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. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
