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Shortly after IBill I switched to Cardservice. I was a lot more impressed with the flexibility of their system right off the bat, and I would still say that is one of their best qualities. The problem that I had with them was that the person who set up my account, Michael Wentzell, did so improperly such that all of my transactions were creditted to a different user's account (funny thing, though, they had no problem deducting the montly fee from the account that was supposed to have been creditted). After a month of not recieving any credits (it was supposed to take around 48 hours after a sale, but I wasn't sure of this) I called Michael Wentzell up to see what was going on. He said that he was sorry about the problem, that he had found it, and it would be fixed within a week. Well, it wasn't fixed. I called him back about two weeks later and he told me the same thing. This game of me calling him and him telling me it was fixed now went on for several months until I got sick of it and went over his head to Cardservice's corporate headquarters. It was an absolute nightmare trying to get them to fix this as they refused to take responsibility for the problem or even help me figure out what the problem was. I kept getting bounced between Cardservice and Authorize.net (Cardservice resells Authorize.net's services) because nobody at either place actually wanted to help me, it seemed. Well, I finally got ahold of somebody at Cardservice who said they could fix the problem and she yelled at me for not reporting the problem right away (apparently, in her mind I was responsible for their salesman's lack of action)! Anyway, that finally got straightened out and I was too sick of dealing with people like this to try switching again. Their service works OK now that it works (it's down sometimes), and at least porn doesn't magically appear in my customers' carts. I don't know what their other salespeople are like, so maybe Michael Wentzell is an anomoly.

Anyone else around here listen to KMFDM? Oh, and have you seen KMFMS?

The decision for Quote.Com to change wasn't only based on the "reliability" of the platform.

Their decision was also based on facts like:

• There are more pre-built software components for IIS/SQL server
• Things like XML support are very primitive in PERL, for example.
• MCSEs are cheaper to hire than Unix admin/programmers
• With more, cheaper machines, you can play the "uptime numbers game"

A lot of developers are working on XML support in PERL (there is a Perl/XML FAQ), but you still can't support Unicode. Perl still relies on 8-bit character sets, so we use UTF-8 instead of 16-bit Unicode. Unicode support is neccesary for a complete XML implementation.

You'll also find that MCSEs will be cheaper to hire than Unix programmers. This is partly due to their (general) lack of skills, and partly due to their great abundance. An MSCE course only teaches you how to think the Microsoft Way. I wouldn't trust an MSCE to maintain or write code in C++ or Perl, for example. Without the MFC and a pointy-clicky interface, an MSCE can't function.

However, give the MSCE the MFC and a pointy-clicky interface, and an MSCE can deliver a program faster than a "traditional" developer. The fact that the program inherits all the bugs and mis-features of the MFC is not an issue here. The fact that the program was slapped together without regard for maintenance or robustness is also not an issue here. The issue that Quote.Com chose to focus on was delivery time, not quality of product.

As for the uptime numbers game, it works like this:

If you have 1 Sun server, and you need to upgrade the hardware, you need to shut it down. If it takes 1 hour to shut down, replace the hardware and restart, then you have 1 hour downtime.

If you have 2 Windows NT servers (for the same price as 1 Sun machine), and you need to upgrade the hardware, you need to shut them down. If you do it one machine at a time, and take 4 hours total to replace the hardware, then the server pool still has 0 hours downtime. Windows NT pundits will happily overlook the fact that the individual machines are constantly being overhauled.

In addition, Microsoft introduces the idea of "scheduled downtime". That is - you plan to reboot each machine once a day, to make sure the system remains stable. So twice a day, you have one of your two machines reboot. One machine reboots in the morning, the other in the afternoon. The total downtime of the server pool as a whole is still 0 hours (because you're not counting "scheduled downtime" as "real downtime").

Now combine the MSCE factor with the downtime numbers game factor, and you'll find that you can get away with shoddy code, because when your server crashes, it's not really downtime anymore. The problem of data integrity in your backend database is something for the DBA to worry about. You've got your uptime figures and time-to-delivery figures up there in the top 10. If the DBA complains about data integrity, you sack her and fire someone with a more "can-do" attitude. You don't want slackers in your Microsoft Powered enterprise!

Daily Reboots:

• Win95 prescription: 50mg of reboot daily
• What's So Bad About Microsoft?

But it helps to have something to point those to who have been indoctrinated by FUD. Such a site could also serve as a training area and reference guide for people who wish to teach others about FUD. My intentions were similar when I created my kmfms website and I think it could work equally well with this counter-fud site.

...at KMFMS and on a french Linux site.

Eric
--
"Free your code...and the rest will follow."

...otherwise the penguins might escape, and then grow to gigantic size. I've seen pictures of what giant penguins do to Microsoft employees. It's not pretty, and knowing Microsoft's lawyers, we'd have a hell of a lawsuit on their hands.

And gods help eTrade if the penguins didn't get to participate in the Red Hat IPO.

I'd like to challenge your patent on ass-whuppin. Say, nice tie... *pow!!!@#$%*

If you feel like writing essays about Microsoft and you need a place to post them I'd be happy to let you use my KMFMS site. I've been gathering links to news articles as references to why Microsoft is bad, and I think some essays on Microsoft's practices would compliment this list nicely. I've been wanting to write some myself for awhile but just working on the list of links has kept me busy.

If you feel like writing essays about Microsoft and you need a place to post them I'd be happy to let you use my KMFMS site. I've been gathering links to news articles as references to why Microsoft is bad, and I think some essays on Microsoft's practices would compliment this list nicely. I've been wanting to write some myself for awhile but just working on the list of links has kept me busy.

KMFMS has some cool stuff on it. I bought the mousepad/t-shirt combo.

Any industrial geek's gotta have it!

Hmm... why does everybody hate Bill Gates? www.kmfms.com. One more thing, I think most of us can agree that Linus is in a very similar position, and well, he seems to be much more popular than Bill...

http://www.kmfms.com... that's all I have to say.

Although the death star reference may make it seem like Microsoft, I have yet to receive any trouble from them over kmfms.com. I've been unable to get into Segfault to try and figure out exactly what they could have said to miff MS off, but I doubt they would target parodies before going after places like yamoo or the excellent CPT's Microsoft Antitrust Page which are far more direct in their criticism.