On Monday 29 December 2008 21:27, Saswata Banerjee wrote:
Sanjay B wrote:
On Mon, December 29, 2008 4:58 pm, Dinesh Shah (દિનેશ શાહ/दिनेश शाह) wrote:
<snip />
Isn't it strange that if someone don't agree with you are have views and opinions opposite ti you becomes M$ puppet? Why we never attempt to learn from our opponents? If our opponents are vastly successful does not always mean that they always employ unfair/illegal practices. They must be doing something right - like not berating and attack newbies with insults and creating an ecosystem which feed on each other, however flawed.
Have you ever tried calling a Microsoft call center? I'd much rather be "berated" on a list like this than try and communicate with those morons, whether I'm a newbie or not.
Actually, I did call the microsoft call center. Its called microsoft connect.
They have large bank of reusable codes that are available for developers to use, including a 12GB knowledgebase from which you can find who else had the same problem and what is the solution. If the community is unable to help and the matter is complex, microsoft inhouse developer and trainers step in and help out.
That must be a "recent" development. In 99 we had a virus problem that wiped out the fat from a very imp disk with years and years of data. (Ya ya backup stuff and all that - one always learns). We set about recovering. There was one closed recovery tool called tiramisu, which cost a packet and did a half rotten job. We decided to recover manually. And discovered that the fat 32 disk format 1995 was not documented in 1999. Calling local M$ office (no they did not have a help line, but did have an office) for help was useless. After a lot of digging on the net on dialup, we discovered that official docs were not available, but found some documentation from a polish uni where one of it's students did a Phd on file formats!! (bless his soul). using that, debugging bios calls (which we were already familiar with and inhouse assembly code we managed to recover quite a bit. It took two months of back breaking labour. One of the most fundamental parts of an OS not documented? i have yet to came across something worse.
It also opened my eyes and made me take a look at M$ with a magnifying glass, Particularly after lots of nasty experiences with doze 3.0, 3.1 and 95. And it wasnt just me. There were many Indian developers with very similiar experiences. I was already aware of M$ - CPM shenanigans. But it took a while to understand the politics of computer tech and the illegal and unethical practices of M$ in this politics.
I suppose one should just let the misinformed burn nicely, rather than point them out to correct sources of info.