A news article popped up in my feed reader saying that “Microsoft Ukraine” is launching a site about licensing. To quote it directly:
« »
a portal about licensing, where visitors can learn what licensing is and what it means from a legal standpoint.
Since I deal with licensing questions at work, and the legal side of it is quite interesting (because it’s so contradictory), I decided to read more.
First of all, that pathetic news site I do the honor of reading their drivel on didn’t provide a link to the portal — I had to Google it. I found the Microsoft Ukraine website, but there’s nothing about the portal in the news section. Still, some article caught my eye, so I clicked through — and it turns out they have podcasts!
I thought — great, I just finished listening to Radio-T, this will be something to entertain me on the road. I’ll listen to the latest news from the potential enemy’s camp.
However, the treacherous Microsoft put me through an anal Vietnam a stern ordeal.
First, the podcast page content wasn’t rendering because JavaScript was disabled via NoScript. When I allowed scripts, this wretched soul (the site, that is) reloaded — but instead of showing me what I wanted (as normal sites behave in such cases), it continued showing me the error page, while slapping a banner on top of it asking me to install some Internet Explorer.
When I clicked the podcast link again, the page did open. JavaScript was required solely to display, at the top of the page, a picture of a dimwit leaning back in his chair and relaxing while Win98 installs on his computer
As one might guess from this eloquent image, the topic at hand is RSS. Click on it — and voilà: we’re greeted by an article in the foreign language explaining what RSS is, and informing us that wherever on Microsoft’s wonderful site you, dear reader, see this icon — 
— you’ll be able to take full advantage of this technology.
Mind-blowing. Yet the “podcasts” section doesn’t lead to a list of podcasts — it leads to a search!
And there’s no RSS in that search.
And when I gave up on downloading the podcasts the normal way and decided to try a couple manually, it turned out the damn thing also requires registration.
Is it really that hard to do things properly?
Microsoft being Microsoft. Everything through the back door, as always.
Makes you want to swear and spit.
My apologies to the esteemed readers. (And if you, reader, are from Microsoft — kindly kiss yourself goodbye)