I can totally see how a problem where all user's phone data is permanently lost forever, is just as bad as a very rare problem where some people lose local data that they probably have a backup of anyway . . . I have yet to talk to anyone who has had their data disappear from this guest account problem.
It seems to me that this might have been avoided had Microsoft been broken up by the court when they were prosecuted for monopoly abuses. Their whole culture is defined by holding on to and expanding upon their OS dominance. I don't see a good future unless they voluntarily break up the corporation into meaningful, independent parts.
That is the reason this story is significant. Up until now, IT managers have always proceeded under the assumption that choosing a Microsoft solution is unquestionably a safe practice. From now on it may not be so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sippincider
I blame it on the Pink Jinx; i.e. any project named or involving "Pink" turns into utter disaster.
Apple 1994, MS 2009, etc.
Oh and speaking of jinxes: Ballmer has been kinda quiet on all of this, no?
The logic that a lack of detailed explanation from Microsoft implies sabotage is flawed by the assertion that T-Mobile will likely sue Microsoft for failure to meet its SLA. If there's an expected lawsuit Microsoft isn't about to make any public statements about how the trouble came about, regardless of how much they know or how nefarious or innocuous it is.
When T-Mobile customers called to complain that their data was missing, the customer service reps gave them that standard advice for this situation which is to remove their batteries to fully reset their Sidekicks and then re-sync with their servers. This, of course, was the worst possible thing to do and now all these customers have probably lost their contacts and other data forever.
This is just flat out a wrong use of the term dogfooding. Dogfooding means using your own code to do what it's designed to do, as opposed to relying on external users. ... It has nothing to do with eradicating acquired technology.
If it means replacing Oracle or Sun servers with Microsoft products, then they would in fact be eating their own dogfood in that regard. That is, using their own products to do what they're designed to do and to fulfill those functions, and not use someone else's.
It's part of the reason Balmer goes crazy whenever he see's a MS employee with an iPhone...
Good point. For better or worse, Apple's Pink didn't get off the ground. Certainly better than a worst-case disaster with all of their customers' data.....
IIRC, way back in the old "Apple Human Interface Guidelines", they gave some how-not-to-do-it example, with the comment "By now, the user is probably wondering why they bother with technology". Oh how the Sidekick users must be relating to this!
An act of sabotage "would explain why neither party is releasing any more details: for legal reasons dealing with the ongoing investigation to find the culprit(s)," one of the sources said. Due to the way SideKick clients interact with the service, any normal failure should have resulted in only a brief outage until a replacement server could be brought up.
The very long outage of core functionality, followed by an incapacity to recover any data, both point to the possibility that "someone with access to the servers at the datacenter must have inserted a time bomb to wipe out not just all of the data, but also all of the backup tapes, and finally, I suspect, reformatting the server hard drives so that the service itself could not be restarted with a simple reboot (and to erase any traces of the time bomb itself)."
how do you wipe backup tapes? i manage a netbackup installation and we always send tapes offsite. it's almost impossible to wipe the tapes inside the robot.
if someone destroyed the catalog all you have to do is set up a new netbackup server and import the tapes and restore. no big deal
Unlike a more conventional incident involving a suspicious failure, the source said, "the Microsoft IT forensic investigators who would normally be called upon to investigate this sort of thing are all trained on Windows servers and have no clue of any of the details of the Sidekick service.
"If this was an ordinary sort of failure, the service would have come back within a day, so once again, all signs point to sabotage. If they erased the server hard drives, they would have to reinstall the OS on each affected server, then reload all of the server-side software and start everything back up, and who knows how many people are remaining at Danger who even know how to do all of that? Once again, there is no-one on the Microsoft side who is going to know how to do any of this.
i bet microsoft has plenty of people who know ^nix. or they could just hire consultants. i've installed solaris and linux servers and installed netbackup just by reading the instructions. it's not that hard to run a script
...Apple's F up (I did listen moderator) is as bad as Microsoft's Side Kick F up...
I will take my right to disagree here...
No way the Snow Leopard guest account issue ranks as a fiasco like the Microsoft/Danger toe cheese.
Lets take a poll...
"Everyone who allow use of the guest account on their Mac raise their hands... one, two, ... ten.. okay now all those who don't have the guest account activated... fifty, one hundred, fifty thousand... okay i'm tired of counting."
"Next... everyone who uses something other than the Danger(MS) cloud for backing up sidekick data... oh c'mon, don't be shy. YOU ALL HAVE YOUR DATA ONLY ON THE (MS) CLOUD?"
Again, i think you stretched that one a little further than even the writer of this article did.
Now what will turn my argument on it's head would be MS getting that data magically back in place. (which for the sake of all the Sidekick users I hope happens.)
LOL. I see on the T-Mobile forums that they're now proposing to give all affected customers a $100 gift card to offset their loss.
Cripes, Apple gave that to existing iPhone customers when they dropped the price! T-Mobile and Danger/MS have got to be feeling very stabby towards each other at the moment.
I really feel empathy for any/all Sidekick users out there, who are totally screwed over through no fault of their own. You can't back up most of the data from the phone to a SIM, and unless you use a third-party utility and run Windows, you have no options.
Comments
Hey what does this ignore button d...
It keeps your head in the sand and still lets you drink the Kool Aid.
Can the Apple Sheep now be called Apple Ostrich because if you don't acknowledge a problem it doesn't exist?
Apple 1994, MS 2009, etc.
Oh and speaking of jinxes: Ballmer has been kinda quiet on all of this, no?
While I do believe every word dealing with the internal structures and disabilities at MS, I consider the sabotage story to be extremely speculative.
I agree. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." (Hanlon's Razor)
Apple's Snow Leopard Data Loss.
Say again?!
Angry much?
That is the reason this story is significant. Up until now, IT managers have always proceeded under the assumption that choosing a Microsoft solution is unquestionably a safe practice. From now on it may not be so.
I blame it on the Pink Jinx; i.e. any project named or involving "Pink" turns into utter disaster.
Apple 1994, MS 2009, etc.
Oh and speaking of jinxes: Ballmer has been kinda quiet on all of this, no?
What pink item did apple have in 1994?
Say again?!
Angry much?
Thanks for asking. No I'm not... You?
Not a very good year for Microsoft?
Xbox RROD...
Zune Meltdown Day...
IIS Market Share...
Windows Mobile...
Vista...
IE...
Netbooks...
Bing...
SilverLight...
Good summary by the way.
Oh what tangled webs we weave.
Indeed.
What pink item did apple have in 1994?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent
What pink item did apple have in 1994?
Apple's Pink project. Never got off the ground: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent
(Ha sippincider beat me to it!)
Oooo: more here: http://lowendmac.com/orchard/05/1026.html
This is just flat out a wrong use of the term dogfooding. Dogfooding means using your own code to do what it's designed to do, as opposed to relying on external users. ... It has nothing to do with eradicating acquired technology.
If it means replacing Oracle or Sun servers with Microsoft products, then they would in fact be eating their own dogfood in that regard. That is, using their own products to do what they're designed to do and to fulfill those functions, and not use someone else's.
It's part of the reason Balmer goes crazy whenever he see's a MS employee with an iPhone...
Apple's Pink project. Never got off the ground: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent
Good point. For better or worse, Apple's Pink didn't get off the ground. Certainly better than a worst-case disaster with all of their customers' data.....
IIRC, way back in the old "Apple Human Interface Guidelines", they gave some how-not-to-do-it example, with the comment "By now, the user is probably wondering why they bother with technology". Oh how the Sidekick users must be relating to this!
An act of sabotage "would explain why neither party is releasing any more details: for legal reasons dealing with the ongoing investigation to find the culprit(s)," one of the sources said. Due to the way SideKick clients interact with the service, any normal failure should have resulted in only a brief outage until a replacement server could be brought up.
The very long outage of core functionality, followed by an incapacity to recover any data, both point to the possibility that "someone with access to the servers at the datacenter must have inserted a time bomb to wipe out not just all of the data, but also all of the backup tapes, and finally, I suspect, reformatting the server hard drives so that the service itself could not be restarted with a simple reboot (and to erase any traces of the time bomb itself)."
how do you wipe backup tapes? i manage a netbackup installation and we always send tapes offsite. it's almost impossible to wipe the tapes inside the robot.
if someone destroyed the catalog all you have to do is set up a new netbackup server and import the tapes and restore. no big deal
Unlike a more conventional incident involving a suspicious failure, the source said, "the Microsoft IT forensic investigators who would normally be called upon to investigate this sort of thing are all trained on Windows servers and have no clue of any of the details of the Sidekick service.
"If this was an ordinary sort of failure, the service would have come back within a day, so once again, all signs point to sabotage. If they erased the server hard drives, they would have to reinstall the OS on each affected server, then reload all of the server-side software and start everything back up, and who knows how many people are remaining at Danger who even know how to do all of that? Once again, there is no-one on the Microsoft side who is going to know how to do any of this.
i bet microsoft has plenty of people who know ^nix. or they could just hire consultants. i've installed solaris and linux servers and installed netbackup just by reading the instructions. it's not that hard to run a script
...Apple's F up (I did listen moderator) is as bad as Microsoft's Side Kick F up...
I will take my right to disagree here...
No way the Snow Leopard guest account issue ranks as a fiasco like the Microsoft/Danger toe cheese.
Lets take a poll...
"Everyone who allow use of the guest account on their Mac raise their hands... one, two, ... ten.. okay now all those who don't have the guest account activated... fifty, one hundred, fifty thousand... okay i'm tired of counting."
"Next... everyone who uses something other than the Danger(MS) cloud for backing up sidekick data... oh c'mon, don't be shy. YOU ALL HAVE YOUR DATA ONLY ON THE (MS) CLOUD?"
Again, i think you stretched that one a little further than even the writer of this article did.
Now what will turn my argument on it's head would be MS getting that data magically back in place. (which for the sake of all the Sidekick users I hope happens.)
Cripes, Apple gave that to existing iPhone customers when they dropped the price! T-Mobile and Danger/MS have got to be feeling very stabby towards each other at the moment.
I really feel empathy for any/all Sidekick users out there, who are totally screwed over through no fault of their own. You can't back up most of the data from the phone to a SIM, and unless you use a third-party utility and run Windows, you have no options.