Microsoft Do you trust them?

Real World Microsoft

In the cold war we employed espionage tactics to prevent progress in foreign countries, but now the Americans have a company to do it for them.  All over the world Microsoft creep into our computers at will and do their damndest.  We should be up in arms.  Why do we let Microsoft get away with it?  What is the real cost of what they do? 

 One Friday in October, Microsoft issued security updates for Windows XP computers.  (Mainstream support for XP Service Pack 3 ended some time ago, and we now only have a few months of security patches to go before XP will not be supported at all).  One update was for Internet Explorer 8 and around half a dozen were Windows core updates.  One of my clients is a designer providing graphic ‘wraps’ for vehicles.  He is a sole trader with three PCs, one of which is dedicated to performing the printing and scoring of these vinyl artworks before they are applied to vehicles.  The second PC is for design and the third, a Windows 7 machine, for email and accounts.  Late on Friday afternoon, after backing up, he left a design open and unsaved on his desktop, (you know what’s coming don’t you), and went home to his family weekend.  PCs were left switched on and would hibernate or sleep.

 On Monday he called me as his printing PC would not boot.  He thought there had been a power cut as strange messages were appearing on two of his computers.  I called round late on Mon afternoon and could not get to the bottom of what might have happened.  The critical printing computer would not boot beyond a message informing us that urlmon.dll had failed to load.  Safe mode didn’t work either, (I can hear you asking!) and, once the message was clicked, just a pale blue screen was left with nothing on it all.  It wasn’t the Blue Screen of Death, just a background colour.

 Suffice to say that determining the cause of the problem took an hour on site, a couple of hours that evening (I took the PC home) and a further hour the next day.  I was actually getting nowhere until at the last minute before wiping the machine and starting again, the internet warned me that Windows updates might cause this or similar errors.  Jiggery pokery followed while we found a way using Ctrl+Alt+Del and the ‘run’ command to get to the add remove program’s update section and remove the various updates from the previous Friday.  A reboot gave us a perfect working computer.

 All was becoming clear.  Once the ‘automatic’ updates for Windows XP had applied themselves they had restarted two of the three PCs leaving the design PC without the design program running.  This promptly lost the work and returned to the desktop as if there had been a power outage and reboot, but with the added ‘bonus’ of getting the unwitting user back to his shiny desktop.  The second PC, controlling the very expensive two metre graphics printer restarted too, but the updates had failed leaving us, not with a sparkling new desktop, but a dead machine.  No taskbar, no icons, no nothing, just an OK button to remove the error message, then an absolute vacuum, coloured with a serene pale blue screen.

I had thought the problems might be virus related, that there might indeed have been a power cut and corruption of important boot data, that the hard disk could be failing, that swapping out the RAM might give us a bootable PC.  Removing the hard disk from the PC and checking it when connected inside another clean computer proved that all was well with the disk.  Swapping out the RAM gave exactly the same useless PC when booted.  Replacing urlmon.dll failed to give us any hope either.  System Restore might have worked, but it had been turned off on what was a nearly full hard disk.

 How can re-starting a computer with no user input be a good thing?  Where is the option to halt the restart if anything needs saving in the workspace?  Where is the warning that updates are about to be applied and might be the cause of future problems as well as supposedly fixing insecure software?  What gives Microsoft the right to break in to our offices and cock-up a working system?  Why do we put up with it at all, and at what cost?

 

Printing time lost                                 1.7 days

Design time lost                                  1 hr

Technician time                                   2 visits, and 4 hours

 It would have been cheaper to buy a new PC, load software and settings, recover backups and get rolling again.  (Do you think there might be something in that argument?  Perhaps…..  There’s no harm in selling a new piece of kit, with a new set of software licences is there?)

Any apologies forthcoming?  Anybody admitting responsibility?  Any promise not to do it again?  Any phone support?  Any cash incentive?  Any care, any thought, any useful screen messages?  Anybody interested at all?.................................Big Fat No!!

Multiply the lost time and costs of, say, £400 by, say, 10,000 small business users.  (There are getting on for 3 million sole traders in the UK) and you get to £4,000,000, and, for the most part, nobody even knows it’s a Microsoft issue.  You bet your life Microsoft are keeping quiet about it too!  That’s one little issue on one day.  Do you think there could there be a few others?  As long as cash is being laid out for new hardware, and therefore necessarily software, who in the material world gives a damn?

Shall we go?

The forecast was for hailstones the size of cricket balls and lightning storms. It was sunny to the east, but getting darker by the second to the west.  I know what'll happen.  Just as we get to the top of Whelp Stone Crag, I'll become a lightning conductor.  It's almost bound to be.

Walking is as much about what goes on in your head as it is about strenuous excercise, fresh air and views.  First you picture yourself astride the globe, perambulating effortlessly, smiling at all you meet.  Then you plan and pack.  You start, slightly nervous.  Will you be OK?  Can you get that far? Will you get lost?  After a short while the physical effort gives you a great sense of ease and you warm up. You get involved with the dust, the sights, the smells.  You become one with the earth. Your eyes become precision instruments handling all those steps in exactly the right place to stay upright whilst watching the route and the conditions.  Now you're the perfect walking machine.  Even the bag on your back feels lighter.  Watching those clouds blacken reminds you that people die doing this sometimes.  You look after yourself, keep warm, keep dry, take on water and food, testing your equipment and experience to the limit.  Danger is a thing you face.  Decisions are life and death.  What will you do if one of us breaks their ankle here?  Then you win your prize.  You get where you're going.  Downhill always less stressful than breaking new higher contours, but never complacent as to where you put your feet.  The last mile. You relish the challenge and the finish. You did it.  Success..... and relief.  What a feeling.  What an adventure.  Every single walk you take is like that.  It writes a story in the earth itself.

So we have to go. Waterproofs and flask packed. A short ride in the car to Tosside. Got the all important camera. Feels like we're storm chasing. 

As we drive it gets darker and darker.  The wind picks up and blows hawthorn blossom in centrifugal swirls into the air.  Is this madness or just a little local walk.  Why am I scared?  Just because nobody else it out this early doesn't mean it's dangerous, does it?  Park the car near the cafe.  It's early, but the owner is getting ready.  He looks at us, then looks up at the sky, then shakes his head and disappears back inside.  Madness!
It's warm and cold at the same time.  The east wind is cool. I'll keep my jumper on.  But the temperature says 14 degrees C.  What's going on?  The clouds are forming strange twisted horizontal cheese straws.  Most of the sky can't be brought in focus, but clearly there are elemental changes going on up there.  Darker still as we set off.

 Bailey Lane is a private track, but a water works van passes.  The guy calls out, "don't get struck by lightning"........Is that an omen?  How does he know what we're thinking.  Now here comes the rain.

We're out in the open.  Cannon fodder really.  Do rubber boots stop you getting struck by lighning? Let's make for the trees and walk along the edge of the plantation.  It's a bit wet, but good to have the boots on and someone has laid a tarmac track here where the path is.

Only three straight miles from home, but I've never been here before.  Feels like a new country.  No sign of lightning.

 Oh dear we got lost.  OK I got lost.  Just after Heath Farm. Took the easy signposted forest gravel path, but soon realised it was heading in the wrong direction.  Retraced our steps and found the way which was hardly used, boggy, overgrown and tough to follow.  Livingstone must have come this way.  No one else has in ages.  Got to be careful.  The ground is rutted with broken branches across, and more water than path.  You could break you leg, die here and no one would know for months. Soaked now, in just over half an hour, feet included.  The ground is a sponge, as is the sky, but I can see the crag now.  We're out of the forest. Two boggy fields to cross and we're there.  It's only just over 1,000 feet high on the edge of the Forest of Bowland (AONB), but the view even today is extensive.  I can see some Yorkshire Dales, our local Catlow Fell and Bowland Knots and even the fells behind the Salter Track roman road.

No lightning conductoring required.  If anything it's brightened up a bit, although the wind has strengthened.  A few brave mountain bikers are battling through the forest on twisty tracks, but they don't even look up to see us.  We are falcons.  We sit high on the crag.  All seeing.  Just waiting.  If one of them comes off his bike, I'm going to eat his leg!

So now to find a way off here, but the path on the map is barely visible on the ground.  It's a popular saying these days.  "You've got to get out more", but they aren't getting out around here.  I  know some paths are getting eroded but here they are disappearing fast, which is even more worrying.

Some old paths are marked by being consumed by reeds.  That's the case here.  It is a level route on the side of a slope, so it catches all the water as it runs off the fell and the reeds find it the perfect environment.  If it wasn't for the line of reeds though we might have had to battle our own route across the bouldery sloping surface.

2.5 inches to the mile is the scale of our map.  It shows walls and fences.  A great guide when you're not quite sure.  Finding the way off the fell would not have been easy if it wasn't for the lines of the walls showing exactly where to drop down to the end of the single track road.

Here's a summer meadow.  Brilliant colours with a background of bright spring green.  The grass and flowers are a billowing carpet 4 feet thick, bulking up the landscape.  Why do we find this spring growth so attractive?  It's so bold, enticing, colourful and cheerful and it smells fantastic. It's a feel good field! I guess we were all insects once.

Further down, yes we're dropping away from the fells, there's some horses galloping madly about.  They're over the wall from our lane, so not going to do us any harm, but mad about the rain, or the spring, or us or something.  It must be brilliant to run about in your dinner before you eat it!

Civilisation, T-junctions, bridges and finally a little shelter so the flask can be broken open.  Hungrier that we thought.  Cake dismantled.  Twix and biscuits. So good.  And good to sit and watch shimmering leaves, bright droplets and the occasional vehicle.  Walkers always feel superior to people doing everyday things, like driving, going somewhere for no apparent reason.  It's another of those special pleasures of getting out in the open.  You cannot be contained by car, house, job or duty.

Finally,  real hard rain for the last couple of miles.  Some people think we're not enjoying this.  Just letting the soaked hedgerow brush past and adding extra water brings the body and the walk to a crescendo.  Just about everything in life happens in a hedgerow and this exquisite country has  millions of miles of it.  You'll never be bored next to a hedge.

There's the car.  Well done!  Wet....just a bit.  Picture that little route in your mind as you look up the track you followed a few hours before.  It had everything. Nothing will ever be quite the same now you've done that. Pleased you came?  You bet.

What’s the cost of real value?

Everybody knows you don’t get change out of a parking meter.  Doesn’t matter whether it’s at the side of the road or in Sainsbury’s car park, you don’t get change.  Have you ever stopped to wonder why?  You could bowl down the street and get the right money.  But you’re too busy, right?

 

If its 60p for half an hour and £1.20 for an hour, you’ve got to go and find the right change.  Maybe trip down the road to buy something like a chocolate bar or a packet of mints.  Of course you run the risk of missing the warden giving you a ticket you while you're away and you'll get fatter.  Incidentally, have you checked out the price of mints lately?  They’re 60p, 70p, 80p a packet of extra strong ones, and 18 in a packet.  That’s 10d in old money.  (It was always ’d’ after the amount…. 6d, 2d.  Can’t remember why?).  No way, eh?

 It’s the little things in our lives creeping ever upwards in price which con us into thinking we’re getting value for money elsewhere.  After all, if a house costs £200,000 then 80p for a packet of mints is reasonable, right?  Value for money is a strange and subtle beast and we don’t comprehend it most of the time.  Sometimes we know we've been overcharged, sometimes we’re sure we've got a bargain.  Most of the time we shrug.  That’s the price.  But we’re ripped off time after time.

I spent, if I remember correctly, around £4.50 on a pot of tea for two in Penzance station café recently.  I thought at the time it was great value, just what was needed on an icy spring afternoon.  They even had Thomas the Tank Engine steaming round and round at pelmet height for a bonus!  I think I had three cups, Helen two.  Boiling hot.  Fabulous!

But wait……...  Later the same day it cost £75 to stay in a hotel a couple of miles from Land’s End.  For that price you get hours and hours of privacy and comfort.  You get clean, several times if necessary, and they'll even provide the soap.  You get to excrete, (sorry to bring it up, but it’s a valuable commodity!), 'til you're blue in the face.  Personally I've not tried that, but it’s got to be worth a tenner at least.  You can make yourself some tea and coffee, with biscuits, more or less as many times as you like.  Watch the telly, read a book, share the view, change your clothes, make love…..There's no end to the fun.  Connect your phone or laptop to the internet.  Make a packet soup.  The list is endless and you can clear it all up with toilet paper, towels and fancy tissues.

 Is that it?  Am I finished?  No way!

Come the morning you get somebody to cook you a whacking great breakfast as well!  You can have cereals, pastries, fruit, yoghurt, toast, butter and jam, a huge Cornish fry-up, fruit juice, and, and, and…….yep…….as much tea as you can drink!!

 Let’s break it down for one person, so we can see the real value;

 

Couple of Hot Showers                                                                                    £5.00

Visits to the loo, (now 40p in Birmingham New Street!)                                    £2.00

Tea and a Coffee                                                                                            £4.50

Flask of Coffee made to take with you                                                            £3.00

The Kit to make Hot Soup                                                                               £2.00

Clean bed, night’s sleep, and TV in a warm room and no cleaning                  £25.00

Internet for an hour or two                                                                           £10.00

Toilet Paper, Tissues Soap and Towels                                                            £5.00

Big Breakfast, (might even make a packed lunch from what’s on offer)          £14.50

 

Total of what it’s worth to me                                                                       £71.00

 

….and we paid £75 for two people!!  Now that’s what I call value.  18 hours of comfort for two people at £2 per hour each.  Wow!

 Back then, to the parking meter.  The technology is great.  You chuck in your coins and it decides how much you’ve put in.  Then it prints a ticket with the time you must leave by, how much you paid, who you’re paying and your shirt size.

 How difficult would it be if, say you put a £1 coin in, to allow you £1’s worth of parking?  Adjust the time you can stay until, based on how much you pay.  Stunningly simple!!  You get your money’s worth and they get paid.

But no…….

 They want you to pay more than the going rate.  If they can take £1 for 60p’s worth of parking they’re quids in.  I wish I had a business like that, where I could charge nearly double for something, just because I didn’t have the change to hand.  These people aren’t crooks though.  The local Council are fine upstanding fellows.  They work for you.  You voted for them!

 So, I’m afraid, you’ve only got yourself to blame.