Not Good Enough

Ah, criticising Microsoft is a bit like picking on the disabled kid.

Anyway, one of the issues we have with Windows is when a user accidentally moves a directory.  How do you accidentally move a directory you ask. By moving your mouse across the screen. Sometimes, for one reason or another, as you drag the mouse the left button gets held down and suddenly you’ve moved a directory. If it’s a small directory the user may not even be aware that they’ve done it – and sometime later we get asked to restore the “missing” directory.

This has happened often enough that I’ve been asked to modify permissions on directories so that users can’t do it. The problem is I can’t – the permissions on the directories are fine. The users concerned are supposed to be able to do what they do.

Really this isn’t a security issue, it’s a usability issue. If Microsoft had provided an option in Windows so that the user would be asked to confirm a move then we would all be happy. Unfortunately, they haven’t.

You might be thinking “so what – it’s the user’s fault, they should have been more careful”. However, it’s easy to do. Browse to your favourite search engine and enter Windows Explorer move confirm and you’ll see that plenty of other people have the same problem.

So, Microsoft, why haven’t you fixed this issue? It shouldn’t be hard – you only need to provide a tick box under the Folder Options menu and then, if it’s ticked, ask the user to confirm a drag and drop move. One of your gun Windows programmers could probably knock it up over lunch.

It’s just not good enough!

I’m big on virtualisation. I think it’s the way of the future, especially from a DR perspective. The combination of VMware ESX and SAN replication means that the downtime due to the loss of a data centre can be minimised. Virtualisation potentially makes DR a lot easier. As a matter of fact, I think it’s worth virtualising everything, even if you only run one virtual server per physical server. VMware ESXi is now free so it doesn’t even have to cost anything to do it. In my mind it makes a compelling argument.

The only fly in the ointment is the problem of those products that won’t work without a licence server. Some products require a USB or parallel port dongle. They obviously can’t be virtualised.

However, licence servers that don’t require dongles (e.g. FlexLM based) are prime candidates for virtualisation. We can virtualise these servers and know that if we have to fail over to our backup data centre everything will still work.

Intergraph now require a licence server if we want to use their SmartPlant Materials (formerly called Marian) product. Thta’s fine, it’s their product. Unfortunately, they won’t allow us to virtualise the licence server. To my mind, this means that Intergraph are saying that they don’t care about us or our business.

It’s just not good enough!