have lost the "opportunity" to be so stressed. and lessened his requirements
for all that xtra hardware.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Angel Stewart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "CF-Community" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 10:36 AM
Subject: Microsoft Rant.
| This from a Trinidad computing list.
| 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>"
|
| -----
|
| What do you think?
|
| -Gel
|
|
| ---
| Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
| Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
| Version: 6.0.544 / Virus Database: 338 - Release Date: 11/25/2003
|
|
|
|
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