We, Microsoft, are deprecating NTLM, and want to hear from you.

Holy crap, this is going to break half the world. Deprecating NTLM is like banning all the standard locks on all doors and mandating that you can only use biometric-based locks that scan your iris — and then just hoping people can do it. This is going to suck if they actually try to enforce this and do in fact take away NTLM.

I don’t feel like writing a whole long post about NTLM — what it is and does — but Microsoft is going to nuke a whole lot of shit when they do this. Currently, the documentation for how to transition away from NTLM is terrible and nearly-unusable, many applications and devices do not support Kerberos (the newer alternative to NTLM), and many companies will not be able to comply with this at all for at least 15-20 years.

This is going to break a vast amount of stuff. I need to schedule a very long vacation when Microsoft does this craziness. Don’t want to be anywhere near this pointless disaster.

This is yet another example of fake security that makes many, many things harder or impossible to use for extremely little gain. It just makes life roundly more difficult “for your own good.” Really, though, it is being done so you have to buy more Microsoft products and get further locked in to their ecosystem.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Please, experience the awesomeness that is Baby Queen for yourself.

She understands the overarching point Nietzsche was making better than most PhD-ed philosophers.

When I got out of the military I was lucky I didn’t need a job — as I’d made a lot of money in the stock market — because all of this is true:

Typical interviews would be like:

Interviewer: We are looking for someone with office experience.

Me: I worked in an office for nearly five years, creating press releases, reporting stories, escorting reporters and dignitaries, conducting public relations worldwide, and researching relevant topics for command.

Interviewer: So you didn’t work in an office because you were in the army.

Me: I just told you I worked in an office nearly every day. I just did a lot of other stuff too. I generally worked 12-16 hour days.

Interviewer: But how could you work in an office and be in the army?

—

Interviewer: Describe your experience with budgeting.

Me: For the last two years of my career, I was responsible for a $180,000 budget that covered all training, deployment, equipment and miscellaneous expenses.

Interviewer: So buying guns and stuff?

Me: What, no? I’m talking about computers, office equipment, that sort of thing.

Interviewer: So who bought the guns?

Me, shaking my head: The gun buyer??

—

Interviewer: Have you ever managed people?

Me: For the last three years of my military career, I was team lead (not what it’s really called in the military) for all the journalists and public affairs staff in my office.

Interviewer: No, I mean managed people when they didn’t have to do what you say.

Me: That’s not really how the military works. Anyway, I worked with paratroopers only — no paratrooper just does what anyone says, or they wouldn’t be paratroopers. I actively managed five to seven staff for those three years.

Interviewer: So they just had to listen to you.

By the way, those conversations above were all real as best as I recall them. Civilians are utterly clueless about the military and how it works. So much so that it’s comical — except when you’re looking for a job and those bizarre and hilarious misconceptions bite you right in the ass.

Yeah, this person has experienced the horrible trauma that is tech support:

I think my record for telling someone how to find their Windows start menu on a single call is right around 10 times — where they actually found it, anyway. More than a few never could. And this was the era when it actually said “Start” on it as plain as could be. Apparently using a computer prevents many people from tasks like reading or having a functioning brain.

No one could ever explain to me why I should give someone a pass for supposed lack of technical ability when they can’t find the word “Start” on a screen that looks like this (this is Windows 98 SE):