From: sabrina downard Date: 14:29 on 22 Sep 2006 Subject: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. I've recently changed employers and now I use a Windows workstation at work. Outlook, even. (At least putty's pretty unhateworthy. And it turns out you can configure Outlook to send blissfully ordinary plain text mail, if you try, even if it is a pain in the ass to work around its damn-near enforced top-posting.) It's been tolerable. I mean, I find it irritating and unnecessarily difficult at certain times, but I shut it down at least once a week and run my little software updates and it has been alright enough, I guess, for a kludgey hack of a window manager. Except sometimes you have to work with the kludgey hack of an operating system instead of just the window manager, and that's when the illusion starts to break down. Situation: I have a memory stick. I have some files on my machine at home that I'd like to bring to work. I have used my personal memory stick in the past to transfer files to work this way. This week? No worky. Plug it in to the USB port, nothing. Doesn't mount it. Device Manager insists nothing is wrong. Yet, if I look at my Event Viewer, there it is: "[Removable Storage Manager] could not load media in drive Drive 0 of library Sony Storage Media USB Device." Well, why not? It used to work. It used to work great! Could you at least give me a hint? Okay, well, maybe it's the memory stick. They are awfully small and, although I've never broken one yet, presumably it's possible. I was wearing shoes the other day that apparently really hated our office carpeting so I was shocking everything I touched; maybe I fried it. Good thing I've got another memory stick. (Get home, the memory stick is still perfectly fine as far as Mac OS is concerned. Now that's shocking.) So, take the work memory stick home. Mac OS says "hi! how are you! oh, your name is 'widget,' that's amusing. those are lovely files you've got stored on you. would you like some more?" I blithely copy over most of a gig of files, umount it, and drop it in my bag to take it to work. Work computer: "What is this 'usb memory stick' of which you speak? I know not of these things. Begone with you and your filthy removable media ways." Event viewer: "RSM could not load media in drive Drive 0 of library Sony Storage Media USB Device." Cheers. So, okay. I give up. Device Manager: "This device is working properly." Clearly! "If you are having problems with this device, click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter." Okay. Troubleshooter: "Well, is your hardware supported? Yes? Well, have you changed your driver recently? No? Well, have you reinstalled the driver anyways yet? Okay, have you called the manufacturer of your hardware device? Well then, 'this troubleshooter is unable to solve your problem.' IOW, HTH, HAND, FOAD, $user." Seriously. It's a usb memory stick. It's not rocket science. Not only is it not rocket science, it's barely science at all. It's third grade earth science where you think the hamster cage in the classroom is the coolest thing ever. Turns out, though, I got it figured out. It had decided that the USB memory stick wanted to be drive E:, as I discovered when I went into "My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management." Trouble is, I had a network drive already mapped to E:. Rather than, say, generating a warning saying I had two things wanting to be drive E: and I should probably do something about it, it apparently just happily mounted the USB stick as E: under the network drive E:. As soon as I unmapped the network drive, my E: window refreshed, happy and ready to give me my files. Stupid, steaming pile of shit. If you're going to auto-allocate drive letters to removable storage media, maybe you should consider allocating drive letters that aren't already in use? Just a thought. hatefully re-secured in mac-pwns-windows snobbery which I thought I'd grown out of, --s.
From: Chris Devers Date: 15:28 on 22 Sep 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, sabrina downard wrote: > Stupid, steaming pile of shit. If you're going to auto-allocate drive > letters to removable storage media, maybe you should consider > allocating drive letters that aren't already in use? Just a thought. Which begs the question: will Vista still map mounted volumes to letters, or are they finally going to rip off the ways the rest of the world does things so that problems like this won't be possible anymore? Or are they too busy coming up with gonzo menu bar hokum instead? http://shellrevealed.com/blogs/shellblog/archive/2006/09/20/What-happened-to-the-menu-bars_3F00_.aspx
From: Ricardo SIGNES Date: 16:00 on 22 Sep 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. * Chris Devers <cdevers@xxxxx.xxx> [2006-09-22T10:28:55] > On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, sabrina downard wrote: > > Stupid, steaming pile of shit. If you're going to auto-allocate drive > > letters to removable storage media, maybe you should consider > > allocating drive letters that aren't already in use? Just a thought. > > Which begs the question: will Vista still map mounted volumes to > letters, or are they finally going to rip off the ways the rest of the > world does things so that problems like this won't be possible anymore? In Windows 2000, already, a drive could be mounted like a directory. It just wasn't sufficiently pushed to become the Right Way. Despite the fact that volumes could be mounted at directories, people started pushing the use of UNC paths, like //server/path/to/dir, which totally failed to work in 16-bit apps. Then to solve this, admins mount drives, instead of directories -- which, had they been used to begin with, would have solved this without needing two ways to get at things. Auuuugh.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 18:59 on 22 Sep 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. > Which begs the question: will Vista still map mounted volumes to > letters, or are they finally going to rip off the ways the rest of the > world does things so that problems like this won't be possible anymore? I actually like UNC paths, though I really wish they had left SWITCHAR in so they could point the right way. > http://shellrevealed.com/blogs/shellblog/archive/2006/09/20/What-happened-to-the-menu-bars_3F00_.aspx Holy hell.
From: Aaron J. Grier Date: 01:25 on 30 Sep 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 10:28:55AM -0400, Chris Devers wrote: > On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, sabrina downard wrote: > > > Stupid, steaming pile of shit. If you're going to auto-allocate drive > > letters to removable storage media, maybe you should consider > > allocating drive letters that aren't already in use? Just a thought. > > Which begs the question: it raises the question, but doesn't beg it. http://begthequestion.info/ > will Vista still map mounted volumes to letters, or are they finally > going to rip off the ways the rest of the world does things so that > problems like this won't be possible anymore? UNC wouldn't be so horrible if hostnames could have functional aliases, so you could move mountpoints around and still have a single namespace. maybe there's some way to do this with active directory, but my co-worker couldn't figure it out, and I've disavowed myself from the windows world maintenance. maybe somebody here knows? > Or are they too busy coming up with gonzo menu bar hokum instead? > > http://shellrevealed.com/blogs/shellblog/archive/2006/09/20/What-happened-to-the-menu-bars_3F00_.aspx now take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ui/overview.mspx for what they're doing for office 2007. I really don't quite know what to say...
From: Patrick Quinn-Graham Date: 01:43 on 30 Sep 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. On 29-Sep-06, at 5:25 PM, Aaron J. Grier wrote: > UNC wouldn't be so horrible if hostnames could have functional > aliases, > so you could move mountpoints around and still have a single > namespace. > maybe there's some way to do this with active directory, but my > co-worker couldn't figure it out, and I've disavowed myself from the > windows world maintenance. maybe somebody here knows? There are two answers to this, 1) Uh, yes, they can have functional DNS aliases. Nothing is stopping you from setting up your DNS such that \\salesdeptfiles.somedomain\ points to the same machine \\fileserver01\ 2) You might also want to look at DFS, which allows you to do things like \\somename\dept\abc and \\somename\dept\def pointing to shares on different servers. This does not require AD, but I believe might only work on Windows, on linux with fairly new versions of samba (if at all), and only with ADmitMac or Dave on the Mac. Now, of course, I have plenty of reasons to hate SMB, but UNC paths aren't one of them. ~patrick
From: Jeremy Stephens Date: 18:27 on 20 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. Aaron J. Grier wrote: > it raises the question, but doesn't beg it. http://begthequestion.info/ > I know this is a little bit off topic and a little late (as I have some time and am reading threads that I've left unread for a while). But, who is so bitter about the incorrect use of 'begs the question' that they would go to the trouble of buying a domain name and setting up a web site to discourage misuse? - Viking
From: Dave Hodgkinson Date: 18:32 on 20 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. On 20 Oct 2006, at 18:27, Jeremy Stephens wrote: > Aaron J. Grier wrote: >> it raises the question, but doesn't beg it. http:// >> begthequestion.info/ >> > I know this is a little bit off topic and a little late (as I have > some > time and am reading threads that I've left unread for a while). But, > who is so bitter about the incorrect use of 'begs the question' that > they would go to the trouble of buying a domain name and setting up a > web site to discourage misuse? A stickler. /me goes over to register "fewernotless.info"
From: David Landgren Date: 10:06 on 25 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. Dave Hodgkinson wrote: > > On 20 Oct 2006, at 18:27, Jeremy Stephens wrote: > >> Aaron J. Grier wrote: >>> it raises the question, but doesn't beg it. http://begthequestion.info/ >>> >> I know this is a little bit off topic and a little late (as I have some >> time and am reading threads that I've left unread for a while). But, >> who is so bitter about the incorrect use of 'begs the question' that >> they would go to the trouble of buying a domain name and setting up a >> web site to discourage misuse? > > A stickler. > > /me goes over to register "fewernotless.info" I tried to register spelldefinitewithaneyoustupidfucker.info, but it was already taken. David
From: David Landgren Date: 10:14 on 25 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. David Landgren wrote: > Dave Hodgkinson wrote: [...] >> A stickler. >> >> /me goes over to register "fewernotless.info" > > I tried to register spelldefinitewithaneyoustupidfucker.info, but it was *snort* I meant spelldefinitewithani of course. Definately. > already taken. > > David
From: Robert G. Werner Date: 19:01 on 20 Oct 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. Jeremy Stephens wrote: > Aaron J. Grier wrote: >> it raises the question, but doesn't beg it. http://begthequestion.info/ >> > I know this is a little bit off topic and a little late (as I have some > time and am reading threads that I've left unread for a while). But, > who is so bitter about the incorrect use of 'begs the question' that > they would go to the trouble of buying a domain name and setting up a > web site to discourage misuse? > > - Viking > Go visit the site. They explain it rather amusingly. ;-)
From: jrodman Date: 15:55 on 22 Sep 2006 Subject: Re: Windows: where everything is harder than it needs to be. And also broken. On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 08:29:52AM -0500, sabrina downard wrote: > So, okay. I give up. Device Manager: "This device is working > properly." Clearly! "If you are having problems with this device, > click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter." Okay. Show of hands, who has ever gotten something useful out of Device Manager in terms of malfunctioning hardware? Every time something is clearly broken it claims "This device is working properly." I _do_ remember back in the win95 ISA PNP days, when device manager would show devices _not_ working correctly, but this was invariably because it had detected the same device multiple times, decided it was conflicting with itself, and shut "them both" down. I don't think this is really worth any praise. -josh
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