BTW, I always thought those “I’m a PC” ads were stupid. I’m a human and running Linux on my PC was my idea.

(h/t: JH)

Good: The work crew didn’t finish, so we didn’t have to go in to move equipment.

Bad: They rescheduled it for the 29th. Good thing I didn’t have plans for then, eh?

Good: I went in anyway to finish updating my laptop, since I’d already planned my day around that.

Bad: I’m still in awe of how primitive Windows software updating is.

Good: I got everything installed and updated … except for one last product.

Let’s review …

On a new machine, before it actually gets used for anything, I install all the typical software I expect to use (or need to support), install all the updates, “touch” all the programs to get past the agreements, registrations, and initial setups. I do all this as Administrator.

Then I log in as my regular (administrative powers) user and touch everything again, to get past the agreements, registrations, and initial setups. Because some programs do have per-user setups, but others haven’t quite figured out how to deal with global (machine-specific, non-user specific) settings, and some are just insanely anal about accusing you of being a pirate and insisting on verifying and validating your right to use their precious software.

Finally, I defrag, recreate the page and hibernate files as contiguous chunks, empty all caches and history, delete all temporary files, defrag again, and create an image backup. I do all this to get a known good image, up to date, configured like I want, ready to be restored at a moment’s notice.

You know what’s coming next …

Ahem. So I’ve done the Administrator part above — everything has gone smoothly, if tediously, all the programs are working, there have been no errors, so now I’m ready to install a firewall. I install virus software and then firewall software last, because I don’t want to be slowed down and/or nagged while I’m doing the earlier installations and so their scans will pick up all the previous software in one pass. One of the reasons I do this at my office is so I’m behind the company firewall in the meantime.

The UGLY

The company uses ZoneAlarm Pro on their laptops. Lately the installation has often, but not consistently, been a little flaky, but otherwise installs ok. So I decided to install Free ZoneAlarm on mine.

Oops. Something about not finding ordinal 23 in vsdata.dll, over and over again — that’s one I’ve not seen before. Reboot. Restart the installation. Apparently goes ok.

Except on reboot Dell’s connection manager bombs. And the Network Connections folder won’t open. And shutdown hangs at the “Saving your settings” window.

Reinstall. Now things appear to work ok.

Log in as my regular user. Previous symptoms.

Reinstall as regular user. Now things appear to work ok.

Log in as Administrator. Broken.

Repeat.

Apparently, last installer wins, other users broken.

Give up in disgust and go home, to deal with it tomorrow (now today).

This morning I uninstall ZoneAlarm, clean it out of the registry, etc.

I still have a system that, while it does connect to the network (that has always worked throughout all this), the connection manager usually won’t start, and the Network Connections folder usually won’t open, and it won’t shut down cleanly, hanging at the “Saving your settings” window.

Great. I’m OCD enough that I want a clean, untainted (so to speak) image for backup. Now I have to decide whether to try to fix this, or start over from a bare-metal installation. Arrrgh. I’m gonna put this off until after Christmas at least.

Have I mentioned lately that I detest Windows?

Gets your attention doesn’t it? Being such a fan of Microsoft, I couldn’t help but get a little buzz when I read that.

Actually, Microsoft is banned from selling versions of Word that contain a particular piece of “XML technology” which i4i has patented.

This is effective January 11, 2010. The injunction was originally granted last August, but was stayed until MS’s appeal, which they lost yesterday, was ruled upon.

I doubt that MS will actually stop selling Word; they’ll either drop the disputed technology or come up with some royalty agreement with i4i.

One concern I have, if they drop (or alter) the technology, is what effect that will have on the usability of older documents that were saved using the original code.

Just yesterday someone showed me a stack of diskettes they found while cleaning up their office, containing files generated with old software no one (that I know of) has any more. Fortunately, it was out of date material that could be discarded.

Archivists have legitimate concerns about digital artifacts. Not only is the software needed to process material soon out of date and no longer available, but the hardware needed to simply access the media is disappearing as well. For example, diskette drives are now usually special-order items rather than standard; how long before you can’t even get one at all?

But there are a few people who are thinking of The Long Now.

According to Roz Ho (a Microsoft VP) at t-mobile.com/sidekick (10/15/2009 1:00 AM PDT):

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage.
[...]
We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way. This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data.
[...]
Sincerely,
Roz Ho
Corporate Vice President
Premium Mobile Experiences, Microsoft Corporation

Note that updates to that link are replacements, not additions or edits.

Credit for lost service and data

Previously [10/12], we were told:

In the event certain customers have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content, T-Mobile will be sending these customers a $100 customer appreciation card. This will be in addition to the free month of data service that already went to Sidekick data customers. This card can be used towards T-Mobile products and services, or a customer’s T-Mobile bill. For those who fall into this category, details will be sent out in the next 14 days – there is no action needed on the part of these customers. We however remain hopeful that for the majority of our customers, personal content can be recovered. –Dan, T-MOBILE STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION, MON., OCT. 12 , T-Mobile Forums

Fortunately, I’ve not lost anything that I’m aware of — on my phone. I already knew not to reset my phone or remove the battery. Whether my “stuff” has been recovered on the servers, I don’t know. Nor do I have any idea how to interpret “significant” or “fall into this category”.

Dogfooding or Sabotage?

Earlier speculation [10/12] at AppleInsider, based on “insider” information, suggested that it likely was “dogfooding” or perhaps even sabotage:

Additional insiders have stepped forward to shed more light into Microsoft’s troubled acquisition of Danger, its beleaguered Pink Project, and what has become one of the most high profile Information Technology disasters in recent memory.

The sources point to longstanding management issues, a culture of “dogfooding” (to eradicate any vestiges of competitor’s technologies after an acquisition), and evidence that could suggest the failure was the result of a deliberate act of sabotage.

–AppleInsider, Microsoft’s Sidekick/Pink problems blamed on dogfooding and sabotage

Negligence or Incompetence?

Despite this being from the Apple camp (and my own biased opinion against Microsoft), I think that upgrading without adequate contingency planning, along with inadequate operating procedures, is likely what really happened:

Microsoft’s accountability in supporting its acquired Sidekick support obligations with T-Mobile was also shirked. The source stated that “apparently Microsoft has been lying to them [T-Mobile] this whole time about the amount of resources that they’ve been putting behind Sidekick development and support [at Danger] (in reality, it was cut down to a handful of people in Palo Alto managing some contractors in Romania, Ukraine, etc.). The reason for the deceit wasn’t purely to cover up the development of Pink but also because Microsoft could get more money from T-Mobile for their support contract if T-Mobile thought that there were still hundreds of engineers working on the Sidekick platform. As we saw from their recent embarrassment with Sidekick data outages, that has clearly not been the case for some time.”

That indicates that Danger’s high profile cloud services failure didn’t occur in spite of Microsoft’s ownership, but rather because of it. [emphasis mine --loh] This has led observers to question the company’s commitment to its other cloud services, not just Windows Mobile MyPhone, but also the Azure Services Platform of cloud computing efforts that the company has had on the drawing board for years. Azure is designed to allow third parties to build applications that are dependent upon Microsoft’s data centers.

–AppleInsider, Microsoft’s Danger Sidekick data loss casts dark on cloud computing

Consequences

I imagine one or more people, not necessarily the most responsible, are out of a job.

Microsoft has taken another black eye. This will bleed over into their other hosted services, current and planned. They’ve tried to distance themselves by saying that Danger was a separate unit, but they bought them over a year ago, so they “own” the issue, regardless of how much they wiggle.

T-Mobile I see more as a victim; I’m not sure how much blame for this they should share. In any case, they have halted sales of Sidekicks until this is resolved, many customers are jumping ship, and their reputation will suffer, no matter who is to blame.

Personally, I like the Sidekick despite its having a “for kids” reputation; it has an excellent keyboard, plenty of apps for what I need, and relatively inexpensive unlimited plans. For now, I’ll stick with it — surely MS/Danger will be particularly vigilant to prevent further disasters — but whenever my contract comes around, I too may switch to something else. Again, it’s back to my anti-Microsoft bias, but I’ll never trust the service like I did before.

Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.

[...]
Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. –T-Mobile, t-mobile.com/sidekick, Oct 10 update

Notice the opening warning. They do provide information on how you may be able to reconstruct some of your data, such as entering (or using pre-existing) contact information in another system (say, Outlook or Google Mail) and then export/import it. Unfortunately just getting it back into the sidekick isn’t sufficient because they are still working on the data service back-end — “new” stuff you enter will still not be backed up on the servers. Until the data service is fully operational, you’ll still need to keep your data elsewhere … which is actually a good plan anyway. Backgound at my “Sidekicks out planet-wide”

The first lesson to be learned is: don’t keep important stuff (solely) in a remote email account, because you never know when someone or something will take it away. –me, Losing your stuff

See “‘Side By Side Assemblies’ Bring DLL Hell 2.0” at Slashdot.

I didn’t pay much attention at first, since this does happen occasionally, but not for this long. You’d think that someone would send out a text message noting the issue, and/or provide a note on the T-Mobile web site, but all I’ve googled so far is this (all posts are from the T-Mobile forums):

Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, and T-Mobile regret any inconveniences experienced by Sidekick customers as a result of a technical issue. This will limit customer access to data services but it will not affect phone or texting capabilities. We are working with Danger to resolve the issue and hope to have things restored to normal soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding. –forum post 5041

Hmm, I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that Microsoft had purchased Danger in April 2008. That explains a lot </snark>.

In a FOAF-like comment, someone reported that

the rep [...] said “all sidekicks on the planet are out” –forum post 5055

Wow! A planet-wide disaster! Cool!! But, ya know, it’s getting kind of old. How long until it’s fixed? Yet another indirect source:

they informed [the T-Mobile store rep] that Danger had a system crash and all data will be restored within 2-3 business days –forum post 5062

Two to three business days? WTF? That means Monday or Tuesday. I hope this is just a poor choice of words — wouldn’t you consider a “system crash” of this magnitude serious enough to work on it over the weekend?

“Mississippi residents have until Oct. 16 to submit claims under the state’s settlement of a lawsuit with Microsoft.” –WJTV, “Mississippi-Microsoft Deadline”

h/t: WJTV (Twitter)

The state gets $40 to $48 million directly, while vouchers to just about any constituency you can think of will account for up $60 million or so.

Now, I’m somewhat gleeful that MS smacked MS[FT], but I’m disappointed in that the bottom-of-the-food-chain consumers only get a few paltry dollars (either $5 or $12). Well, actually, they don’t even get that; what they really get are vouchers good for buying “any hardware or software”. While the article says “any”, I wonder if that really means “any Microsoft” product. Oh … I wonder how the lawyers made out.

I’m also concerned that by the time the bureaucratic procedures mentioned in the article are implemented and all the vouchers are processed, that it will actually cost more than the cheap vouchers are worth — unless you’re a bureaucrat, of course. Honestly, I wouldn’t go through the hoops necessary to get a $5 Microsoft voucher. If the $60 million in vouchers aren’t all claimed, the state will only get an extra $8 million — that’s an interesting provision.

Finally, now that this is settled, MS & MS can go marching hand in hand into the sunset dawn of a new day: “[Attorney] General Hood further stated, ‘I now look forward to working with Microsoft on helping us on two of my most passionate issues: stopping intellectual property theft and cyber child pornography.’”

h/t: WJTV (Twitter)

You’d think that downloading a file from a web site would be a simple process, but noooo, our friends at Microsoft have to make it a major effort — you have to seriously want to get that file.

Microsoft’s PowerShell looked like it might be useful for creating some administrative scripts for work, so I jumped to the download page. Since I was working from my typical workspace, I’d opened the site with Firefox (on Linux), which of course is unacceptable to Microsoft because the want to make sure you’re using genuine MS software just to download the file:

This download is available to customers running genuine Microsoft Windows. Please click the Continue button to begin Windows validation.

I should have remembered how anal they are about that. I switched over to my VM running XP, opened IE, and pasted in the link. Hmm, blank page. So I jump to the top of the download area and search for PowerShell, go to the download page, and click on the Continue button to “validate” my system.

It’s been a while since I’ve downloaded anything from MS, so I was surprised to get yet another page with a set of validation steps. To validate, I have to click yet another Continue button

• to download and run GenuineCheck.exe
• which will give me a “validation code”
• which I then have to paste into a field on the new validation page

Arrrgh! I flash on the The Daily WTF‘s wooden table meme.

You know it wasn’t that simple. I endure the download, click the “Run” button … and get told that the program is an old version and is no longer supported, and I should download the latest from MS. WTF? — after all, I just finished downloading it from MS.

Generally it’s a sign of stupidity to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results, but after all, this is Windows, which has a built-in results randomizer … so I click “Continue” again … and immediately GenuineCheck runs (wheee!) and gives me a code to paste into the Step 2 field. Now I’m taken to another page where I can finally click a “Download” button and get the PowerShell installer.

Well, now I’ve got PowerShell. I eagerly (snicker) peruse the documentation. Among other things, it won’t run scripts by default (security, ya know). Great. I can either disable security, or download the .NET Framework SDK to get a certificate generator / signing utility. Even then, I can’t conveniently put scripts on other machines unless I 1) go through convolutions to install my cert on those machines, or 2) buy a cert from a “trusted third party”.

Ok, no big deal. I’ve about decided it’s not worth the effort, since I can accomplish the few things I want to do without resorting to PS — I just wanted to play with a new (to me) toy.

After glancing at the command structure, PS looks like a bastardization of bash (particularly when you consider all the included “unix” aliases, and the pseudo-drives that map into the environment (ENV:), the registry (HKLM:), and other namespaces), DCL (the regularized verb-object pattern), and a few other shells and scripting languages thrown in, with some funky syntax to glue it all together … but passing “objects” is kinda cool.

Although not directly apropos, I’m reminded of a couple aphorisms: 1) operating systems evolve to re-implement Unix, poorly; and 2) programming languages evolve to re-implement Lisp, poorly.

Updates

• 2009-03-26: I see that PS has recently been added to Microsoft Update, so you can install it that way rather than having to get a separate download.
• 2009-09-30: If you got here from The Daily WTF, you may be interested in my “A Visit From DEC Corporate” post.