A Rant about Microsoft and their effects on computer technology and the
way we use these machines:
"<severe rant>
What a week! I learned a lot of things I didn't want to know.I am tired
now, really tired. Tired of Microsoft products. My soul is sad. I have
fought and fought and I have lost.Time is on their side. There are too
many of them.I need to leave this work, find something else to do.
Found out this week that you can't just change a 10Mbps hub for a
10/100Mbps switch and not have problems.Found out that different
motherboard/NIC combos default to different speeds when responding to
DHCP. Weird. Some try to connect at 10Mbps, some at 100Mbps. Didn't
expect that. I thought that the switch would sense the speed of the NIC
and set the port to that speed. Not so. Am I doing something wrong?
Anyhow, it totally screwed my LAN setup. Real pain. I'm going to have to
do some research on this.Found out some subtle things about Excel97, SQL
Server 7.0 and the protocols used to get them to talk to one another.
Found out that Microsoft deliberately breaks things that were working in
order to force users to upgrade. They seem to have this need to force
users to have a PDC on their LAN. Things that shouldn't need a PDC,
somehow have to have a PDC. Maybe it's coz a PDC means another server
license sold. And of course, you can't have a PDC without a BDC. So
that's another license.
Let's assume I'm Joe User. I'm happily using Excel97 on Windows95. Then,
I need to have a company database. Jack Vendor sells me a "solution"
which requires SQL Server. Okay cool. So now I need a new machine to run
SQL Server. Which means I need to have, at least, WindowsNT. Now, I can
run my database machine as a standalone server without needing a PDC.
I'm just using it as a database server, right?In order to connect my
client workstations to SQL Server, I install Excel97 with Data Access
and the drivers for SQL Server. This really means I'm installing ODBC on
my client. But ODBC is not a networking protocol, so I need a networking
protocol. No problem. SQL Server can use several, among them Named Pipes
and TCP/IP. There are others but for the purpose of this discussion,
they're not important.
What is important is that Named Pipes under Microsoft requires user
authentication. This is separate and distinct from, AND in addition to
the user authentication the database requires. This is the key point.
User authentication at the network level, in the Microsoft scheme of
things, requires a separate server called a PDC. Which means that
instead of a single, simple database server, Joe User now has to buy two
machines. And Jack Vendor is going to STRONGLY suggest that Joe buy a
third server as a BDC. Just in case.
So now, we have three machines, three server licenses, and one copy of
SQL Server. How can we avoid buying the extra things? We use a protocol
which does not require a PDC and a BDC. This is where Linux comes in.
Since we probably are going to need a file server at some point in the
future, let's get an old box and stick Linux on it. Linux can be our
cheap user authentication server, running Samba. So now we can ensure
that only valid users can login onto our file server.Instead of Named
Pipes, we run TCP/IP to access SQL Server. But there's a problem.
Excel97 does not successfully connect to SQL Server 7.0 via TCP/IP.
Amazing but true. The client software that comes with SQL Server 7.0,
spews indecipherable error messages.
Now this threw me. Excel97 connects perfectly with SQL Server 7.0 using
Named Pipes, but not TCP/IP. Weird. After two days of trying to figure
this out, I sat back and said to myself, "This worked perfectly with SQL
Server 6.5. But now it doesn't work?"So I dug out my old 6.5 install CD
and installed the client software from that. Hey presto! now Excel97
connects perfectly to SQL Server 7.0 using TCP/IP.
Understand this. Understand the sneakiness of this. Excel97/TCP/ip was
working in 6.5. It stopped working in 7.0. Named Pipes worked in 6.5.
Named Pipes still works in 7.0.
Why? Coz Named Pipes *requires* a PDC. Which leads to a BDC. Which leads
to two extra server licenses.There's no other reason. TCP/IP allows you
to get rid of a PDC/BDC.
Ergo, TCP/IP is a threat. Therefore, it must be broken.
Microsoft. You don't get to choose.
No doubt, the Microsofties out there, will say, "Hey, no problem.
Excel2003 works fine with SQL Server 7.0 and TCP/IP. Just upgrade."
Wonderful. It's a safe bet that Joe User has more clients than servers.
So instead of just having to buy two extra servers, two extra server
licenses, Joe User is now forced to buy Excel2003 licenses for each one
of his clients. Microsoft wins again. And Joe User loses again.I never
got to find out whether Excel97 on Windows2000 works with TCP/IP or not.
That's coz it gives a really stupid error message when trying to create
the DataSource. Something along the lines of "You must have given an
invalid filename". Really insulting.It's insulting becoz it suggests
that the user did something wrong in providing a filename. Except that
the same procedure on Windows95 never gives any such error. Ever.
Something changed in the OS to break the procedure.
I could kinda understand this if Excel97 was produced by a different
company. But Microsoft builds both products. Surely, they have people to
test these things.I could understand if this was an isolated incident.
But Outlook97 does more or less the same thing. The same Outlook97 can't
open a .PST file created by Outlook97 when it runs under Windows2000,
but it works fine under Windows95. Why?
Isn't anybody else fed up with this crap? Am I the only person who hates
this?
I have worked hard to create a stable LAN where I work. I boast of
having the most stable installation of Windows PCs on the planet. I have
carefully removed anything that can crash my network. I have padlocks on
all the PCs. Disabled all floppies, CD-ROMs, serial, parallel and USB
ports. Nobody can get inside my boxen without a chisel. We are
anti-virused and firewalled up the wazoo. I have images of all my
configs on a boot server. I can download and reload any PC in 3 minutes.
But stablity comes at a price. We need to support a certain software
configuration. Any change must be resisted to the max.Change is the
problem. Change is forced from outside.The people forcing change, say
"This is better. You will be more productive. Upgrade." When they can't
get you to upgrade, they go to the hardware manufacturers. They say,
"We'll give you a discount if you pre-load our software. If you don't,
you'll have to sell bare-bones."
So Joe User, when buying new machines, either has to buy parts and build
his own, or buy a pre-loaded machine. So what's the problem?One thing is
that the hardware manufacturers now support things which only work with
the new versions of the software. They no longer provide drivers for the
older versions of the OS. Hey, no problem. The new OS has backward
compatibility, right? Nope. Things like TCP/IP support gets broken. In
subtle ways.
I expected file formats to change between Office97 and the later
versions. OK, that's not nice, but I suppose you could fool yourself and
say, "Well, they added extra features, so the file format had to
change." But networking protocols? Standard stuff like a protocol which
is as old as the hills, is going to break? And it is only broken when
Excel97 uses it. That's right. I have another product which connects to
SQL Server 7.0 which has no problem using either Named Pipes or TCP/IP.
It's only Excel97 that has the problem. Can you believe this crap?
I'm a dinosaur. I'm really a dinosaur. I thought computers were going to
set us free from drudgery. Save us time. Free us to be more productive.
Help us to be more productive.That's not what has happened. Computers
have become toys. We can't get people together to form a serious
lobbying group, but we assemble in droves for a LAN party. We are our
own worst enemy. We put up with the crappiest software every day. St.
Clair King is right. We are consumers, not producers.
Bill Gates has tapped into the deepest vein of human weakness, and like
Dracula, he is sucking our life blood out. And like Mina Harking, we get
off on it.
I've got to get a new work.
</severe rant>"
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What do you think?
-Gel
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