Yet More Reasons to Hate Microsoft
As if we needed more reasons...
(Bugs, "Features", Anomolies, Arrogance, Deceipt, etc.)
Software |
Politics |
Hardware |
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Windows 2000!
That's right, Windows 2000 is vile
enough to earn a page all its own!
When you install IE4 as "browser only" and elect NOT to have IE4 take over your desktop, don't you believe it! If you think I'm kidding, try Start | Run "FTP.EXE". Even with specifying the .EXE Windows and IE will decide that's an internet shortcut and insist on using Explorer (or whatever your default browser is) to FTP nothing.
Fix this with REGEDIT (or REGEDT32) by finding all instances of the keys "software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/url/prefixes", and get rid of values like "ftp. = ftp://"
No matter how you install IE4, you can kiss LOTS of disk space good-bye, and be prepared to wait a while when IE4 is setting itself up and taking over all the things it shouldn't be screwing with.
Was this an upgrade or just a way to make a few bucks and screw everyone up? I wish someone would have told me. After de-installing FrontPage97 and installing FrontPage98 I'm still trying to figure out where the Extended... properties buttons went, and why when you publish your web site it always insists on defaulting to "sitename/copy_of_web", and why the Publish dialogue no longer puts the site location right where you can see it in the list box (so everything looks like "<root web>" at a glance), and where that extra 20Mb of disk space went even when I left out all the crap themes, and why we have to spend four or five hours downloading the free Option Pack to use extra software included on the FP98 CD, and why it'll happily create code that'll crash non-IE browsers (oh, wait, we know why), and...
Also interesting is that it insists attempting to re-publish entire web sites that were previously published with FP97, even if you select "Publish changed pages only". Not good if you've a slow link and a huge web site. The alternative is responding "no" to dialogues for each and every file on your web site asking you if you really want to over-write destination files. Silly crap.
Finally there's still no way to synchronize a local or staging web site with your published destination site. So if you rename or delete files locally and publish your site, the destination ends up full of "dead" files which have to be cleaned up manually.
The Web Server software in the MS Option Pack seems at first to be a nice improvement, what with support for Active Server Pages and so on, but wait... something's missing. Security! Not even the simplest form of security is available in the Personal Web Server from Option Pack 4.
There's more - The WINSOCK 2.0 that installs as a prerequisite to Option Pack 4 disables all name resolution if you're not connected to a network or if you don't fudge an IP address and DNS setting. Any HOSTS file is ignored, so names like "localhost" won't resolve. And if you fudge the necessary settings, it screws up connections to your dial-up networking hosts.
What in hell happened to USB support?
First the Force Feedback Pro joystick, then their steering wheel. Even the Microsoft Phone. The force feedback hardware was designed to use the combination MIDI/joystick port that comes with many sound cards. That's just peachy, except that many folks have sound cards that aren't so equipped, and some that do have the required port don't have a port that functions completely enough for the force feedback hardware. Then, what if you have a yoke, or pedals, etc. You have to install a hard-to-find switch (which they warn against), or plug/unplug things all the time (also unwise).
The Microsoft phone is no better, designed to connect to your PC's COMn: port. Some PC's have one of those, some even have two. What if you're lucky enough to have to COM ports, but are using a serial mouse and an external modem?
There's no reason not to make these things USB compatible. Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot, limiting the hardware they can sell because too many people can't find a way to juggle the connections!
