back to article Microsoft: Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, my PowerShell has gone RC

Welcome to the last Microsoft round-up of 2019. While it may seem that the Windows mines of Redmond have been deserted by Nadella's minions ahead of the holidays, there remains one more roundup before the delight of 2020 falls upon us. What's that under the tree? A PowerShell 7.0 RC? Oh, you shouldn't have! Microsoft …

  1. Teiwaz

    Santa's Hat caused offence.

    I must admit, I was expecting some sort of poor icon design kind of remiscant of how Death in Gauntlet appeared (in some home computer versions at least).

    The cog was clearly wearing a santa hat, and didn't even vaguely resemble genitals by any stretch of the imagination.

    I'm not particularly keen on how the whole xmas thing is hard to avoid this time of year, but while the majority of the population want to celebrate in this way.

    Does VLC still don a santa hat at this time of year?

    There are more annoying xmas traditions that need complaining about - like xmas songs <u>incessantly</u> in all shops almost as soon as halloween is past.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

      Now it takes a single anonymous moron troll to make an entire company to knee. And I have the suspicion it was another post to sown discord.

      I would have closed the issue as "no change required" and removed its account because the nickname "Ghost" is offensive to people who think ghost are a superstition, to those who think ghost are the spawn of Satan, and especially to those killed because they believed they could talk with ghosts... <G>

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

        Ghost is github's name for a deleted user. I'll leave the offectiveness is or otherwise of that choice of name for other people to discuss.

        I guess it's some 4chan gag anyway. If it is, they're probably disappointed MS caved in so early.

        1. jaywin

          Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

          When the issue (and removal of the hat) was posted it was attached to a user with a number of projects on his account, and a regular posting history. Looked like a legit user to me*, although with the vs code project having to be locked down for 24 hours to let people calm down, I'm not surprised he's ended up having to delete his account.

          * Doesn't discount the possibility his account was hacked

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

          "ghost" has to be a troll. Jews objecting to Christmas? It's an opportunity to get together for a big Chinese meal in some places.

          I think few Jews object to Jesus. It's the actions of people who call themselves his followers yet so spectacularly ignore, pervert and misrepresent his teachings that they object to. He was, after all, Jewish.

    2. NetBlackOps

      Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

      VLC has on my system.

    3. iron Silver badge

      Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

      This is why we can't have nice things. They should have asked the moaner to point to where Santa exists in the bible (he claimed it was a religious symbol) and promised to remove it once they verified the book, chapter and verse.

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

        What’re you talking about? Plenty of references to Santa in my copy of the Bible (Authorized Jing Kames Editoon, Published By The Dyslexia Support Association). “Get Thee Behind Me, Santa” and so on...

        1. quxinot

          Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

          Not punny.

          You owe me a keyboard, sir.

        2. Aussie Doc
          Pint

          Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

          Yeah, thanks to autocorrect, my kids were hanging out for a visit from Satan this year.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

            Well? Did they get one?

            Enquiring anagrammists want to know.

    4. Agnes.W

      Re: Santa's Hat caused offence.

      Pushing religious symbols as part of a product update is completely unacceptable

  2. steviebuk Silver badge

    I really...

    ...need to stop being lazy and try and learn Powershell. I was looking back at the Commodore 64 the other day and thought "I want to finally learn Basic" :) why? What use will it be, I should really learn Powershell.

    The only thing is sometimes the Powershell environment annoys me. Only just having discovered the & command in cmd so you can do

    Gpresult /h a.html & a.html

    Which runs the first command and then the 2nd. Couldn't do this in Powershell. Then someone pointed out you do

    gpresult /h a.html; .\a.html

    Which wasn't obvious to me considering Powershell had alias for other cmd commands

    1. simonlb Silver badge

      Re: I really...

      It really depends what your use case is but from personal experience when coupled with something like PrimalForms to create a front-end, you can create some very nice and handy user account management tools which make your job a lot lot easier.

      Mind you, having had to create my own tools from scratch because my employer at the time only had a budget to pay off people on the redundancy merry go round every quarter, I also found that vbscript in a few cases could also do exactly the same job, but just a hell of a lot faster.

    2. FuzzyWuzzys

      Re: I really...

      We perform regular updates direct in AD from the HR database, just the useful employee stuff like job title updates and such like. With 3,500 employees and using about 10 lines of Powershell I can update all the non-critical attributes of all employees direct from the HR DB in around 30 secs. We also automate all new AD user creations ( after a form and details are checked by a fleshy HR manager of course ), the AD user creation with basic dept relevant privs takes about 4.5 secs per user, we have around 90 dept base profiles. If new default apps get installed in the company, we just add the required AD groups to the profile listings and issue an update. We have an Ops team and I build WinForm GUIs using Powershell script, they use them to install software onto systems, things like third-party monitoring agents.

      Powershell sits on top of .Net, so you have all the power from the .Net framework if you want it. I'm just a Unix systems admin and I learned C# so I could code plugin DLLs for PowerShell.

      If you're not using Powershell day-to-day on Windows, then you're missing out on a huge amount of automation power! Use Powershell to save you admin time so you can spend more time learning more about Powershell!

    3. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: I really...

      I'm with you. There is nothing intuitive about Powershell.

      Typical damn Microsoft.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I really...

        The Powershell is deepest blue

        And Redmond thinks it's good for you.

        Though Unix admins point and sneer

        It's what you get with Windows, dear.

  3. Sam Adams the Dog

    Santa is not an elf!

    'The annual tracking of "Santa" is due to get underway shortly, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) will be using satellite imagery from Bing Maps to make things a little more, er, realistic for those wishing to monitor the magical elf.'

    Umm, Santa is not an elf!

    1. iron Silver badge

      Re: Santa is not an elf!

      Prove it.

      1. 9Rune5

        Re: Santa is not an elf!

        Prove it.

        You won't get many gifts from Santa with that attitude. QED.

      2. Stuart Moore
        Joke

        Re: Santa is not an elf!

        Have you seen the vehicle he rides in? Rooftop work blatantly ignoring working at height regulations?! No way is he part of elf and safety.

    2. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

      Re: Santa is not an elf!

      Is he an a.out?

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Powershell is to go cross platform??

    Beware folk from Redmond bearing gifts (that you bet the company on).

    Enfold, extend....

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Amazing powerful scripting language. Shame that there is nothing even to close to as good as this in the Open Source world.

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