This is sad, but it is true...
Last week one of our R&D engineers came up to us lowly minions in the marketing department*, and asked to use our CVS server because it is running on a sane operating system (Linux).
For reasons of history and silly office politics that I don't understand or even wish to understand our R&D people are forced to use Windows as their development environment. They have applied Cygwin to it, to gain some semblance of normality, but it's only a thin skin, and as Windows is broken in so many ways, Cygwin can't cover every wart.
Anyhow because I was given a free choice of OS when I was installed as "Web Master", and as I had used iPlanet Enterprise, Apache and IIS in the past, we have Linux boxen running Apache/mod_Perl.
So along came an experience R&D engieer, making what I belive will be one of our best products ever, to borrow space on a marketing CVS server, because the R&D CVS server is on a Windows box, and it just "don't work!"
* Because the web is seen as a marketing function, those of us who look after the server, do the scripting and build the web sites are seen as part of marketing, even though we really don't belong... but that's another story.
Re:MSexchange?
ajt on 2003-12-14T11:32:45
We do run MS Sexchange and MS Lookout. These two products are the product of a mind of pure evil. Nothing can describe my loathing of these products, but it's what we have to have....
Even though at my current job and my previous job, we had serious out breaks of Windows/IE/Outlook viruses, mangelment seems to be convinced with this pile of sh*t. At my last job I *refused* to use or support Outlook, and I never had any problems with the machines I ran, the same could not be said of head office.
At the moment I get SPAM at work, and our IT dept seems powerless to stop it. I also get the odd virus, that get's through the boundary protection, and is too new for the desktop AV client. I keep an eye on The Register so I usually know about the latest MS problem before IT. However try and send me a file with a
.css extension, or somthing with double gots, e.g. .tar.gz and the system eats it....? If we were running something sane, on a sane operating system, then we could probably reuse most of our dozen or so Exchange servers as somthing more useful than Virus propogators. Yes! that is a dozen largish Wintel boxes, for a company the size of a pimple..... Don't laugh the money we waste in stupid purchases comes out of my bonus....!
Re:MSexchange?
mary.poppins on 2003-12-15T05:19:31
Sounds familiar. I imagine similar situations are happening all over Corporate America. But don't disturb economists with the facts -- they're all too busy using convoluted math to prove that rich people should be allowed to control the world.
Authoritarian organizations are horribly inefficient. Cooperative organizations are the way to go, yo.
Re:MSexchange?
ajt on 2003-12-15T09:32:21
From what I can gather MS Exchange is constantly ranked bottom by users and in objective reviews. A simple POP/SMTP/IMAP server with any client works best when you just want email, and Lotus Notes is supposed to work well if you want a real collaboration tool.
At our place of work Exchange is a poor choice, because:
- We have many offices connected over slow/narrow links - so we need many local exchange servers
- We have many field based staff on slow GSM/modem links - they have constant problems sycronising their email
- Outlook is relly crap on slow links - you can't throttle your downloads
- Exchange's broken version of IMAP is terrible on slow links - IMAP is great on a mobile, MS's version is so poor your better of with POP3
- We don't really use the calenadaring tools much - seems good value for money, but not when you don't use it
We could scrap most of the Exchange servers if we went with SMTP/POP/IMAP, and with better email clients the field staff would be a lot happier on their mobile phone, and virus problems would greatly be reduced.
I can understand the attitude of IT in supporting as few applications as possible to reduce costs, but standardising on one of the more expensive, and least reliable is a bit naff.....
Re:MSexchange?
mary.poppins on 2003-12-15T10:32:51
At my job, my NetBSD system runs fetchmail, polling MSexchange every 30 seconds
and delivering to local postfix-procmail-(homedir)-mutt. I used to use
MSexchange for relaying out, but had problems (bogus loop detection in
MSexchange) so now postfix sends out directly.
Unfortunately, this doesn't protect me from horrible brokenness -- like the
absence of threading info in MSoutlook-authored mail, or the wacky "MSexchange
didn't understand the encoding of this mail, so decided to trash it and send you
this notification."
And of course there is the farm of machines as you mention, plus a number of
people to babysit the installation. Oh, and expensive consultants to come
configure it.
Re:MSexchange?
ajt on 2003-12-17T11:36:42
Interesting. I know which Exchange machine is the SMTP relay, but I don't if the nearest Exchange Server is running POP3 or IMAP, as well as it's broken Exchange protocol (a version of IMAP I think).
The profusion of machines is horribly wasteful!
