Comments on: How the Sidekick fiasco is Microsoft’s fault

By: MichaelHost

MichaelHost — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:58:57 +0000

For a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft not to have a redundant backup is simply unforgivable and inexcusable! Whether Danger failed to make a backup before its upgrade or Microsoft’s oversight http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365 /, this incident is a total disaster especially for its customers.

By: Peter Potter

Peter Potter — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:12:54 +0000

You think you’ve got problems. Microsoft is a total waste of time now. All it’s programs are giving an error when shut down by the user, not recognising the shut down as a normal part of operating a computer. Please, someone, buy Microsoft and trash it.

By: syndicate

syndicate — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:48:59 +0000

All sidekick users deserved it, they were just so annoying back in high school, trying to look cool (I am not complaining). They distracted me so much with their chitter chatter typing, so now no service means no proper device functionality.

By: sidekicker

sidekicker — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:35:57 +0000

IMO, permalink is likely correct. Danger was a vendor of mine for three years, and they were understaffed and lacked professional level debugging of systems and procedures. They built stuff and did not test that the entire loop actually worked without a glitch. It surprises me something this huge did not happen sooner.

By: John Willkie

John Willkie — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:21:30 +0000

everybody talks about backups. Backup, schmackup. I make backups of my code daily. But, I learned a lesson several years back when I made a big mistake in code and tried to restore from my latest backup. It didn’t work. Backups are important, but nothing matters until you have actually restored data from a backup and PROVED that your backup system works. I suspect that is what happened here: at the most basic level, nobody had recently proved that they could restore from backups.

By: MattF

MattF — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:28:49 +0000

Microsoft has lately had a string of failures, and it’s reasonable to ask why. After all, MS was the dominant technology company in the US as recently as ten years ago. All I can see, broadly speaking, is that they’re all management failures– Microsoft doesn’t lack talented and knowledgeable engineers, but assets and goals don’t seem to be lining up in a rational way.

By: Dollared

Dollared — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:32:41 +0000

Ordinarily Dave’s word is gospel with me. But I’m with Felix on this one.The problem is not due diligence. It probably has a lot to do with trying to force Danger’s infrastructure into some architecture that 1) has Windows server at its core, not whatever Danger was using and 2) is part of some technology roadmap and grand vision that merges the mobile services platform, the adserving platform and the online services platform sometime in 2014, and called for a greatly hobbled Danger from 2009 to 2011, with millions of unhappy customers, because for some reason that perfect, Microsoft-centered vision called for Danger to discontinue its storage architecture two years before its replacement was in place.Actually, I know the “some reason.” The architects want to replace the Danger storage infra with something more awesome-ier, but if they actually pay to extend the Danger system’s life and support Danger’s customers until they are ready to transition in 2012, they have to cut features from their due-in-2014 awesome-y stuff. They can’t bear to do that, so it’s time for cold turkey!Those Danger customers should have just bought a Windows Mobile phone, and then they wouldn’t have this problem.