Posts by arjaysam

The sad tale of the Alpha massacre

Similar ...

We had a similar incident back in the day ... I worked for a property management company that managed shopping centers and we ran on a weird UNIX variant on weird UNIX micros from Fortune Systems. Each department had one ore more of these multiuser machines. In MIS (oh, those were the days) our Director logged in on our machine with superuser rights and rm -f his home directory (the command was slightly different but had the same effect). Wondering what had gone wrong he went and nuked a number of other home directories. Then he let the rest of us know that "something was wrong". All hell broke lose and much work was performed to recover. Certain passwords were changed and the Director was locked out of all systems (the Unix boxes as well as the Prime mini's); he was left with his primitive golf game on his desktop PC.

Microsoft's 11-year itch: The uncelebrated anniversary of Windows 8

Re: MSFT just didn't get it

Agreed!

MSFT just didn't get it

I got to participate in "reviewing" MSFT training courses for Windows 8 in Redmond in advance of the GA release of Win 8. There was something like 18 of us in the classroom and we were all horrified at what we were seeing. The poor instructor did everything she could to keep us on track but it was a losing battle. I guess our universal dislike of what we were seeing bubbled up to "the powers that be" and our class started to be visited by various management and product groups. There were lots of heated discussions between the 18 of us and the various Microsofties with the gist being, "are you people out of your minds????". It was five very memorable days and all of us left Redmond wondering if Microsoft had just killed the crown jewels.

A few weeks later a work colleague got to do the same thing for Server 2012 and the same scenario repeated itself with the various sysadmins attending the course apparently expressing their views in an even stronger fashion than we did in the Win 8 review. It's sad that the underlying good bits had to fight with the visual layer of crud. Just another example of a technology vendor losing sight of what it's user base actually needed versus the whizbang marketing drive that forces "features" into a product that no one really wants. Sadly, we see this at all levels of MSFT (and others, to be fair) where the good bits are often lost in a sea of "what were they thinking" cruft.

Start your engines: Windows 11 ready for broad deployment

I really wanted to like it ...

Did the W11 thing for a few months. I really wanted to like it BUT just got tired of fighting with stupid things like broken File Explorer, dumb Start menu and Lord knows how many other things. It's pretty but still not worth the pain at this point. Is it another Win8? Probably not but MSFT needs to get their act together when they start shoving things down user's throats. If you are GOING to shove, please at least ensure the effing thing works at a basic level! I'm thankful at this point that most of my fleet at work doesn't support W11, at least I won't have to endure the pitchforks and axes of an enraged and unhappy workforce.

California court sentences ex-Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain to five years in clink for fraud

It's something of a puzzlement as to why only Autonomy staffers have been strung up when the (former) management of HP (Mad Leo et al) are frankly just as culpable. HP/HPE has been in a free fall pretty much ever since the Autonomy acquisition. It could be argued that far more value (money) has been stolen (lost) from shareholders by laughingly inept management and boards since then than was ever "lost" in the Autonomy deal. It's really sad to see one of the former giants pretty much sidelined as a result of all the management insanity.

It walks, it talks, it falls over a bit. Windows 10 is three years old

Microsoft’s apology for the Windows 8 generation

I was part of a group that went to Redmond for a week to act as guinea pigs for Microsoft's training materials for Windows 8. We were supposed to stick with the program and just make suggestions about how to improve the training materials. What actually happened was total shock at the dog's breakfast that was being presented to us as "the new Windows". We were horrified and protested loudly to any Microsoftie that dared to enter the training facility. It was obvious even then, before the official launch of Windows 8, that Microsoft was already aware the market response to 8 was probably not going to be "good". Shortly after my trip to Redmond a colleague made the same trip to sit in in the training materials for Server 2012 and the horror intensified!

So here we are lo these many years later and, yes, Microsoft has performed yeoman work to clean up the mess and make 10 so much more pleasant to use (and Server 206 and 2019, too). But you really do have to wonder at the thinking processes that were followed that allowed Microsoft to squander the general goodwill that had built up around Windows 7 for the travesty that was Windows 8. Satya and crew would be wise to keep it all in mind as they keep the rapid cadence of change rolling in Windows and the various Cloudy bits.