Microsoft's "4th Gen. After Success: Sucks" Pattern

I have held this theory for a while and wanted to document it. I have noticed over the years that after a particular technology that Microsoft releases "catches on", the 4th generation of it becomes a horrid piece of trash. Here are my examples:

1. MS-DOS 1.x - Tremendously caught on - started the whole PC Revolution. MS DOS 4.x was the worst version of MS-DOS EVER. Version 5.x and 6.x were major improvements and brought things back under control.

2. Windows 3.x - Windows finally catches on. The following releases of the technology were (#2) Windows 95, (#3) Windows 98/98SE, (#4) Windows ME. I don't think too many people will argue with me that Windows ME was the worst.

3. Windows NT Technology - This really did not take off until Windows NT 4 so we will call that #1. The following releases of the technology were (#2) Windows 2000, (#3) Windows XP, (#4) Windows Vista. Need I say more? Look at how horrible Vista is doing.

What is it with Microsoft and the number 4? The only thing I can figure is this: Look what happens when you count to 4 in binary on your fingers - ha ha.

Hilarious Spam Story

It's been a while since I've posted - been busy but have a funny story to share. A while back, some company started spamming one of my domains. Several companies, actually. Some dirty spammer sold an address list using addresses from my domain and presenting them as doctor's email addresses. So these "legit" companies start sending me a lot of medical spam. This one company ignored my emails to cease and desist a while back, so I called and yelled at them on their voicemail. The next day I get an email from a hobo account with the VP of this "company's" IT department as the username asking me to identify myself. I ignore it and the spam stops until YESTERDAY.

I start getting spam from this same "company" again. I go to their website and click on the "contact us form" and type in a KNOCK IT OFF message. I hit submit and all I get is this red message near the submit button - no data clears, no redirect. Red message says "your request has been submitted". I hit the submit button a couple of dozen times.

I get an email from the same dude above, using his "company" email. He tells me that I need to submit each email separately as a request to stop, and that I've been acting unprofessionally. He then accuses me of a denial of service attack for sending him a couple of dozen requests.

I go back to his web form and address him by name. I tell him that I don't have to act professionally - he's spamming my house. That he has a dodgy web form and that 2 dozen messages to get someone's attention does not constitute a DOS Attack. I tell him to fix the problem, stop buying addresses from spammers and to grow up.

Dude has the nerve to write back and basically say "OK... but technically we're not spamming you". I can't believe this bozo - it was hilarious.

If you are reading this, Mr. White Trash Big Shot IT VP From (_|_) As*ville North Carolina, be glad I am not using your real name or company name. I will next time - 3 strikes you're out.

ROTFLMAO

Enoying my new server

It's been alive for about a week. My virtualized Red Hat 7.3 install is chugging along inside VMWare Server as is my virtualized FreeBSD 6.1 machine. The older hardware has been given a rest (well the 850mhz PIII became the new Kid Computer). My buddy Chris at work helped me diagnose a video problem I was having because I thought I was running the nvidia driver but really running the nv driver - causing havoc with vnc. Other than my virtualized FreeBSD machine's clock racing ahead a couple of minutes a day (no matter what I do - solved the problem in RedHat - that one was racing MUCH faster) everything is chugging along fine.

VMWare Server Sound on CentOS

Kind of disappointing that VMWare Server can only use the sound on one VM concurrently and that's only of nothing else is touching the sound card. Turns out after googling around a bit that VMWare uses OSS for it's sound. I installed the alsa-oss package for FC7 and the alsa-oss-libs package for FC7 as well (got them from rpmfind.net). I then renamed my vmware script to vmware.orig. I wrote a new script called vmware to run the aoss wrapper and have aoss invoke vmware.orig and pass all of the args it received. Works like a champ. Now at least all of the VMs can have sound. They can't use the sound at exactly the same time, but at least it's better than it was before. Afterall, what's a home automation system without sound :-)

It's Alive!!!

I got my new server machine built on 2/15/08. Best of all, it worked the first time. I do have the SATA cable plugged in backwards and also into the wrong SATA controller. The system complains that it can't find the rest of the RAID drives when I boot it. Not a big deal and I will fix it eventually. First computer I built in a long time. Also I think first time ever that I installed both a motherboard and a power supply and haven't actually drawn blood.

I changed my mind between Centos 4.6 and 5.1 a few times. I hate the changes to anaconda in 5.1 but got used to it after 4.6 didn't recognize my integrated sound.

Finally Confirmed Order

Finally have equipment on the way. The Dual Layer DVD writer with Lightscribe that was the only surviving piece from my original set of orders showed up yesterday to irritate me :-)

I got a quad-core processor and an Intel "Bad Ax" motherboard (at least the guy in some tech video says people call it that). Should be a fun machine build - haven't put one together totally from scratch for quite a while. It'll have 4 gig of RAM and a 750 gig SATA drive. Should be halfway decent for running VMWare Server.

Order Fell Through

Well, the website contacts me 2 business days after I place my order and say they don't have the RAM or the motherboard anymore. I paid with PayPal and got an immediate refund. I didn't realize how hard it is to find a dual processor ATX motherboard that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I'm leaning towards a single Intel Core2 Quad. Those motherboards are much easier to find and will potentially run around the same speed - or close enough.