Slashdot Mirror
MS Says All Sidekick Data Recovered, But Damage Done
nandemoari writes "T-Mobile is taking a huge financial hit in the fallout over the Sidekick data loss. But Microsoft, which bears at least part of the responsibility for the mistake, is paying the price with its reputation. As reported earlier this week, the phone network had to admit that some users' data had been permanently lost due to a problem with a server run by Microsoft-owned company Danger. The handset works by storing data such as contacts and appointments on a remote computer rather than on the phone itself. BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data, but a minority are still affected (out of 1 million subscribers). Amidst this, Microsoft appears not to have suffered any financial damage. However, it seems certain that its relationship with T-Mobile will have taken a major knock. The software giant is also the target of some very bad publicity as critics question how on earth it failed to put in place adequate back-ups of the data. That could seriously damage the potential success of the firm's other 'cloud computing' plans, such as web-only editions of Office."
Not just buzz, it's the future bro.
OMG, Totally Awesome, My SK is back in the clouds!
here the damage to T-Mobile is compounded by their tone deafness on customer support.
Best Slashdot Co
Well, to be fair, whoever said 'All data is lost' to the press should have been dragged out back and shot. They should have said 'We're looking in to how long it will take to restore data, and to see if there will be any problems' and left it at that for a few days.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
It is hard for me to blame T-Mobile for the MS/Danger server / backups failure. Danger both makes the phones and runs the service, where as T-Mobile appear to be little more than common carriers and the customer service department. It is a bit unreasonable to suggest that T-Mobile could have prevented the outage. I mean it not like they could host the data somewhere else right? Sure they could have done a much better job handling the failure after it happened, much much better, but I just don't think they could have prevented it.
What's up with all the editorializing in the summary? Danger was bought by MS only 18 months ago. What the heck has this got to with Office and cloud computing except wishful thinking by the submitter?
Oh sorry, it's the bash MS article of the day. Please continue.
This space for rent.
Hey, at least this fiasco took the heat off their crappy network for a while.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wow, this is a terrible blow for Microsoft. This might make people think that they produce unreliable products!
Worth repeating every time. Nobody cares if you back up your data. Take a blank server; take whatever it is that you store offsite. If you can turn the blank server into your production system then you are fine. If you can't then your strategy is failing. If you never try it then you are an amateur.
This incompetence is something far beyond serious for MS. T-mobile is a much bigger customer than almost anyone short of vodafone can ever hope to be. MS have been moving strategically into hosting servers such as exchange for many customers. If you're a CEO you should be calling your CIO in and asking him when he plans to be free of MS services. If you are a CIO you want to be able to answer "there's nothing business critical relying on MS services" by the time that meeting comes.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
"That could seriously damage the potential success of the firm's other 'cloud computing' plans, such as web-only editions of Office."
I can't tell whether this is spin put on the summary by the submitter or some other third-party (because we all know submitters are, absent any editorial constraints on /., free to post what they want without attribution). That said, it's highly unlikely Microsoft will suffer from this. Wisely, they offloaded all responsibility the moment they created this entity known as Danger. They've effectively washed their hands of the entire affair, because it wasn't really a Microsoft problem in the end, but a problem with an affiliated company.
It is simply wishful thinking on the part of the submitter (or whomever) that Microsoft will be tainted by this deal. In all likelihood, Microsoft will simply walk away from their relationship with Danger, and it will be business again as usual.
I think in the end that you get what you deserve if you actually bought a sidekick.
The worrisome part about cloud computing is putting your trust in someone else's hands. But keeping your backup process internal to the company is no panacea either. Bad management practice is what led to the cloud screwing up, just like bad management practice led to in-house data losses at other companies.
How many of you guys generate your own power 24x7? C'mon, you're really going to place the face of your business in the hands of people running off the wire? Wire power. Feh! That wire could be going anywhere. Real men run their own generators!
Sounds silly, right? Of course, that's only because we're used to power companies running like utilities, government-regulated monopolies allowed to exclusively service the public with a healthy, dependable profit in return for low rates and universal service. In such an environment having your own generators for anything other than emergencies is paranoia. But wow, you start deregulating things and let the businessmen go nuts and it almost seems like you'd have to.
The real question with cloud computing is whether the companies are going to operate in a fashion that brings to mind steady, sober, dependable service like a local utility, like a giant rapacious corporation uncaring of human concerns, or like a fly-by-night dotcom. My personal opinion is that I don't trust these fuckers. Current company's situation is that we have a major software product we run our business on and the publisher got gobbled up by a bigger company and that company got gobbled up by a bigger one. The big company has decided to discontinue the product and have been slowly dismantling the team that supports it. We know we're going to have to make a jump eventually but the conglomerate could pull the plug tomorrow and we'd still be in operation. If it was a cloud app, we could be dead in the water.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Given how much of our internet access is being spied on by the government, how could ANYBODY want to trust their critical data to a cloud service? Sounds like Microsoft has Cumulonimbus clouds.
Years of BSODS.
Years of viruses.
Years of trojans.
Yet THIS "damages Microsoft's reputation"?!?!?!
At least bother to read the summary you dolt.
"a server run by Microsoft-owned company Danger."
rename Microsoft to DangerOUS.
Yours In Ashgabat,
K. Trout
Cloud computing and remote storage are not necessarily the same.
What we see here is a small device storing it's data remotely and I wonder why.
Considering how cheap a couple of GB of memory are and how precious wireless bandwidth is this can mean only one thing, having and thus exploiting that data is worth more than the cost of the bandwidth.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
If T-Mobile plasters their name on the contract, the device, and the service, then the buck stops there. Period. Internally, T-Mobile can choose to blame the Easter Bunny if they like, but ultimately, it was T-Mobile's responsibility to ensure that their customer's data was properly protected. This absolutely could have been prevented by audits of Microsofts/Danger's operations, checks of backup integrity, tighter contracts, etc. T-Mobile can go try and sue MS to get their damages back, but in the meantime, customers can, and should, be blaming (and suing) T-Mobile.
SirWired
A company called Danger? Responsible for data and servers? Yowsa! Red alert time!
How could Microsoft damage their reputation? That's like saying George W Bush could be more inept. Once you're at rockbottom, you cannot go lower.
Yeah, it's not as if Google's Loonix servers have ever had downtime... Oh wait. Haven't there been like 3 or 4 downtimes on Gmail just in the last few months? LOLOLOLOLOL
I don't see this as having a big effect on Microsoft. T-Mobile on the other hand....
I don't believe that customers care if your services providers have problems. They have an agreement with you, not your providers.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
This is what makes "cloud computing" so great! It's not your fault you don't have a backup, because you can't backup your own data.
Last I checked, Hotmail still ran on FreeBSD
Which was what? 8 years ago?
In fact, yes, people have lost data from Google. That isn't even the only example one can find.
BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data
So here's what confuses me... "BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data, but a minority are still affected." If all the data has been recovered, wouldn't NO ONE still be affected? I mean... being affected by this means your data was lost in such a way that it couldn't be recovered. So...
BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data, but a minority are still affected (out of 1 million subscribers)
At this point, the name Microsoft is pretty much a synonym for danger.
But the damage is not limited to Microsoft's reputation, the damage extends to the concept behind 'cloud computing', whatever that is. I think it is safe to say that Microsoft will recover from this incident, after all, it's record is already pretty suspect, but cloud computing will have this example hanging over it from now on.
I doubt that people will take this as a lesson that Microsoft is not to be trusted or believed since they are the public face of computing, but that computing generally, and 'cloud computing' is what's untrustworthy. Microsoft can abandon this particular project, coin a new term to replace 'cloud computing', and move on.
This is an opening for Google or other competitors. Will they step up and displace Microsoft as the public face of computing? We can be rid of monolithic operating systems if someone can make a system that boots a minimal browser/front-end that connects to the internet. A combination of BIOS and replaceable flash drive. Sell flash drives with the kernel and the drivers for the display/keyboard and network interface.
Best regards.
Microsoft Corporate Vice President Roz Ho says that all data will be restored, beginning with personal contacts.
She believes that only a minority of Sidekick users are still affected.
This is the quote in full context. There was no data loss.
Just because customers may still be affected by the outage does not automatically mean that they lost data. As a matter of fact, a statement like "recovered ALL data" should tip you off to the fact.
"But this one goes to 11!"
I was with you until "Years of Trojans", since, in my experience, Trojans are much better than Durex (broken too many Durex to count).
It's kind of like having a reference customer. It's all very well showing that they are incompetent in theory. It's good to be able to set up the production servers and run load tests. Here we have a real life demo that MS can really damage loads of customer's data. There are always cynics who say "yes, but they won't be able to do it in production". Now nobody will be able to claim that MS can't do an up to date full scale cloud screw up.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Has anyone confirm that their data has been recovered?
Maybe I'm jaded, but I can imagine that this is just a way to settle down the s-storm until the media cycle moves on to another politician being found "on the appalacian Trail".
Anyone?
Yes, the "but a minority are still affected" was referring to a previous line talking about them getting all the data full restored.
So, only somewhere between 1 and 499,999 users are still affected, then?
Or is there racial profiling going on here, too?
*Still* negative function...
Who decides that a server farm called "Danger" is a safe place to store backups?
HP servers running Unix. Hitachi SAN. Oracle RAC. Java.
Microsoft sure seams to have a wicked spell of utter incompetence cast upon them. Anything they tuch turns to crap.
Nobody in their right mind will put anything even remotely important in a cloud ran by Microsoft.
HTTP/1.1 400
But once you're large enough to need to hire someone to manage the grunt work, you're putting your privacy, security and accountability in their hands. It doesn't really matter if they're in house or contracted out.
Hey, it was the last time he checked :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I'm glad I've started reading sites like PhysOrg.com instead. The endless political spin on every post is a bit tired just like everything else around here at Digg^h^h^h^hSlashdot.
Since this outage wasn't T-Mo's fault, I would expect T-Mo to sue Microsoft for damages. I mean, why should T-Mo have to eat the huge financial losses? Unless T-Mo has idiots for lawyers, who entered into a business relationship of this sort with Danger/Microsoft with no language in the contract holding Microsoft liable for such losses.
Liar. Everyone knows that Slashdotters are all virgins. Especially the Anonymous Cowards.
All Problem solved.
If I had mod points, you'd get +1 Funny.
Given that I used up the last of them yesterday, I'll settle for, "Irony of ironies. All is irony."
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Microsoft has been employing and run by Americans since it started, and they've produced nothing but buggy crap.
Meanwhile, the Mars rovers have been a tremendous success, built by American engineers using American-made software I believe (I'm pretty sure they use vxWorks). This is the epitome of software reliability I think.
I don't think nationality has much to do with this one.
"But Microsoft, which bears at least part of the responsibility for the mistake, is paying the price with its reputation."
Microsoft bears ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MISTAKE!
They own Danger and they run the data center that stores the data!
It was their fault 100%.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If I call T-Mobile about my G1 and complain that it doesn't actually delete emails that I delete, or that the maps sometimes don't show me where a business is actually located correctly, or that I inevitable have to wipe after an OTA release, I get any of several variations on '...it's not our software, sir'. Of course, I am directed to the forums, where I can bitch and moan, but still, after 4 major releases, POP email isn't actually deleted.
I call Google, and, no, wait, I have only forums and blogs to correspond with Google about this. The issue is known since launch, and still not fixed. Google has no statement about this because they don't even bother to acknowledge the issue 'officially'.
The Open Handset Alliance? Ha! That's funny!
Other releases? I have no idea if Cyanogen's release has a new email app, but I suspect it doesn't. Ditto for JF and the rest.
So holding up T-Mobile for this Sidekick fiasco will be equally pointless.
But, I suspect, TMO is seriously reconsidering selling Sidekicks. And Danger is probably begging them to not destroy their business.
And Microsoft will do just fine, no matter what.
This is the treatment you get when the big corps decide 'good enough' is good enough.
Now, will someone further explore why they would consider buying a Hitachi SAN system? I won't. Ever.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
data had been permanently lost due to a problem with a server run by Microsoft-owned company Danger.
Is that like saying "The pedestrian was injured by Mr. Smith's car, a Mercedes?"
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Yes, indeed, although that might explain why service is even worse now.
I have a Sidekick.
I still, a week later, can't get e-mail on it. My contacts were never lost, but the damn thing still doesn't work! I'm getting tired of waiting.
My contract is up in August and I'm going to find a phone that stores everything locally AND a new provider. I have learned my lesson.
> "The outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back up,"
> [Microsoft Corporate Vice President Roz Ho] wrote in an open letter to customers.
It sounds like their "backup" was a replica on another connected server.
No actual offline backups at all.
When JournalSpace was destroyed, one SlashDot thread was "Why Mirroring Is Not a Backup Solution".
My favorite comment was by JoelKatz:
>> The whole point of a backup is that it is *stable*. Neither copy is stable, so there is no ... if the active copy of the data is corrupted, there is no backup.
>> "backup on the hardware level". There are two active systems.
>>
>> If you cannot restore an accidentally-deleted file from it, it's not a backup.
>>
I disagree - it is better public relations to 'take a dump' in one quick hit, and hope that it doesn't make too much of a splash. Otherwise you sit around for a week until a slow news day comes, and your story ends up on the front page, while the customers get more nervous.
By getting out the bad news early, anything that happens (like a partial recovery of data in this case) looks like good news, so that reputation can be partly salvaged.
I use to work for T-Mobile, and if you think for one minute that this interuption is going to cost T-Mobile, you're kidding yourself.
T-Mobile makes mad, mad money. This doesn't hurt them one bit. They are not loosing a single cent, even if they give money back to their customers, because it's all "expected income".
And it's only just and right that a huge Telco that rips off it's customers has to finally payout for a their screw up.
This didn't hurt T-Mobile at all, it hurt the customers who are locked into that damn 2 year contract! GO BOOST OR CRICKET!
and this kind of lack of due diligence creates a problem that would be an insult to any real Mickey-Mouse (tm) operation
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Hyped as Usual.
How much of a "big financial" hit is Tmo really taking, $130 (100+month's data service) off per specific sidekick users? That's likely 25% of the Tmo user base, not all of it. And those users are likely longtime customers too, so the hit is not too bad (like given them a free phone upgrade honestly, no biggie). That's why T-mobile is doing it: good customer service, and it's not that expensive. Good move T-Mobile, even though it was MS's problem!
As for MS, it is a hit to their reputation, but still doesn't effect the enterprise users, which is where MS will get its cloud computing gold nuggets. Remember, public consumers get cloud services for free nowdays and don't have problems switching to another cloud service. Enterprise users pay for theirs and usually resist moving services once committed.
Welcome to new cloud services, the same as old local IT network services. Not much different really (made sense they would recover the data cause it's still in a IT Datacenter)...
It is to laugh, those two words just don't go together very much.
If people, web developers and web surfers both, really cared about what was secure or not, just one example, javascript would have been totally banned as just an interesting but thoroughly flawed in implementation bad idea a long time ago. For every cool thing you can do with javascript, sixteen (whatever) security flaws surface...to this day, and it has never gotten any better either. If you (not you, you, I mean joe six pack you at the office or at home) run both windows and javascript openly, and not behind something like firefox and noscript, you are most likely gonna get hosed. Very few will avoid that. 100 or 200 or who the hell knows million zombies in botnets over the years prove it.
So I doubt this danger/cloud computing fibar will make any difference at all in the grand scheme of things. If the big marketing dudes want it, it will happen, and they will keep getting people to sign up for it and spend money on it, whatever "it" is. Advertising works, it is designed to get people to buy crap they probably don't really want nor need, but it still works and that's reality. Hell, look how much billions and billions of dollars that hundreds of thousands of companies have lost just from running microsoft products *in general terms*, yet they continue market dominance, and the same victims keep lining up for another swat to the ass, plus pay serious money for the privilege "Whack! ThankyousirmayIhaveanother? Whack!". That's modern corporations, who actually have IT security guys, let alone joe and jane six pack at home with their dell or walmart or best buy special.
Most people, individuals or corporations, really don't give a rat's ass about computer security, and the government doesn't either, else there would be laws on the books right now mandating a warranty that your net facing software must be "suitable for purpose" and "free from glaring defects" before you could sell it.err lease it..err licensed to use it, whatever. But even the government doesn't care, except for a small amount of their own security and even then they fail often enough.
And they never will either. I mean they should, most guys here do, but we are an extremist minority with tech and gadgets and so on, the other six billion and change people on the planet? They just do not care, even if they get compromised or lose data or get identity theft..they just won't change products or habits very much at all. Our relatives don't care, our friends don't care, our bosses don't care, our collective governments don't really care all that much either. It costs money and takes mental effort and some time to "care", that about sums it up why it doesn't happen.
And besides that, this is a PHONE we are talking about, disposable tissue paper throw away gadgets today for the most part, made, sold and obsolete every few months, people aren't even close to really thinking about telephone security yet, even though it is a little computer now. If we haven't nailed "computer sitting on a desk" security yet, gotten that huge mindset change that this is a good idea and should be followed up on, phone security is still two or more decades out before it even hits mass consciousness.
Geeks use computers and phones with an interest in how they work and what they do and how to make them better, everyone else uses computers and phones as an appliance that works today, or it doesn't and should be thrown away and a new "unbroken" replacement purchased.
MSFT is on the NYSE and it's tracking the S&P for the last decade so close it may as well be an index fund (a net loss). Since March of 2003 (coincidentally(?)) when the whole SCO thing started MS is up 12%. AAPL for example of a company that doesn't track the S&P is up 2400%. I know which one I'd rather have in my retirement fund - the one that grows faster than stuffing the cash in your mattress.
But, hey, a moribund stock mired antitrust concerns and walled off from new markets by gross incompetence can still break out and be a big winner, amiright? This whole Yahoo partnership could work out well for Microsoft (we all know what's going to happen to Yahoo). Bing could be a huge success. Google could decide to lose everybody's email and documents. Everybody and their brother could decide to migrate to W7 overnight because it does stuff their current OS doesn't do. Microsoft could have a secret phone project that gets over the fact that they've hosed over their relationship with every phone provider on the planet, and a phone OS that isn't WiMo 6.5. They could make a creative alliance with the TV vendors, the movie studios, the music industry and Sony that allows them to take over the consumer electronics space. And monkeys could fly out of my butt.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I used to work on a team at Microsoft who heavily relied on the services of the data center, and if you only knew the shenanigans and the complete incompetence of some of the people responsible for some of the servers, you'd realize that not even Microsoft is immune from stupid admins.
Google does not rely on outside providers and they're the index case for cloud computing. You can roll your own cloud and Mark Shuttleworth at Ubuntu is working on that for you. If you do it right you can build your own cloud. What third party clouds offer you in that case is on-demand compute resources and bandwidth.
The cloud thing is going to happen but a lot of people don't understand what it is. It doesn't mean giving up control of your data. It doesn't mean giving up control of your interface. What it does is provide on-demand compute and bandwidth resources for spikes in demand. A cloud hosting provider can absorb excess demand for access to your data by absorbing spikes in demand until you have time to buy, receive and provision servers to support that demand. It's like an insurance policy against the sudden growth we all know happens when you do the right stuff.
Nobody in their right mind would host all their data on a third party's cloud. But cloud providers DO provide a valuable and necessary service.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
HP servers running Unix. Hitachi SAN. Oracle RAC. Java.
To this stable solution add one MCSE engineer. WARNING : Solution may be hypergolic.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
For now.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I don't think this is really true, but if I were a conspiracy nut - I might consider this a brilliant move by Microsoft. They get the data back (insulation from lawsuits) yet manage to scare people away from the biggest threat to their market share in decades - the cloud! Don't put your email onto GoogleApps - buy Exchange, retain control.
Given that there's very likely an SLA involved w/ Dang^H^H^H^HMicrosoft for hosting the service, I suspect that T-Mobile will do just that (that is, try to sue Microsoft into the Stone Age).
T-Mobile will probably also eat a legal shit sandwich, courtesy of the first lawyer to find an affected Sidekick user who can spell "Class Action" successfully and can sign his or her name legibly on a piece of paper.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
To the person who said it, that the data was unrecoverable was true. Unfortunately for them the implications of losing a million people's personal data is not a normal case. In that case some heroic data recovery options are available, including engaging every person involved in design and implementation of the storage from the platter up, at whatever rate they ask, for the duration of the emergency. Problems that involve a half-billion dollars merit that level of intervention.
A remarkable job for the MS crew here. Kudos to everybody except the twit that lost everybody's data.
Do I want a MS thin client phone now? Why I'm glad you asked. No. Hell no. Are you freaking kidding? NO!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Like every other cellular provider T-Mobile sells bandwidth and connectivity and nothing more. It's true they should have inspected their partner more closely, especially when Microsoft acquired them, but the provision of data services is actually not within the scope of the things that they do. Maybe after this bandwidth providers like T-Mobile, QWest, Sprint and AT&T might consider the risks involved in third party data service providers, but that's tomorrow, not today.
It's fair to say that people are bashing Microsoft here, but it's not fair to say that the bashing is unfair. Microsoft bought the company and it's required that they do due diligence. If they overlooked something, at closing it's still their fault. That's what closing is about. It's about transferring responsibility for future issues from the seller to the buyer.
If this issue had arisen shortly after closing there might be some argument about this, but a year and a half is long enough to prove that the system was as advertised at time of sale. So if Microsoft hosed it up afterward, that's their fault. There is some evidence that it was working fine right up until Microsoft decided it needed to run on Microsoft technologies, at which point all indicators pointed south.
I see that the MS blog center is all over this issue and I fully expect to be modded down repeatedly. The hateful beatdown is already in progress on public sites like CNET. Hopefully there's been some education in the blog center about that, because it would be unfortunate to have to make this a crusade.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You are very close to the truth here, but you're not quite there yet. The difference is the muddled incompetence of Microsoft's phone strategy and the evil competence of their overarching strategy. They really need a phone strategy, and they placed their faith that they could get one in Roz Ho.
They put her in charge of the Premium Media eXperience. Their bad.
So they've got this Zune phone project, and they know that Zune Phone is going to get as much lift as the Zune, ie, lead balloon. They stretch out a half $B to get some smartphone props with the stuggling inventor of the smartphone, SideKick and Danger. They've got to stretch this to their new "Pink" phone but it turns out due diligence doesn't extend to examining the term "exclusive".
They need to knife their bandwidth provider T-Mobile in a Legal sanctioned way to escape the exclusivity of this contract and sell their own-branded phones with own-branded backing services to any and all bandwidth providers, so a good wide outage should do it.
Hence, the need to jerk around a million T-mobile users.
The sad thing is, this strategy is working. Much like their efforts with Sendo, they are carefully worming their way into cellular phones. There is always someone who is desperate enough to deal with them even though they know they're selling their soul to the devil.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Take both power cords (all HA servers have two power cords) and yank them out in the middle of the day. If anybody at all notices that you did that, it's not an HA server. For extra points hit your Cisco switch with a Tazer first.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The contribution to the computer sciences of the Reverend Dodgson are oft overlooked. He was a CS major and his colorful works were IT manuals that take some digesting. It is said that a full understanding of "Alice in Wonderland" will suffice as background for a full IT career.
What I tell you three times is true. This is the rule. A fact that is recorded in three geographically disparate locations (each more than 50 miles apart), did happen. A fact that is not so recorded is open to debate. Often that there is a question, regardless of what the answer is, is a career ending event.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
To be honest... As another blogger posted, MS's core competency is varpour-ware.. I think some of MS's alliances and product annoucements are more designed to hinder other competitors or technologies..
So in other words it's not restored yet. Come back in a week and tell me if they actually were able to recover the missing data. Until then, fuck off.
"But Microsoft, which bears at least part of the responsibility for the mistake, is paying the price with its reputation"
Just out of curiosity, what reputation might that be? :-)
Insert
"BBC news reports today that Microsoft has in fact recovered all data, but a minority are still affected (out of 1 million subscribers)"
correction: BBC news reports today that Microsoft claimed it has recovered all the data.
"I used to work on a team at Microsoft who heavily relied on the services of the data center, and if you only knew the shenanigans and the complete incompetence of some of the people responsible for some of the servers, you'd realize that not even Microsoft is immune from stupid admins"
It begs the question as to why MS has to outsource its own cloud services to a third party. Unless it's the people at the top trying to save money by doing things on the cheap. An IT manager who isn't technically trained. Low cost hardware with no redundancy and low cost ms certified 'IT' staff. The staff leaving/hiring cycle being so fast that there isn't a familiar face there after ten months.
Microsoft today implemented its 100% Data Confidentiality package for T-Mobile Sidekick, comprehensively protecting users’ contacts, email and messages from any possible attacker.
“Our data security is impenetrable,” said Steve Ballmer, “and will reassure everyone of the data integrity of our Windows Azure Screen Of Death cloud computing and Windows Mobile initiatives.”
Microsoft plans to leverage the new confidentiality mechanism to finally purge the horror of Vista from the face of the earth, in the same manner as firing all the contractors who knew how to build Windows 2000 and having to reconstruct Windows XP from bits of NT 4.
Microsoft Sharepoint users looked forward to a similar denouement as the only safe way to scour their hopelessly incompetent organisations from the world in a manner that would not infect successor organisations.
Microsoft is putting together an outsourcing proposal to the UK government for data protection.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I think this is more like 1984 scandal of Amazon Kindle, it will have long time impact on cloud computing and the general direction of things to come.
Even if you invent a system about e-ink/store tomorrow which has NOTHING to do with Amazon Kindle, you will still be asked "but will you delete my books remotely?". Just like some dead tech acquired by MS and not managed well will cost even IBM Mainframe dept. sales.
If one is a hopeless conspiracy theorist, he can easily suggest MS did it on purpose to lower general public trust to cloud which they have almost nothing. Cloud is all open source empire right now, Apache Hadoop etc. are being talked about, not some MS enterprise server or technology.
Openly admitting you are a Danger to society with your clunky software is a good first step.
I know one person in the "minority," and she has still not had anything recovered as of 8PM CST Thursday, Oct 16 and she says she knows two other people with the same status. The kicker is she was required to get a Sidekick for her job working with deaf people (for TTY support? I don't really know, but that brand was required).
Incidentally, I' had heard MS pushed MS-SQL servers into the Danger server room, and this is bad press more for MS-SQL than MS as a whole.
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this concept. Why would the spamers not just exploit the vulnerabilities in the Microsoft anti-spam solution? No doubt the Microsoft solution involved executing every attachment to ensure that it was safe, which would have compromised their filtering engine in under 50ms.
Help stamp out iliturcy.