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Matts (1087)

Matts
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I work for MessageLabs [messagelabs.com] in Toronto, ON, Canada. I write spam filters, MTA software, high performance network software, string matching algorithms, and other cool stuff mostly in Perl and C.

Journal of Matts (1087)

Thursday September 19, 2002
12:30 PM

Microsoft

[ #7840 ]

Oh how I hate thee microsoft. Let me count the ways...

1. Foisting Exchange on me. OK, that's really this company's fault. But does it really have to be *this* bad?

2. Completely and utterly gang raping emails to the point where it's impossible to re-produce the original as it arrived.

3. Dumbfounded authentication systems. Yes, apparently I can change my password for the new domain I've been put on, but while the terminal server client recognises it fine, the exchange system, and pretty much every other system here at work won't authenticate me. Why? Because I changed my password back to one I'd had before. Did it warn me about this? Did it hell.

4. OLE Structured Storage. Who's brainfart was that?

5. Storing RFC-2822 emails in OLE Structured Storage when you select "save as .msg" from Outlook. WTF??? Why the hell do you need this totally brain damaged structured storage format for a simple email? Not only that, it utterly and totally destroys the original structure of the email so that you can never really put it back together again quite the same as it was before. A Data::Dumper of a 4K email in .msg format (using the most excellent OLE::Storage_Lite) is about 20K. Nice.

6. For producing sysadmins who haven't got the slightest bit of clue why I might need pristine original emails for spam detection work. Apparently someone who runs an exchange server doesn't need to understand the concept of email headers.

Microsoft, you suck!

OK, rant over. Today has been one of those "battle against proprietary crapness in the face of utter hopelessness" days.


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  • Exchange is pretty cool, no? :-)
  • I have vowed that I will quit on the spot if a company ever tries to make me use Outlook again.

    The shameful thing is that it's probably a good desktop version of a PDA, but it's just so grossly overdone and has the worst email client on the planet that it's not worth it.

    -Dom

  • 4. OLE Structured Storage. Who's brainfart was that?

    Do you really need to ask? After all, if Outlook was able to save email in RFC 822 compliant text files, you might be enticed to use a competing mail agent [mutt.org].

    Overall, I've found that Exchange isn't that bad, if IMAP is enabled. It's difficult to change your email password (unless you're actually logging into an NT domain), you can use a real email client, you can get at the full headers, and save mail to mailboxes. Of course, there are better email

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