Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

myce.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 124 posts

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#61

Post by mitchty »

kenjackson wrote: post #50
kabdib wrote: post #48

SharePoint has always been a piece of garbage. Unfortunately it's a money making piece of garbage, so there you go. Inside MS, SharePoint is often used to "track" project documents. Start a project and -poof- your most unfavorite PM has creates a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents in because none of the categories match anything in the actual product. Like, having whole separa…

When we do that, we lose control of the documents, we can't get at the history, we can't search them, we can't even find stuff in there, Except SharePoint does store history and you can search it. And no need to create a second Beta1 and Beta2 folder when you can just mark documents as release = Beta1 or release = Beta2.

No share point does not store history. Get a file above a certain size, and that magically just stops working.

Every time I've seen share point used, everyone described it the same way. Its where documents go to die.

So far at the current gig a share point "upgrade" has meant that all our fun use of the old install is useless. All of the sudden wikis look more useful.

Burn me once and all that. Oh and search, yeah that search is about as useful as altavista was back in the day.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#62

Post by pgeorgi »

jmspring wrote: post #40
0x0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole RT thing sounds like a joke. Even on wikipedia there's a circular link collection on top of each of those articles, "WinRT, not to be confused with Windows RT, not to be confused with Windows Runtime, ..." Btw, I just noticed that the old Surface is now known as PixelSense. Makes sense.

Um, no. Pixelsense is technology behind touch, gestures, and similar. Take a look at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/pixelsense/pixelsense.aspx

Yes, and something very similar used to be called Microsoft Surface (for example, see http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/digital-home/home...)

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#63

Post by mitchty »

hrabago wrote: post #60
natch wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except SharePoint does store history and you can... It does until it doesn't. Just like "Plays for Sure(TM)," also from MS, worked until it didn't.

> Just like "Plays for Sure(TM)," also from MS, worked until it didn't. Are you referring to unintended technical defects or DRM?

I think he's referring to when they made sure that "plays for sure" drm license/authentication/whatever servers got shut down so all the music you bought became a bunch of bits in a bucket.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#64

Post by jmspring »

jmspring wrote: post #40
0x0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole RT thing sounds like a joke. Even on wikipedia there's a circular link collection on top of each of those articles, "WinRT, not to be confused with Windows RT, not to be confused with Windows Runtime, ..." Btw, I just noticed that the old Surface is now known as PixelSense. Makes sense.

Um, no. Pixelsense is technology behind touch, gestures, and similar. Take a look at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/pixelsense/pixelsense.aspx

@pgeorgi - I was specifically responding to -- "Btw, I just noticed that the old Surface is now known as PixelSense. Makes sense."

MSFT (and other companies) have a very bad habit of circular/redundant/superfluous naming conventions.

In this case Pixelsense and the renamed Surface RT never had direct naming overlap.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#65

Post by skrebbel »

kabdib wrote: post #48

SharePoint has always been a piece of garbage. Unfortunately it's a money making piece of garbage, so there you go. Inside MS, SharePoint is often used to "track" project documents. Start a project and -poof- your most unfavorite PM has creates a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents in because none of the categories match anything in the actual product. Like, having whole separa…

Your comment is witty, but I have absolutely no idea what it has to do with OneDrive modifying files. It's not even about Microsoft or the effects of any of their choices or policies - it's about stupid managers.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#66

Post by edmccard »

marshray wrote: post #47
marcosdumay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only file synchronization tools (commercial or not) could ever fit that description, any other kind of tool must manipulate some kind of file. The only problem is that we are talking exactly about a file synchronization tool. Thus the exercise isn't as valuable as it may appear at first.

I found this KB https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2903984 which doesn't mention the term 'file' anywhere (except to refer to the downloaded installer file). It uses the terms 'library' and 'content': The stand-alone OneDrive for Business (formerly SkyDrive Pro) sync client lets users of Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and Microsoft SharePoint Online in Office 365 sync their personal OneDrive for Business (formerly SkyDrive…

>Is there something other than the substring 'Drive' that gives the expectation of a fully generic file synchronization tool?

I don't think anyone is expecting OneDrive to be "fully generic" (I believe that 'emeraldd was referring to the "tries to do intelligent things" portion of the sentence he quoted).

It just seems that people are unaware of the fact that putting certain kinds of documents into "document libraries" or "team site libraries" involves automatically adding metadata to those documents (from the OP's example, html comments and "xmlns:..." attributes were added to html files).

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#67

Post by kabdib »

skrebbel wrote: post #65
kabdib wrote: post #48

SharePoint has always been a piece of garbage. Unfortunately it's a money making piece of garbage, so there you go. Inside MS, SharePoint is often used to "track" project documents. Start a project and -poof- your most unfavorite PM has creates a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents in because none of the categories match anything in the actual product. Like, having whole separa…

Your comment is witty, but I have absolutely no idea what it has to do with OneDrive modifying files. It's not even about Microsoft or the effects of any of their choices or policies - it's about stupid managers.

Well, that. Also about how bad SharePoint is, and the kind of people who think that it's okay, when it's not. I wouldn't put my data there because the types of things you run into on SP are endemic and fractally bad.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#68

Post by ableal »

kabdib wrote: post #48

SharePoint has always been a piece of garbage. Unfortunately it's a money making piece of garbage, so there you go. Inside MS, SharePoint is often used to "track" project documents. Start a project and -poof- your most unfavorite PM has creates a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents in because none of the categories match anything in the actual product. Like, having whole separa…

> a procrustean bed of document folders, all set for you to lose your documents

"I resemble that remark". Shudder.

Such fun, a web implementation of a 1980s folder system, with no possible way of doing an "ls -lr". One gets to click every node in a three or four deep hierarchy to look for a document. Shudder, erase from memory.

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#69

Post by w124me »

Microsoft is not the only one. I had saved a special PDF with settings to full screen the PDF on open. I uploaded this to my Google Drive to transfer it to another machine and it completely reconverted the file into another type of PDF which not only corrupted the document but also broke the full screen open setting. This is a really random circumstance, but I was surprised to see GD reconvert the PDF, not store what I wanted "byte-for-byte"

Re: Microsoft OneDrive for Business modifies files as it syncs

#70

Post by jasomill »

nwh wrote: post #16
lucio wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try BTSync

Closed source with that sort of application is uncomfortable.

If you want open source, and you're okay with manual sync and conflict resolution, I've had good results in the past using Unison[1] to sync multiple systems.

At this point, though, I've personally settled on a system similar to the GP's — a backed-up laptop. In the rare event I need to access a document on the laptop when I've left it at home, there's always ssh, and, in the even more rare case where I need a document and I've left the laptop elsewhere, there's always ssh + rooting around Time Machine folders on my backup server. Finally, for times when I don't want to carry the laptop and know I'll need access to files, GoodReader[2] on iOS syncs over a variety of file server and cloud storage protocols.

[1] http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

[2] http://www.goodiware.com/goodreader.html

Post reply on HN