the thick client
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Jun. 4th, 2006 | 11:38 pm
over the past few years, working for several companies that depend on unix (which unix is largely irrelevant) and on geeks that live and breathe unix, i've been more and more pissed off with corporate it practices.
these companies all seem to rely on what are probably the worst two pieces of software ever written for their internal day-to-day living: exchange and outlook. this despite several standards-based solutions available and being stocked with people who can do whatever is asked from them with a unix box, rough consensus and running code.
and the geeks all have to endure it, because management, we're told, can't live without exchange's or outlook's this or that which are oh-so-handy.
thus i go to work everyday, to find a bunch of geeks running a variation of the following: a mac laptop or a pos pc laptop running a linux specimen; a low-powered, 3-year old desktop as development server (which is more than enough to handle pretty much everything thrown at it) also running linux or a bsd flavour and finally the latest and greatest in desktops from hp or dell, typically sporting intel's most recent offering and a gig of ram.
and what does this overpowered horse do? it runs either windows xp or 2003 and sits there all day running exclusively outlook. fuck me if this isn't idiotic.
note: before you say entourage or crossover whatsit, shut it. i've been there, and there are simply too many edge cases to consider them a viable option (entourage has improved, but it's still not there). besides, the goal shouldn't be work out ways to handle and work around a moronic way of thinking and doing things, it should be do the right thing.
these companies all seem to rely on what are probably the worst two pieces of software ever written for their internal day-to-day living: exchange and outlook. this despite several standards-based solutions available and being stocked with people who can do whatever is asked from them with a unix box, rough consensus and running code.
and the geeks all have to endure it, because management, we're told, can't live without exchange's or outlook's this or that which are oh-so-handy.
thus i go to work everyday, to find a bunch of geeks running a variation of the following: a mac laptop or a pos pc laptop running a linux specimen; a low-powered, 3-year old desktop as development server (which is more than enough to handle pretty much everything thrown at it) also running linux or a bsd flavour and finally the latest and greatest in desktops from hp or dell, typically sporting intel's most recent offering and a gig of ram.
and what does this overpowered horse do? it runs either windows xp or 2003 and sits there all day running exclusively outlook. fuck me if this isn't idiotic.
note: before you say entourage or crossover whatsit, shut it. i've been there, and there are simply too many edge cases to consider them a viable option (entourage has improved, but it's still not there). besides, the goal shouldn't be work out ways to handle and work around a moronic way of thinking and doing things, it should be do the right thing.