September 26, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Your Point of View
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September 28, 2009 at 3:19 am
Steve, the first link seems to be broken: http://concentratedtech.com/content/index.php/2008/06/18/sql-server-2008-rc0-powershell-long/ gives a 404 page.
For what the second link is concerned, I think this comment says it all:
Tone? Sorry, Microsoft, but I've noticed that polite questions and comments are ignored, and snippy comments are not. Consequently, you've trained me to never ask a polite question on a Microsoft forum -- I always start out rude, and continue to get ruder.
Not because I'm rude. People around me think I'm the very paragon of niceness and patience. But with Microsoft, rude==success and polite==fail.
I think this is the kind of comments that made you write this editorial.
Good points.
-- Gianluca Sartori
September 28, 2009 at 6:49 am
hmm, your editorial got off to a bad start as soon as I saw the picture of the dog, the dog is the spitting image of my puppy that I had to have put down recently. not a good start before I started reading it.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even the angry ones. everyone to a certain extent always thinks their opinion is valid and more correct than anyones elses. I dont necessary agree with your point regarding growing older and becoming wiser and more liberal in views and out take. I do agree that noone knows everything and that some people tend to mellow in age.
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September 28, 2009 at 8:15 am
Sorry about the link. It was there a couple months ago when I was working on this. Looks like they lost content from their home page. Dan Jones addressed some of this as well on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/dtjones/archive/2008/06/18/the-sqlps-firestorm.aspx
Silverfox, sorry to hear about your dog.
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September 28, 2009 at 9:38 am
The more you know, the harder it is to judge nuanced issues, but the more likely you are to judge correctly when you do get around to it.
Some things are easy to judge. There are workable-absolutes in engineering solutions. Many things are harder to judge, because absolutes are unobtainable.
The thing that bothers me on this is people who decide that "black and white/good and bad are all subjective, therefore I reject two-value thinking and work with gray instead", but who end up replacing flawed two-value thinking with even more flawed 1-value thinking, by operating as if all gray = all gray. Gradient scales of values are import in the thought process.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
September 28, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I can understand your view points except when it comes to talking about Microsoft...
On the one hand, I am thankful for Microsoft. Clearly, in my career, I have made a lot more money affording a nice life on the back of Microsoft's work and technology.
On the other hand, I cannot think of a single other company I deal with in any facet of my life that continually delivers the poor quality, lousy documentation, and unfinished work that Microsoft does. I, like millions (you included?) have simply come to accept this because MS is the only game in town.
Imagine you buy a new car and you go to pick it up. The salesman says; "She's ready for you Mr. Jones!" but as you approach the vehicle you notice that although there are four wheels, only three of them have tires. You point this out to the salesman and he says; "Well Mr. Jones, your fourth tire will be coming in our first Service pack." You then get in the car and notice that it has a special adapter for your cell phone and MP3 player. You plug them in, and they blow up and melt. With soot on your face you ask the salesman and he replies; "Really? Blew up? Gee you're only the 200th person that has happened to!!!" and he tells you to consult the manual. You open the manual for this adapter and it says; "Plug in your stuff" nothing more. Ridiculous, right?
I mean, would you actually buy this car? Would you shop there ever again?
But this is pretty much what we do with Microsoft year in, year out, and we just accept the mess.
Maybe thats only my point of view, but in a long career I know I have a few million folks who feel the same way and the web is loaded with their rants.
Needless to say, Microsoft has never gotten the message.
September 28, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I think largely that one's experiences with Microsoft tend to be dependant on what issues you are facing and why you need their help. As someone using their software for over 20 years now i can definitely say their support, documentation and acknowledgement of issues(=not reduced issues 🙂 but merely acknowledging they exist, has gotten much better over time. If you call them on specific issues you do get very good help at times, and being an enterprise environment we have a TAM who follows up on any problems we have and does an excellent job. BUT, God help you if you have problems across platforms, say some .net issue combined with a sql server issue or windows issue combined with something else. Microsoft people dont' know how their left hand from their right and are very quick to say 'not my problem'. There is noone there who handles customer issues that span multiple technical areas and that is how our MVPs and top notch consultants make $ :)) There are lots of people out there who are anti MS - I believe if you make a living off of their products I would hesitate to take such a strong stance just on basis of principles. But there are folks who do. And yes Steve is 100 percent right on mellowing with age..in the technical world atleast. If you do not then you better be a genius geek or someone who lives off of your opinions than the $ that comes with getting along with people and getting things done.
September 28, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I've had good and bad experiences with Microsoft. By and large, however, I think that most of their software works well when it is released. There are bugs, but it's rare that they've prevented me from using the software.
That being said, I don't typically push the edge cases. I don't sit there and wait for a new feature to be released on look to use it on day 1.
The VS/SQL issue, is a development sync problem. I do think that they should align these teams better, but having to workaround the issue and install a patch somewhere is part of having a large software suite that covers many different areas.
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September 28, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Steve, sometimes the 'sync' issue has happened with me even on different areas of SQL Server. Like at last year's PASS conference i was consulting with the MS team on site on a replication issue. We had a SQL 2000 publisher that was replicating to 2005/2008 and we had an error going on on which i wanted some advice. Before I even finished explaining the issue one engineer dismissed me saying replicating from 2000 to higher versions is not possible ! ( I had it working just needed help on an issue). Then he apologized saying he was a 'clustering guy and would go get the replication guy to help me. It is just stuff like that. And if you have a server suffering multiple problems, say more than one query that needs tuning. No, they help with only one at a time. I am willing to pay, make it as many calls as they need to , spare me the hassle of setting up each call - no they havent' figured out that either.
You need a clear, focused issue - one issue, and then they help you, yes. If you have a complex situation with multiple issues then better get a consultant or have patience to do it yourself, that has been my experience atleast.
September 28, 2009 at 2:26 pm
My wife should read this! about the black and white thing and getting more tolerant. Shame she doesn't read English (I'm in Peru). But I will make time to translate the article and show it to her (If you let me Steve).
Alberto De Rossi
Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate - SQL Server
Microsoft MVP - Data Platform
Power BI User Group Lima - Community Leader
September 28, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I have to say that the car analogy to software is, while tempting and poetic, horribly flawed.
First, a car really has one purpose, which is to get you from point A to point B, possibly along with passengers and/or luggage of some sort. That's a very simple purpose.
A computer has different purposes depending not only on who is using it, but also on what the immediate task is. A general tool is always less robust than a specialized tool. Try chopping down a small tree with a chainsaw, then try it with a Swiss Army knife, you'll quickly see what I mean.
Second, thousands of cars get recalled or have parts recalled on a fairly regular basis. In what way is that different from software patching? Oh, right, the flaw in the car usually resulted in someone being dead, while the flaw in the software usually resulted in millions of people being sent fake viaga ads.
Another flaw in the statement is the apparent assumption that Microsoft is guilty of this, but other software makers are not. A few minutes research on security sites reveals that this is simply untrue.
Does that mean Microsoft can lower their standards and produce junk and I won't complain about it? Not at all. I'm not appologizing for them. They've produced some truly horrific crapware in their time (let's skip over Vista, which I like, straight to ME, or, even worse, Bob). I'm just pointing out that the car analogy isn't really accurate as portrayed here.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
September 29, 2009 at 2:36 am
Thanks for your thoughts Steve on the subject of understanding and trust. They may seem unlikely areas for an editorial in SQL ServerCentral, but clearly they are the bedrock of civilization, and everything else we are and do builds on that foundation.
I've experienced the tension of watching while decisions are taken where not much is revealed of the surrounding reasoning why they were taken.
I appreciate your observation that knowing the people is a key to trusting that they are doing the best they know how. And how hard it can be to stick with them if they stretch the ties of the relationship by how they may appear not to listen.
A balance has to be struck where you then decide whether the relationship is 'a given' and the issues will be worked through, or a line will be drawn and another path chosen.
This applies in life generally as well as in the specialized world of software.
September 29, 2009 at 5:38 am
Steve, what is it with you and guys named Jones? 😉
I responded to that post of Don's some time back to clarify for him what the mini-shell was there for and how to use the snapins without it. He responded that he'd seen that after he'd posted the rant and that the snapins were the proper way to use the tools, but understood the mini-shell for things like SQL Server Agent processing, to make it easier for PowerShell newbies. (This was how I remember our exchange on the subject, it's been some time since we had it.)
Whenever I do my demos and presentations, and when I write my own PowerShell scripts, I use native PowerShell and load the snapins via Michiel Wories' script. (http://blogs.msdn.com/mwories/archive/2008/06/14/SQL2008_5F00_Powershell.aspx) That way I get the benefits of the current environment, including full use of PowerShell 2.0 on Win7 and Windows 2008 R2.
Allen
September 29, 2009 at 8:41 am
I was a philosophy major and have noticed over the years that black/white thinking (a.k.a. the bifurcation fallacy) is the most common cognitive error people make. To see shades of grey does not, in fact, make all opinions equal as some fear. It might make it easier to throw up our hands at the complexity of an issue and give up on it, but that is more of a psychological hurdle rather than an ethical one.
Thales, the first philosopher, started out with “All is water.” Of course, know we know that there are well over one hundred elements. So no, things aren’t quite so easy. In general, singularity or unity has almost been like a mini-god to our thinking.
However, decisiveness is what people respect. Our leaders speak with solid opinions or they appear to be weak. A leader who confidently lays down his argument in simple, uncompromising terms gains followers. But the world is not simple, not at all.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. - Stephen Hawking
September 29, 2009 at 8:55 am
Us Jones' stick together. Or make mistakes together, not sure which.
I think the rant was a little emotional, and a little off track. It pointed out, however, that you ought to stop and consider other points of view before you drive down that road.
This is one reason I'm hesitant to do complex product reviews and say a product is great or horrible. I recognize that the way I use the product might not be how others use it and they might not realize that.
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