October 2006 - Posts
And today's phrase-of-the-month is: Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
I was watching an episode of "The West Wing" on my media center and this phrase was the title of the episode. The literal translation from latin is "After, therefore because of". It refers to the common mistake of assuming that because two things happen in sequence, then one caused the other.
This situation will be all too familiar to the IT Professionals out there. As you know, it is always the last person to touch something who gets the blame for breaking it, or "I installed X and now Y doesn't work, therefore X broke Y". Human intuition has a strong tendency to associate things that happened temporally close together with cause and effect, whereas in fact the two are often not linked at all.
So, IT consultants, if you want to impress (or maybe bamboozle) your customers, next time they tell you that you were the last person to touch their system so you must have broken it, just tell them: Post hoc ergo propter hoc!
I've managed to tempt my mum to come off the fence and
start blogging. Welcome to the world of blogging, Mum.
With the release of IE7, the nay-sayers are coming out of the woodwork. A quick look at the IE7 blog reveals comments like the following:
It probably sets the web standards community back several years.
A worsened interface
Make sure you are not using ClearType. All it does is make your fonts look blurry…
It behaves like an early beta, not an official release
Just installed IE7 and it removed me as an administrator of my own machine!
New features means new bugs. That's the way software works.
…and so on. You get the idea.
A lot of the statements are highly subjective and often there is no evidence to back up the claims. It's all too easy to be critical. Have you guys all taken part in the beta programme and given your feedback to Microsoft through the proper channels? If not, then you only have yourself to blame. You need to start engaging with Microsoft instead of trying to beat it into submission. Instead of taking pot shots every time MS releases a new product, I challenge you to explain why you think what you think and present a reasoned argument, preferably on your own blog with a trackback to the product blog, so others can comment.
Personally, I welcome IE7. I've found no compatibility problems since RC2 and I love the cleaner, tabbed interface. I love the new anti-pfishing filter (and my mum will too). I like the smoother look that ClearType gives me and I appreciate the zoom feature.
The one thing I don't like is that way that you can no longer examine a security certificate until after the page is displayed. In IE6, if a certificate was invalid or expired, a dialog would pop up which allowed the user to click on "View Certificate" to examine the certificate details. Now, in IE7, the View Certificate button is missing. You're told there is a problem but the only way you can view the certificate is to allow the page to load, which seems to defeat the point of having a certificate in the first place. I did report it as a bug but the reply was "working as designed". But in the grand scheme of things, it's not that big a deal.
On balance, I welcome IE7. I've found it to be more robust and easier to use than IE6.
I wish Internet Service Providers could get beyond the idea that people only receive content using the Internet. The Internet has never been just about viewing web pages. Why can't ISPs understand that the internet is not just about receiving HTTP – it is about FTP, SMTP and all those other two way protocols and that people want to run servers? Why can't they understand that I want to access my own music collection from wherever I am, not download other people's music. Why can't they understand that I want to publish content as well as looking at other people's? Why do they have to focus on the World Wide Web, which is just one small aspect of The Internet?
Wikipedia: Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous
In the early days of public dial-up access to the Internet, for consumers at least, it probably was all about the web and viewing other people's content. That's a usage pattern that really developed in response to the World Wide Web and the connection technology available at the time. For a long time in the UK, ISPs resisted the introduction of always-on connection technology and kept people in the straight-jacket of slow dial-up access, which was inherently one-way because of its intermittent nature. It's hard to run a server on a connection that is down 99% of the time. Even when permanent connections became available, bandwidth was expensive and ISPs tried to optimise how it was used (read: minimise their investment) by providing asymmetric pipes. Now though, freed of the constraints of dial-up, Internet users are starting to get more sophisticated along with the operating systems and software they can buy. More and more people are producing content as well as consuming it. Sharing of music and files is commonplace. More and more small businesses are starting to be run from home, using domestic class internet connections. The ISPs are so focussed on their content-centric one-way paradigm that they can't respond to these more sophisticated users. They still insist that we want to consume more then we produce and they might have statistics to back that up, but I'm not certain whether asymmetric DSL is the cause or the effect.
So come on, ISPs. The Internet is and always has been a two way channel: full duplex and bi-directional. Stop holding us all back with your outdated unidirectional view of the world. Make the paradigm shift. In the next incarnation of whatever networking technology is delivered, let's push for two-way working.
Today, our ADSL connection was upped to 8 megabits per second - a free upgrade. Less than a year ago, it was upped from 1 to 2 megabits, also a free upgrade.
Moore's law really relates to the number of transistors that can be crammed onto a chip and it says that the density will double or the cost halve about every 18 to 24 months. Well, our broadband bitrate out here in semi-rural Wales has increased by a power of three in about that time. Way to go, Demon Internet.
Dave Overton recently blogged that we can send feedback to Microsoft on improving the 'Quick Start' poster that ships with SBS. My response to that is (in a nutshell):
Scrap the poster. Tell people about Small Business Specialists.
Microsoft, you put all this effort into setting up the Small Business Specialist programme, only to neglect to tell any end users about it. So currently, the SBS certification is nothing more than an industry-insider way for as to all pat each other on the back. Well, you asked for feedback so here it is - both barrels! Microsoft, we want you to tell end users about the people that you've certified to recommend and install Small Business Server: Small Business Specialists. Why not put a leaflet into the SBS box, explaining what a small business specialist is and how to find a local specialist? This is an important opportunity for you to bring together your partners and end users for successful long-term IT collaborations. You promised us that you would be prominently displaying the SBSC "blue badge" logo on small business related products, but to date, after more than a year, we haven't seen that happening. Here's a golden opportunity to deliver on that promise to your partners. Let's get the "blue badge" inside every shipped copy of Small Business Server.
I already sent my feedback to Microsoft:
As a partner and Small Business Specialist, someone who has qualified to install Small Business Server, rather than trying to spin SBS as an easy-install, I would rather you concentrated on getting people to come to us, your partners, for help installing SBS. No matter how you spin it, SBS is a complex product that requires considerable experience to get right. There are a lot of decisions to be made during the install that require knowledge of things like networking and security. Rather than encourage customers to install the product themselves, why not include information about the Small Business Specialist certification and tell them how to find a local consultant? It's your certification programme after all – why not encourage customers to get in touch with the partners you certify? This is a critical first-touch opportunity for brining partners and customers together for long-term successful IT collaborations. Please, please, please – tell customers about Small Business Specialists! Let's get the "blue badge" inside every boxed copy of Small Business Server.
Partners: take this opportunity to tell Microsoft that we want them to promote the "blue badge". Your vote counts. Use it or lose it. Send feedback to: mailto:sbsdocfb@microsoft.com?subject=FEEDBACK:UsingtheSBSQuickStartPoster