mcbeen.com

After the loads of fun I have had over the years with vista, and Microsoft’s insulting mantra that the issues were all simply in our heads, I expected little from win7. After all the bullshit with project mohave and the smoke and mirrors I expected nothing but simple retread.

But things are looking up. I’m still on my first install off my first try, and things are still working. Most of the insanity that was vista is gone, although win7 still is in many ways just a proper release of vista. The dock (taskbar) is basically what quick launch should have been 10 years ago, and I find it a long overdue improvement over the useless task bar of previous years. The days of running 3-4 apps in long over and the new system handles 10’s of apps very smoothly.

That being said, win7 is still very shallow when it comes to the management gui. I had really hoped that MS could have pushed the new mmc interface all the way down in this release, but it looks like we still have a ways to go. For example… click start, hi-light “computer”, then click properties. We are presented with an easy to read, and organized panel of system information. But this is only a display. Click any of the links in the upper left, and you are thrown back into the over stacked disorganized tab panes that we have been digging through since windows 3. Don’t even get me started on why “Computer – Properties” is still seperated from “Computer – Management” even though they link back and forth to each other repeatedly.
Then there is the fact that contextually identical links with identical wording don’t take you to the same places.

Over all its a great release that should finally allow us to get off XP. That’s a good thing.

Total Telecom – Online ad sales open door to viruses.

Don’t Click on banner ads!

I’ve made no attempts to hide my frustration with vista, and the incredible stupidity shown by the management over at Microsoft. The latest court cases bear out much of what I thought all along.

Well, after two full years, and many patches and updates, Microsoft has announced repeatedly that all of Vistas out of the gate hiccups have been cleared… though they have never actually acknowledged that there was a problem in the fist case. It’s selling like hotcakes!!!

Nothing has changed. At all.

Today I began retesting our internal applications on vista to see how our vendor compliance has come along. We can’t take their word for it, because they lie as much as Microsoft. We have to test ourselves.

Unfortunately, I never got that far. The problems with Vista started immediately.

#1) DON’T CANCEL AUTOMATIC UPDATES. EVER.
If you do, you will run into a nasty little problem, where vista THINKS all your updates are installed. The remaining updates have to be forced into service. This is improved by the fact that the Windows Update GUI happily allows you to click the “Update Now” button, only to be given back a cryptic fatal error after timing out. Looking online reveals this to be caused by “me” having dared to setup my own update server. The problem was corrected by using two other cryptic windows commands that are not limited to vista. “wuauclt /detectnow” and “wuauclt /downloadnow”. Running these in series a few minutes apart will kick vista in the ass and get it going again. BTW, when executed, neither gives any feed back. You could type in “wuauclt /youmomeatspants” with no error at all.

#2) UAC IS STUPID AS STUPID DOES
Don’t store your app installers on your network. UAC STILL cannot comprehend this simple reality. Why? because windows fucking blows. Its really simple. You will love it. UAC runs under a different user context than you. When you run your installer, UAC is invoked in it’s own security context, asking if you really really want to run the installer. When you click yes, UAC tries to execute it for you. Here’s the rub… UAC CAN’T SEE your installer. It can’t run it. You will get an error telling you the file cannot be found… but why? Because… windows does not allow multiple security contexts to map to the same drive letters. Microsoft COULD resolve everything to UNC paths, but, there are major legacy issues with some installers requiring driver letter to install. So… you are just fucked. You have to copy installers to your local hard-drive before you can install. Yes my domain is setup to trust both my drive letters and the UNC paths to the installers.

#3) UAC SUCKS SOME MORE… and crashes your windows too.
So, I was curious to know why exactly my windows session was using so much memory. I opened the task manager, and clicked on the process tab. Since the window doesn’t show all processes by default, I clicked “show all processes for all users”…. nothing happened… so I clicked it again… so I clicked it five times fast… oh no.
I got a UAC prompt… that I accepted. Then I got another. Then nothing. Except a ding every time I clicked anywhere on my screen. FAIL. UAC was up… in another context… and my screen didn’t flip. GREAT!

#4) cannot connect to services remotely.
In another amazing stab at admins everywhere. Windows 2008 and vista REQUIRE your helpdesk admins to also have vista. Otherwise you cannot remotely manage the machine settings. You can connect into the console… but in some cases that simple isn’t possible.

#5) Admin tools!
Would you believe that vista was not released with an admin tool kit? at all? You could force an install of the 2003 tools, but they were unstable and buggy. Luckily a short while back, this was “rectified” by the RSAT installer that was released shortly after SP1. I went ahead and tried to install it today, and was happy to see that it went through without any errors. Then I tried to use it. Nothing. The add-ins don’t show up in mmc… there is no admin tools folder added to the start menu. The admin tools folder in control panel still is missing all of my admin tools. great. So I go out… rerun the installer. Now it tells me that the installer in not applicable to my OS. WTF! Fine… I go and install the old buggy 2003 r2 tools. Vistas bitches about it… but swallows it anyways. But… when I try to go load the mmc? No go… “MMC cold not create the snap-in.”

Time to once again… delete my vista install… I’ll try again in two more years.

So.. here is your test. What does each sentence below mean? What does each button do?

and plugin…

“Every book I’ve read about a campaign is that the one that won, it was a perfect and beautifully run campaign with geniuses running it and incredible messaging, etcetera,” Mr. McCain said then. “And always the one that lost, ‘Oh, completely screwed up, too much infighting, bad people, etcetera.’ So if I win, I believe that historians will say, ‘Way to go, he fine-tuned that campaign, and he got the right people in the right place and as the campaign grew, he gave them more responsibility.’ If I lose,” people will say, “ ‘That campaign, always in disarray.’ ”

Have to put your name on the back of your belt…

so when you pull your head out of your ass you know who you are. 

I'm sure I could come up with a word for it. Lets see…

 Crap

 Useless

 Painful

 Imitation of an artificial flavor? 

I have used other dynamic playlist systems for years. I even have had some fairly good luck doing it within itunes with smart playlists. The solution that apple has come up with makes no sense. I cannot understand what their goal possibly could have been. They state that they use my meta data from my library to figure out what else I might want to hear… So… why the fuck would the system give me playlists full of songs with ZERO playcounts… and 1 star ratings? 1 star means don't fucking put it in my play lists… not, "Hai I LUV ths SoNG!!!" <sigh>

With pandora and the other good systems being squished by the record companies, I guess we have little hope. 

Drier than a popcorn fart

Senate and Bush Agree On Terms of Spying Bill – washingtonpost.com

Could someone please explain to me why you would need to grant legal immunity to the phone companies if they are not breaking the law? 

UPDATE – Looks like someone woke up and stopped this madness for a moment.

Exclusive: Senator Chris Dodd Will Put A Hold On Telecom Immunity Bill