Bitter? or just a difference of opinion?

I just found an article on the BBC News site titled,

It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars

As I started to read down this I thought it was a journalist with a Microsoft grudge who hadn’t done his research and it wasn’t until I got to the end that I realised this wasn’t exactly the case

The article was written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation.

The name rang a bell so I looked up his wikipedia entry and he’s the guy who launched the GNU Project and developed EMACS

Go read the whole thing yourself but here’s a couple of the sections I’d like to take issue with

“Microsoft’s software is distributed under licenses that keep users divided and helpless. The users are divided because they are forbidden to share copies with anyone else. The users are helpless because they don’t have the source code that programmers can read and change.

If you’re a programmer and you want to change the software, for yourself or for someone else, you can’t.

If you’re a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs better, you can’t. If you copy it to share with your friend, which is simple good-neighbourliness, they call you a "pirate".”

I’m sorry Richard this is called BUSINESS

Firstly, if I create something and expect to be financially compensated for it I expect every person who uses/owns it to pay up. Not just the first person who then passes onto everyone he knows who then in turn pass it on to everyone they know, etc, etc

Currently the same applies to DVD’s and music. If you copy those and pass them on for free then you are a pirate it’s not “good neighbourliness”. The fact that it’s software is irrelevant

Your obviously a big fan of free software. Well am I too. But I don’t believe that ALL software should be free. People still need to earn a living so if they decide they want to make money from their software. Good for them

If someone makes some similar software and charge less for it (or makes it free!) then that first person has to make their software even better. That’s called competition!

Do you work for free Richard? How do you pay for your house? Your food? Your computer hardware? At some point money comes from someone working. People make money from the skills they have. If that’s making software then so be it

Secondly, the bit where you talk about not being able to pay a pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs is way off the mark

Microsoft make a big deal out of the fact they are a platform company

Let’s talk about one of their flagship products as an example, Microsoft Office

For some years office has come bundled with Visual Basic for Applications. It allows you to turn the program into a platform where you can then add on extra functionality where making use of the products core functions as part of that. It’s so simple even I can do it!More recently we’ve also had the Visual Studio Tools for Office which perform a similar function but allowing you to take full advantage of the .NET framework

Next,

“In the UK, Microsoft established a major office in Gordon Brown’s constituency.”

So what? Microsoft have offices all over the UK. In the same way they have them all over the US and all over the world?

Then,

“There’s also the Digital Restrictions Management: software features designed to "stop" you from accessing your files freely. Increased restriction of users seems to be the main advance of Vista.”

Is DRM Microsoft’s fault? How does it “stop you from accessing your files freely”?

YOUR files that YOU create are completely under your control. You’ll need to explain this one to me I’m afraid

I think what your talking about goes back to the pirating issue. Media companies want to protect their property (music, video, etc). They ask Microsoft (and Apple, have you used iTunes on the Mac recently?) to help them do that.

I’m no fan of the restrictions we get when buying media online nowadays but your blaming the wrong people I think

Finally (I could go on but as I’ve ranted enough)

“In 1992, when the GNU operating system was completed by the kernel, Linux, you had to be a wizard to run it. Today GNU/Linux is user-friendly: in parts of Spain and India, it’s standard in schools. Tens of millions use it, around the world. You can use it too.”

and there is the problem

As you said in 1992 you had to be a wizard to run GNU/Linux. At that time you didn’t need to be a wizard to run Windows 3.11 not long after that Windows 95 arrived and you sure didn’t need to be a wizard to run that. My mom was able to use Windows 95!

If the user friendly version of GNU/Linux your talking about had been available back then maybe the Microsoft we know today wouldn’t exist. But that’s not what happened

I applaud the promotion of choice but not in attacking the way someone else has done it without a decent argument

Go make a better O/S and shout about why it’s better than the rest.

Your article gives no compelling to move to Linux (or any other O/S) other than “it’s free”

How many free cars, homes, computers are there in the world?

Tell me about features and benefits. How it will help my parents get the pictures from their digital camera?

I’m sure Linux has plenty to offer in that respect but your not talking about any of them

I’m not ranting about this purely because I’m a Microsoft fan

I’m all for a choice and freedom. I use open source software too (I used Notepad2 for the first time yesterday….why haven’t I used this before?! It’s great!) but it’s not the solution for every scenario. What got me riled here is the way your going about your argument

You can check out Richard’s personal site and his blog if your interested in seeing his other causes

That is all

Buy Now, Try Later

I’m not going to name and shame this time but was a little disappointed at a recent response i got to a query

Basically “Company X” had a hosted service i was interested in. I wanted to know how their management tools worked on a day-to-day basis. I’m already a customer with them so i sent an email to ask if they had a demo account, or trial period on which i could test their service to see how it performed with the view to purchasing if all was well

As of now, we do not have a demonstration site.

However, after you have purchased the package, you can cancel it within 60 days and avail our refund policy.

Company X offers a 60-day Money Back Guarantee. You’ll receive a complete refund if you cancel a package within 60 days from the date of your initial order.

So i have to agree to buy it before i decide if i like it? Then if i don’t like it after all i have to go through all the hassle of cancelling and getting a refund?

Lots of online  service providers are happy to let you try their products out before you sign on the dotted line

Surely from a business perspective free trials are like having an extra member of staff in the sales team. If your confident enough of your product once the prospect has had a taste they’ll become a paying customer before long?

If i were in sales i’d say the prospects qualify themselves (did i get away with that?)

Or am i expecting to much as a potential customer?

Shame on you Konami

I never thought i’d say this but i dont think i can play Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 anymore….

I’ve been a huge fan of this series of football (soccer) games since it’s early incaration as International Superstar Soccer on the SNES

The previous version was the first on the XBox 360 and while it was deemed a success many felt they hadn’t pushed the hardware enough and it didn’t deserve the “next gen” tag. However the online play was massively addictive with it’s only problem being the occasional slowdown (lag) when on busy broadband connections

So i eagerly awaited the arrival of the latest version which i’ve had for a couple of months now. As usual they have tweaked the game enough so that it is still Pro Evo but different enough so that it’s not just an graphic and team update.

I usually play it offline for a little while then jump in once confident i’m not going to get hammered every time. It didn’t take me long to get into the swing of things and was happy with the changes

This is where my happiness quickly wore off.

The online version this time around is dreadful

It doesn’t suffer from slowdown…at all! However ,the problem is what i can only describe as jerkiness. The ball and players seem to randomly jump around the pitch and the camera usually follows them

This makes for hugely frustrating games. Earlier tonight i was playing a really close game with someone. I had the ball on the halfway line, looking to start a new attack when the ball suddenly disappeared and reappeared at the feet of the striker. Who promptly scored to send me to a disappointing loss. At least in the previous version if you got slow down you knew you’d still have the ball at the end of it

Apparently Konami have released a patch but i don’t think it’s made any difference. I’ve stuck with it a while as the game has years of goodwill on it’s side but i came very close to damaging some equipment tonight

In modern gaming online gaming can make or break a game. I don’t understand how they can go from having it pretty much spot on last time round to the shoddy state it’s in now 

The basics don’t even work. There is an achievement for scoring a direct free kick during an online game. I’ve done this twice tonight (which is rare..i’m crap at free kicks) and still no achievement

From looking on other sites i’m not the only one to be annoyed with this. Fingers crossed for a new patch soon or Fifa my get another look in, which if your a fan of either game you’ll know it’s like changing the team you support!

High Definition Future

I’ve recently ventured into the high definition video arena when i picked up the HD-DVD add-on for my XBOX 360. I love the extra quality i get with my games so moving to a better film experience appealed to me. I’ve got gripes with HD formats but i’ll get onto that in minute

First up i was pleased to see an annoucement on the UK version of XBOX.comsaying we can now download HD movies. It’s not quite the full-blown marketplace the US get (don’t get me started on that!) but it’s a start

Virgin have plans to reduce the entry price into HD viewing to try and grab some share from Sky. However the amount of content available in the UK for subscription prices they want isn’t really grabbing my attention at the moment.

The BBC are getting in on the act so hopefully this will be a step in the right direction

So onto HD formats. Every week someone from the Blu-ray camp or the HD-DVD camp will announce how they are winning the format wars

This to all the people who start up the whole format war thing

NO ONE CARES

All a consumer wants to do is buy the disc, stick it in the player and watch the film. They don’t want to worry about which disc is technically superior in terms of high capacity, differences in audio quality or resolution.

It’s hard enough explaining to the average consumer the difference between HD and SD so if you throw two types of discs in that’s going to make it worse!

If you showed a film on each format side by side to most consumers they wont be able to tell the difference

What also stinks is making certain films exclusive to specific formats

No consumer is going to tell their 12 year old they can’t have Pirates of the Caribbean 3  or Transformersfor Christmas because they don’t have the right type of player so they’ll just go for the good old DVD versions instead.

How is that supposed to encourage consumers to buy into the whole thing?

If your waiting for the consumer to decide who the winner is it’s not going to happen any time soon.People just want to watch the films and i doubt they’ll invest in two players just so they do that. Having the two formats makes people very nervous about investing in equipment and films if they are useless in a years time (you’ve heard all this before with betamax of course!)

It’s why i have high hopes for Samsung’s dual format player if they can get the price down soon. You can pick up a cheap DVD player here for less than £30 so sticking another £400 on top isn’t going to get you massive sales anytime soon. If they do take off the studios can worry about which format is best to show their films and the normal people can just watch them!

Expert Advice

If your a regular reader of this blog you know i don’t really go in for scathing attacks….but bear with me on this one

Last week i needed to go see a client to change a suspect hard disk. I took an IDE drive with me as i had new one in the office which meant i wouldn’t have to wait to order one but when i got there the existing drive was SATA (it wasn’t quite as old as i thought!) Not a problem though as i came prepared with a spare IDE cable

However, the motherboard layout had SATA connectors at the bottom right corner and IDE connector in the top left corner combined with the layout of PC case meant that the IDE cable i had with me was about 1cm too short! I wasn’t too concerned though as there was a computer shop over the road

This shop is the typical local computer shop where everyone in the town goes to get the laptop the kids have filled with spyware cleaned up. (This isn’t an attack on all local computer shops though as i know some that have really great people running them!)

There were two people manning the desk and i waited for my turn as they both dished out advice on a manner of subjects from laptops to operating systems to broadband providers

When it was my turn i asked for an IDE cable. She came back with one and i asked if could just check it was longer than the one i had. As i held the cables up to each other she said

“That’s a floppy cable…that’s why it wouldn’t work. It’s the wrong one”

It didn’t quite sink in straight away what she said and i just blurted out

“I’ve just taken this off a hard disk”

“Yeah but thats’ a floppy cable”

I assured her that it was definitely an IDE cable and she just shrugged at me like i was an idiot and took my money

I went over the conversation in my head as i walked back and still was pretty surprised the “local source of IT knowledge” couldn’t tell the difference between an IDE cable and a floppy cable when they are are held next to each other

Maybe she just got this one wrong…but what other advice are they dishing out?

It got me thinking to some things i’ve seen on certain “mailing lists of the Yahoo variety”

I’m more of a lurker as I don’t post an awful lot on the Yahoo lists (not enough hours in the day combined with everything else!) but i do find some of the conversations useful and valid. However, sometimes i see questions i wouldn’t expect most end-users to ask, asked by people who are installing and maintaining systems for people (for money!)

I wont post any examples as that’s possibly too harsh

In contrast there are lots of people who contribute who are far better than me and recently through the community i’ve met some really switched on people

I just wonder if there really is that broad a spectrum on the technical capabilities or am i being a little arrogant?

As always thoughts welcome

Certification Renewals

The first post on James new blog reminded me of something that i’ve been querying recently

I’ve been working with Sonicwall products for years. It started in my previous job so made sense to continue to use them when we started our company.

One of the things i did was to take the official training and pass the exam to become a Certified Sonicwall Security Administrator (CSSA)

The benefits for passing include (from the Sonicwall US site)

• Direct access to 2nd level Technical Support (based on regional availability) 
• Access to SonicWALL’s Online Forum (discussion group)
• Support Bulletins and advanced notifications
• Opportunities to participate in SonicWALL beta programs
• Certification newsletters
• CSSA logo usage

Now when i passed no-one told me i’d need to re-certify after a certain amount of time had passed but this turns out to be the case.

I tried to speak to 2nd level tech support but they refused to help as i “wasn’t on the list”

After speaking to our account managers at our distributor and with Sonicwall UK it was only recently we got a definate “yes you have to re-certify” answer

What annoys me is this,

Why should i have to take the same exam every year? (or every two years as it now looks)

If i was doing Microsoft certification i could do the training and pass the exams and become an MCSE

That certification would stay with me until the certification gets retired. Obviously if new products launch new exams come out but i don’t have to retake anything on a yearly basis

Am i complaining about nothing?

I think the sonicwall certification path should include a “re-certification” (or refresher) exam as currently someone taking the exam for the first time would do the same exam as someone who has needs to re-certify

Just my two-pence worth

It took how long?

Yet another customer service rant..i hate posting about it to be honest but if no-one complains then it’ll never get sorted!

I decided to treat myself to a new gadget this week. I wanted to get the HD-DVD add-on for the XBox. Having a quick look around and PC World have a “web only offer” thats cheaper than anywhere else as far as i can tell

They also have a slight loophole on their site that means you can order online but go collect it yourself so no delivery charge

The PC World branch is the other side of Coventry so a slight detour on the way home but no problem, go in, pick it up, go home? Wrong!

The reservation confirmation i got told me to go to the “Collect @ Store” desk so thats where i went. In this particular store “The Tech Guys” service desk is next to the collection desk

So there are two people waiting already, one at each desk so i join the queue for the collection point. No staff around to help us and we all stand around looking at each other. After about ten minues somone finally turns up and helps out the first person (who is in my queue). He then moves onto the person waiting at repair desk (One person for two desks?)

She has a faulty laptop so they are trying to sort that out so i just have to wait. Forty minutes later i’m finally seen to.

I give the guy my confirmation note and he disappears out the back. He comes out looking puzzled so disappears again. Finally he comes back to me and says

“We do have these in stock but you’ll need to go and find a member of staff on the shop floor and they’ll fetch it for you”

ARGH!!!!

So i’ve been there for fifty minutes already when i could have just grabbed somebody when i walk in

I then try and find someone and in typically there is not enough staff and too many people. It took me another fifteen minutes to get someone to actually help me.

I explained what i needed and she said

“Just wait here and i’ll go get it”

So i stood and waited. Ten minues later she finally came back with the item so we trotted off to the till

It took another ten minutes to pay as she couldn’t get her head around the fact i’d reserved it online for one price but the store price was different

All i wanted to do was go in and collect an item i had reserved.

Why should it take an hour and twenty five minutes?

If the experts are giving this sort of advice what chance do we stand?

Wireless security is something pretty important to us all. Most people understand that we need to make sure we’ve covered to stop other people jumping on the network (which your paying for!)

However most end users / business owners don’t understand what to do to make them the most secure

Why should they understand the difference between WEP and WPA?!

I still don’t understand why wireless equipment still comes with WEP to be honest. If it’s not secure don’t make it an option! Yes I understand that we need to make sure new hardware is compatible with old hardware and I’m hoping as older kit eventually gets replaced WEP will be dropped as an option. Can’t we can make WPA the default option? or have the user go through a couple of “are you really sure?” prompts before enabling WEP

What winds me up is when your given bad advice by people you expect to trust

One of the things i see all the time is recommendations to hide your SSID to help make you more secure

How about this for an example

“Hide your wireless network
You can ‘hide’ your wireless network by hiding your SSID. Your SSID works like a password, so only people that know your SSID can access the network. You’ll be able to find more information on how to do this in the instructions that came with your hardware. Be sure to set an SSID that doesn’t give away any important information, for example, do not include your name or address.”

Hiding your SSID wont do anything to put off a determined thief and in some situations can make it harder for you to use. What makes this even worse is that it likens your SSID to a password! In fairness the advice to not include any personal information is sound

So where did i find that nugget

On the Plusnet website (take a look here) 

A UK based ISP recently taken over by BT. They are advising end-users that this is good security best practise. I have friends and family who are on Plusnet and if i tried to explain to them how best to secure their wireless they could quite simply say

“I was just doing as my ISP told me”

I found a good article by Steve Riley on why hiding your SSID isn’t enough. It also explains why MAC address filtering isn’t that great either

Make sure your using WPA encryption on your wireless network!

My Bad Customer Service Experience

I still haven’t played Halo 3

Reason being i don’t have a tv to play it on.

The whole experience of getting it repaired has been terrible. After Susanne’s recent customer experience post i thought i share as well

I was told that an enginner would visit the house, if he couldn’t repair it they’d take it away and i’d get it back within a week. The engineer came and took the TV away on the 18th September. I had no comunication from them so when the following monday came i thought i’d give them a call

The answer i got back was “we had to wait for the cost of the repair to be authorised, now it’s been authorised we’re waiting for parts. They are being ordered today and we’ll call you to let you know what’s going on”

I was annoyed i hadn’t been kept in the loop but the story sounded plausible. By Wednesday i hadn’t heard anything so i rang back

“We’re waiting for parts”

I told her this was the same thing i’d been told on Monday. She fobbed me off and said they would ring with an update

It’s now Friday so i called again this morning.

“We’re still waiting for parts”    WHAT???

“The parts arrived but they were faulty, so we have ordered some more. The last set took about three days to arrive so that’ll be Tuesday or Wednesday”

So IF they turned up on Wednesday by the time they have fitted it, tested and got it back to me it will have been three weeks

I told her i wasn’t impressed, especially since i didn’t have another tv

“We can loan you one”

I asked how much this would cost…. “No cost, thats free of charge”

Why wasn’t i offered this previously?

“We didn’t know that you dont have another tv”

Shocking! (I do have another tv but it’s about 20 times smaller than the main on in our living room)

So the loan set is supposedly being dropped off on Tuesday

I was so angry when i put the phone down. However, there is one simple thing that could have stopped all this from the very start

COMMUNICATION

It would have taken a couple of minutes for someone to call me (as they promised to do!) during each stage to keep me informed. If they had communicated better and asked if i needed a loan tv they could have taken months to repair it and it wouldn’t have cared!

The same applies with your customers. If your doing something for them make sure they know what’s happening. It’s incredibly frustrating being kept in the dark

Even if something hasn’t quite gone to plan make sure the customer knows the situation. Most people understand that sometimes things out of your control can throw a spanner in the works but if they don’t know about it you get unhappy customers

If your working on something for a customer at the moment and you haven’t given them an update drop them a quick email or phone call….go on, do it now

Closure on closure

A while back i posted and had a moan where i worried we may be losing customer for sticking to our principles (original post here) and was worried the client may end up getting a nasty sting if they went with what on the surface appeared to be a vastly cheaper quote

I then posted to say that the customer decided to come with us so all was good!

Well for the last week i’ve been doing the new SBS installation for that client

Now i’m not normally one to say “i told you so” but we got it spot on here.

We used just about the amount of man days we had quoted for and as we anticipated there were one or two issues that slowed us down but were covered in the days we quoted

What amazes me is the state the system was in when we arrived.

It’s a twenty five user system and the server was a Windows 2000 server (not SBS!)

The hardware was the scary bit. It was a self build, basically a souped up PC. The CD-ROM drive didn’t work, the USB didn’t work, the floppy drive didn’t work, the internal tape drive didn’t work.

The tape drive was replaced with an external DAT drive. When someone with a bit of common sense asked if they could test the tapes were backing up ok on a different server they were told “we don’t have anything that will take those anymore”

Storage was on a single P-ATA/IDE disk. It was on the point of failure once before so the drive had been replaced and the data copied to the new one. I say replaced but the old drive had just been left inside!

We took the drive out as we planned to take an image of it before we didn’t anything with it. I plugged it into my IDE-USB cable and fired it up. It started to spin up and i moved the disk as it was a bit close to the edge of the desk, i heard the drive stop, then start, then stop again. Real heart in mouth stuff

I put it back into the server in the end and it was ok, as long as you didn’t touch anything!

The PC’s were all on static IP addresses as the cabling was shared with a company downstairs! There was no central switch and it was all linked together with workgroup hubs. It also meant that they couldn’t use DHCP at all (we knew about this beforehand though and new cabling was being completed while we were onsite)

The only network printer in the building was the photocopier as all the printers were shared directly from the PC’s

I wont even mention the PCs as this post is long enough!

The single scary thing about this is that the client was generally unaware of all this other than the fact than the server locked up a several times a week. The server could have died at any point and the backups were “untrustworthy” and that would have been it everything gone. The client is a charity so mainly deals in information. There is no “product” to sell

Without the data on the server they don’t exist

Fortunately the install went well and other than a bit of downtime the users are using the system in pretty much the same way it was before

We’re giving them a bit of bedding in time to catch up after the disruption and then they will be introducted to RWW, OWA, SharePoint, Exchange, etc

As i said they deal with information so SharePoint is going to be huge here

As much as i love setting up SBS the satisfaction is when you see someones face the first time they see RWW, or when you actually see ideas forming when you show them SharePoint