Flag amendment fails by one vote

MSNBC Story link

..A constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration died in a Senate cliffhanger Tuesday, a single vote short of the support needed to send it to the states for ratification a week before Independence Day.

For me, what pisses me of more is wearing the flag as underwear or bra which I see quite often. If the senate included all forms of flag desecration, I would have been satisfied. But trying to ban just one form of it which does not happen a lot seems like a political thingy. BTW, I would never burn a national flag to show my opposition as it is not very civil but I just don't think passing yet another law is the correct thing.

Reporting a bug in IE7. How hard can it be?

I wanted to be a good Microsoft citizen and install a beta product and use it and give feedback. So downloaded and installed IE7 Beta2 yesterday and started using it. My general impression is that is has caught up to other browsers in the market featurewise and seems to be more secure. All is good.

But as usual, I ran into issues that I wanted to report to Microsoft. So my quest began trying to find a way to do it.

1. First, I tried looking for "Report a bug" link or a button in the UI to make it simple for anyone to report an issue in a beta product. It was futile. I didn't find any.


2. Next I scoured the menus and toolbars for something that would help me report an issue. The closest I found was "Help->Customer Feedback options.." which turned out to be some sort of opt-in UI to send usage data to Microsoft. Disappointing.


3. Next, I chose "Help->Send Feedback" which took me to MS Support website. To my frustration, the web page is the main Microsoft support web page instead something specific to IE7. You chose "Help" from a product and instead of going directly to the product help page, it launched a general support page where users have to drill through the links to find what they need.


4. I did not give up. I found "Report a bug" link (Aha!) which took me to a page with a customer support phone number. Not very good given that I just simply want to type some feedback and send it to Microsoft.

5. So I clicked back to the main support page and this time, clicked on "Select a product" which took me to a web page where IE7 was not listed at all. By now, I was starting to wonder why would help take me to some place useless.


6. At this point, I decided to spend more time to get to the bottom of it. So I clicked "Help->Online Support" which took me to http://support.earthlink.net/. What in the world just happened? I have no services provided by EarthLink and don't recall ever having anything to do with these folks in the last 5 or 6 years. Another road block. Not giving up yet.

7. Next, I went back to the main support page and typed "internet explorer 7 support" in the search box and hit ENTER. Great, it took me to IE7 support home page (Why didn't the Help->Send feedback" take me to this site in the first place?). This page has information more than I am looking for. I was starting to have some faith in Microsoft folks but I still didn't find a link that I can use to simply type some text and hit send. So my saga continues..

8. Going through the page, under "Leave feedback on IE7", there are bunch of options. The web page suggested below as the first options:
Internet Explorer External Feedback
This is the best way to submit Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 bugs to the Internet Explorer team. Access the site now.
You will need to have a Microsoft Passport account in order to use this site. Go to the Passport site to create an account.
In order to submit feedback, go to Microsoft Connect, then select "Available Programs," which will take you through a license agreement. You will see "Internet Explorer Feedback" as one of the list of programs available. Select "Apply" to enroll in the program.

"Access this site now" took me to a login page and after I logged in, showed me a "Page not found" page. Not very pleasent.

9. I then tried the "Microsoft Connect" option under "External Feedback" section and looked for "Available Programs" and it wasn't there. It dawned upon me after few minutes that I should not take any help word by word. I found "Available Connections" instead (What more technical can it be?) and followed the link to find "Internet Explorer Feedback" and clicked on the "Apply" link hoping that it would be a matter of providing my passport e-mail to sign-in and then send the feedback. What a dork I am to expect such luxuries. It asked me to provide bunch of information what I didn't want to. There goes another dead end.
Side Note: I could not use the back button on my browser to go back to my previous page. Which asshole designed this? This is one of the most annoying this on the web where you can get to a page but can't go back with a simple click. It is like being stuck in a backhole..

10. Remember I am determined to get to the bottom. So I tried the next feedback option which is to install the "Microsoft beta client tool" which I clicked obviously. After clicking on O.K buttons bunch of times, I was prompted to install ".Net Framework 2.0". What a crap? In order to install a simple bug reporting program, I now need to download 20+ MB of software etc.. There goes another option.

11. The last option was newsgroups which I am sure will lead me to nowhere and is not what I was looking for.

Thank you Microsoft for making it so easy to report bugs on your product for free and also from users who are brave enough to install a beta product given the fact that Internet Explorer isn't the one with good history for security and reliability.

What did I expect from the World's best software company?
A simple button in the toolbar saying "Report a bug" which would show me a dialog with

• one editbox to enter my feedback
• one more optional editbox to provide my email in case they want to contact me
• And a checkbox to ask if I can be contacted

That is all. Was that too much to ask for? Also, was I complelely stupid to not notice something obvious (even if that is the case, I would fault the usability of it) instead of having to go through all this?

Getting back to what I wanted to report, I noticed 2 bugs with IE7.

1. My blogger site kept asking me to re-login which did not happen when I was using IE6 with blogger for the last year.
2. I see some layout issues when I go to http://expo.live.com

Hope some one from MS reads this and tries to do something about this...

Can Microsoft really execute?

Today's commentary is about the Win FS announcement. Sorry folks, I have to be honest here and write what is currently going through my mind.

The first thing that came out of me as I was reading the team blog was the four letter word along with huge amount of frustration. I am really starting to doubt if Microsoft could pull projects of this size and complexity these days. What is wrong with you people? I am starting to think that Microsoft is better of writing some web application that we call "Live" and should just be content of accomplishments.

My frustrations are multi-fold:
1. It was originally part of Vista and was one of its pillars before it was pulled out. It was announced that it would be available for XP+. I breathed a sigh of relief hoping that the folks running the project at least by then realized what needed to be done and how far they are from shipping this thing.

2. After that, Microsoft kept drumming up this thing and never even mentioned what was going on internally building hopes that this will finally ship as promised.

3. Now comes the announcement that WinFS will be "morphed" into something else and will be shipped with SQL/ADO.Net. I just prey that at least what Microsoft is saying now is true and will stick to it.

4. Beyond all, what surprises me is that the folks running this operation seemed to have no idea about what it is since I kept seeing the re-positioning of the product/platform in the last 5 years or so. I thought they are paid big bucks to strategize and come up with long term vision. If one can screw up things this badly, I am going to send my resume for a VP position in Microsoft.

I wasn't sure before but have my doubts now..

I generally do not want to encourage conspiracy theorists or read about them. But I saw "Loose change" on my friend's insistence and I have my doubts now. Though I have not checked every fact presented, as a layman and playing the role of a jury in a trial who goes by the facts presented to him and then makes a decision based on that, I think the government ought to explain a few things and open up few more to close the 9/11 controversies.

It definitely is not very far fetched and asking few more questions won't hurt...

Who made it to PC World's 100 Best/Worst Products of the Year 2006?

I always look to see where Microsoft and its products stand in these. To my surprise and disappointment, the greatest and biggest software house in the World didn't make it for the 10 best list and only 2 listed in the 100 best products of the year. Here are the notables:
1. Intel Core Duo Notebook/Desktop CPU
2. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Desktop CPU
3. Craigslist.org Web Classifieds
4. Apple iPod Nano Digital Audio Player
5. Seagate 160GB Portable Hard Drive Portable Hard Drive
6. Google Earth Satellite Imagery
7. Adobe Premiere Elements 2 Video Editor
8. Canon EOS 30D Digital SLR Camera
9. YouTube.com Video-Sharing Site
10. Apple Boot Camp Mac Dual-Booter
...
54. Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 Keyboard
...
89.Microsoft Xbox 360 Game Console

and also very disappointing to see that Microsoft took 2 spots in the top 10 Worst tech products of all time. The list is:
1. America Online (1989-2006)
2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
7. Microsoft Bob (1995)
8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
9. Pressplay and MusicNet 2002
10. Ashton-Tate dBASE IV (1988)
...

I recognize that Microsoft needs a lot of work ahead to convince people that its products are top notch.

Microsoft Office to remove PDF support

Whatever the truth is or who ever is on the right side, here are the indesputable facts based on my research:

1. PDF is claimed to me an open format and any one is free to incorporate PDF support as long as they conform to the format and thus not break the compatibility. Here is the Adobe partner documentation
2. There are already many products out there from Vendors/ISVs which support PDF to other formats conversion and vice versa. So it is not just the Microsoft that is taking a lead here or trying a new approach. If it is O.K for others to do it, I do not see any reason why Microsoft should be a exception.
3. At least there is no publically available information on whether Microsoft is altering the format and as some one who has inside information and knew the folks who were doing it, I can say this isn't the case. I for one was involved in sort of PDF support for a Microsoft product a while ago and I know the reality.
4. There is no question or doubt that Office customers will benefit from this as they do not have to buy Acrobat to author PDF content.

So in my simplistic view, Adobe is the evil company here and not Microsoft.