Straight Edge Life

Windows XP pisses me off to no end. It’s devolution: In effect, a simpler being that’s easier to get along with because it doesn’t argue with you.. but only it’s too fucking stupid to understand your language.

I hate it. The amount of work I have to go to in order to make code that works flawlessly in windows 2000, linux and mac os x, work on windows xp is stunning. Take for example the wonderful and relatively new WebDAV protocol that’s endorsed by many of the industry’s largest players. It’s like ftp but better because it runs on port 80, the standard port for website traffic, and can be encrypted in transit. Yahoo. No more passwords sent in clear text with FTP.

So… Windows 2000 lets you connect to a WebDAV server simply by adding a network place. Enter the address of the server, http://foo.myserver.com/myusername, enter your username and password when prompted, and all-of-the-sudden you’ve got a WebDAV drive mounted on your computer just like it was a local drive. In OS X it’s as simple as hitting Apple K in the finder and entering in the address. Bam, connected to a WebDAV server. Drag and drop files at will. I think you get the idea here. This is not a difficult thing to do.

Enter windows XP. When adding a network place in Windows XP the geniuses at Microsoft decided that when you enter http://foo.myserver.com into the add network place wizard you aren’t really looking for a webdav server on the world wide web, no… you’re looking for an SMB server on your local network. Forget that SMB and WebDAV are nothing alike and that the http:// prefixing your address indicates with absolute clarity that you’re looking for an http server. No, XP wants to keep you local and in a happy little microsoft world using only microsoft technology.

Enter the average programmer who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what technology you use, he simply wants to get a job done and write some software so that you can get your job done. This is why we have standards in the industry afterall. Standards help different kinds of computers talk to each other clearly. Standards make different system work together. But when one company decides that they want to ignore these standards and make up the rules as they go along, standards really don’t mean much anymore.