Misc. Ramblings

How to Hate Microsoft. Microsoft (MS for short) employee Robert Scoble has his own blog (visit it here). He put up a question intended, I think, to provoke comment on how to make Longhorn (codename for the next version of Windows) better. The subject of the post is "How to Hate Microsoft."

But I think he asked the wrong question because if a broken trust exists, it doesn't matter what features Longhorn has, it will be a failure.

In any case, I think he succeeded in his intention to get comments. You can read the post here. The comments scroll down for pages. Some say Longhorn should be more like Unix/Linux while others say it should be the opposite. Some love MS and some hate it.

But the thread that seemed common to many of the comments is that people don't trust MS. Permit me to display how old I am when I relate this example. Many years ago, I drove a new 1978 Chevrolet Z-28 Camaro (see an example of what it looked like here). I thought it was a great car. It was low and mean looking, handled well, and could blow the doors off of cars costing three times its price ($6,000USD).

But did I trust Chevrolet? I don't know if I would say that. Although to a certain extent I did, otherwise I wouldn't have bought the car in the first place. But perhaps it wasn't so much I trusted, or didn't trust, them as much as I wanted the car and felt I could deal with any problems an untrust worthy manufacturer might throw my way.

Move forward 25 years and I'm now driving a Toyota. Do I trust Toyota? To the extent that it is possible to trust a non-human entity I would say yes, I do. I trust that its business model is based on designing and manufacturing vehicles that are high quality but reasonably priced. Why do I trust Toyota? Because they do what they say. That is, my experience indicates that the company in fact builds quality vehicles at a reasonable price. Our two Toyotas have been virtually trouble free. If something does goes wrong, under warranty, they fix it. Once, they even fixed something that was no longer under warranty because past experience had shown an abnormal amount of failures in the part. So they fixed it at no charge.

Conversely, look at MS. Do they always do as they say? Various state prosecutors and a couple of federal judges would say no and have the facts to back it up. Do they have a good warranty and stand behind it? Warranty? What's that? Isn't that what they used to call a disclaimer? That is, a document stating that there is no warranty whatsoever?

In addition, how can anyone trust them when they have made it clear they don't trust its customers? Let me tell you about one example from the site: MS now uses product activation to reduce copy right infringement (with digital rights management apparently to come). They even go so far as to write their security updates, which correct flaws in their product, such that if the copy you have is not "legal", the update will not install. Doing this creates an entire class of servers/PCs that are security risks to the rest of us. These computers are open to every worm, Trojan horse, hacker, etc. out there. Is this how corporations build trust?

Other examples: How many times has MS security updates broken fixes made by earlier updates? How many buffer overruns does there need to be before MS finally "gets it" and eliminates every_single_one_of them? How many badly implemented features will it take before MS understands that it is security first, last, and always? If they have product activation, why don't they have product deactivation so that I can legally transfer the product from an old PC, that I won't be using to a new one (without having to call MS to explain what I'm doing with a product I paid for).

Even worse, this lack of trust works both ways. I recently received an e-mail from MS asking if I wanted to provide additional information as to why XP seems to be locking up a lot. Okay, I reckon if I can give MS information that can make Windows more stable that is a Good Thing. But the way MS wanted to gather the information was via a downloadable program that would automatically collect the data MS wants, and it was A LOT even though MS insists it isn't (see it here), and would automatically send it in binary format.

To put it plainly, I would have no control over what was sent to them nor when it was sent. Being that the data was in binary format, even if I wanted to look at what was being transmitted I couldn't easily do that so if I were to proceed, I would have to trust that MS was doing what they said they were doing.

A few thoughts on what MS is saying. If, as it says, they aren't collecting much data, why send it as a binary? Why say they are sending the data back in binary format to keep the transmission as small as possible so the impact to your PC is lessened if it is so small to begin with? Why say it would be too complicated to write a program to show, in plain text, what was being transmitted when they wrote a program to convert it to binary in the first place? To be charitable, they seem to be speaking in contradictions.

I wish I could trust MS because it would make life so much easier. But, based on what they do, I can't. So we both loose. MS doesn't get what they want (data on why Windows is blowing up) and I don't get a reliable operating system.

So what's the bottom line on how do improve the Windows? First, build trust between MS and its customers by telling them what and why they are doing things. Do it. Then verify to everyone that what they did is exactly what they said they would do. Do that every time and people will slowly begin to trust you. Don't follow this advice, even just once, and you will break this trust. For a long, long time.

Aloha!