Six Apart is up to no good again. First, there was the 3.16/3.17 UTF-8 Dirify bug, then MT 3.2 was announced (it's now in beta), but if one reads their list of features, it makes one wonder whether these are truly new features or just bugfixes or concepts that some of the competitors have been using for years (for the zealots, I've got one really good example from the recent past: dynamic pages vs. page rebuilding ;)
Even when the MT people finally found the cause of those damn "500 Internal Server Error"s (though I'm not quite certain that they have found all of them, yet), the bug was, unsurprisingly, connected to a third-party database module and, somehow, CPanel. How convenient for Six Apart.
Don't even get me started on MT-Blacklist. First, I installed it, then it failed because of poor coding and aforementioned errors and I was forced to upgrade and add a shitload of other plugins, only to be told, after about a month, that someone has amalgamated all those plugins into SpamLookup and, therefore, all my work, to tweak everything and make all those damn plugins work together, was for nothing.
Now, apparently, there will be more feature integration in MT 3.2 and, thus, inevitably, more wasted effort. But, hey, I've put so much time into working with this MT bullshit now, I just can't make the switch that easily anymore. Thanks a lot, Six Apart.
P.S. Despite al this bullshit, I do have to admit that (as per a demo Six Apart put out), MT 3.2 does seem to be an easier upgrade than usual, but I treat even this promise with some skepticism (it reminds me of the supposedly-unsupervised installation that Windows Longhorn [recently-named "Vista" or WinVI, by some (more here)] is supposed to have).
P.S. Ah, what the hell: Windows Vista release schedule and logo:
Sweet. ;)
P.P.S. I just couldn't resist and made a "Win Vista" badge using the 80x15 Brilliant Button Maker (thanks again, Edgar! ;)
It's basically based on the image below, that I found at Bink.nu:
You will be assimilated! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ;)
P.P.P.S. Oh, man, domain name squatters are already jumping on the bandwagon!
Fuck!
Windows Vista!
NOT winVI.
VI is osmething else entirely, something good and noble! something that's been used for the last 20 years! something every unix posseses!
gah!
alkjdsfkljasdf
AAAHAHAHAHAHA, oooh man, AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I knew you'd blow a gasket! Ooh man, I laughed so hard I almost fell off my chair. AHAHAHAHA, don't worry, I don't think it'll catch on anyways, although... with "Win2K" and "WinXP," you never know. ;)
Oh, man, you made my day, heh.
"Six Apart is up to no good again." ...so we're screwing up?
"the bug was, unsurprisingly, connected to a third-party database module and, somehow, CPanel" ...but the bug wasn't our fault
"someone has amalgamated all those plugins into SpamLookup" ...so one of our engineers made spam blocking better and simpler
"there will be more feature integration in MT 3.2" ...and you're against us including good ideas in the application?
" I do have to admit that, MT 3.2 does seem to be an easier upgrade than usual" ...and even you concede that we're getting lots of stuff right in this release.
I gotta say, this is good trolling... you call the application "Shite" but use it every day and admit that we're improving in almost every area and that the most serious problems aren't our fault. Well played!
Listen, Anil, why do you even bother to post on my blog if you think I'm an annoying troll? (How could I even be "trolling" on my own site? Is no opinion safe from MT zealots anymore?)
At any rate, I've been using MT since about 2002 and ,ever since Six Apart became a Big Corporation, I've had nothing but grief; every single installation disabled something that worked more-or-less fine, before; a ton of plugins would unexpectedly give me server errors and your support forum regulars were, and are, less than friendly; but we talked about this already.
Let's get things straight: a) if you're designing software than 90% of your users run with PHP, MySQL and CPanel, it is your responsibility to get it to work right, regardless of which side fails to perform. It's just like how, as a web designer, I am forced to work around IE's bugs; yes, I am responsible for Microsoft's errors, because if I do nothing and blame third parties, I don't get paid.
b) Yeah, it's all always "better and simpler," but I've got a shitload of files to reinstall and clean out of my directories. Every once in a while I get an error in my Activity Log about some plugin that I could've sworn I have removed or installed properly. A lot of entries created using an older version of MT and then imported into the newer version behaved unexpectedly or had to be deleted and recreated. *shrug*
So, c) I'm not against "including good ideas" in MT; I'm against uncontrollable bloatware that MT is slowly, but surely, turning into. Compared to the competitors, who are years ahead in entry posting, dynamic entries (I still found no easy solution to migrate to dynamic pages in MT, yet), etc., MT is lagging, and I haven't got the time or willpower to start using a new program.
Thus, d) I'm forced to use and upgrade MT, until an easy way to migrate turns up, just like I held off with the old MT-Blacklist until it failed completely and I had to upgrade. I give credit where credit is due, and it seems that MT 3.2 is, finally, a step in the right direction, but that's as far as I will go, for now.
Perhaps version 3.2 will do for MT what Win2K did for Windows; if MT 3.2 does all that it promises, I will praise MT with the same fervour with which I currently denounce its familiar form-over-function attitude which (from the design of its website, to its PR approach) has dominated MT's ways for the last two years.
Anil, I'm a small-time web designer and student. I maintain an endless amount of small sites, supervise about a dozen on this server and run three blogs. Despite everything, you work for Six Apart and I dig around in small pieces of code that fail more often than work. *shrug* Really, I'm tired of soothing pastel graphics and promises of a better future. We'll see how it all plays out soon enough.