Open Office on my Thinkpad x201, and it is more efficient than either MS wordofficejunk, or, that one time Canadian Corel wordperfectjunk.
There is a great “text editor” called Rouhh Draft, and it is designed for writers, and is open source.
Dear Bill Gates and evil ones out there.
Please allow me to run my Windows XP again. Please provide a blanket code to bypass the activation crap. I have been locked out now on TWO machines for close to a year.
Windows 10 updates and use leave you wondering if your files will still be there afterward and if so what information about you was and is being sold.
I’d like to see General Flynn’s and James Rosen’s responses to this.
Better late than never for them to figure this one out...