William (Bill) Vaughn's Musings

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A few issues have cropped up this week while working on the new book (still in progress):

• Why doesn’t the Visual Studio 2005 Query Designer know how to deal with the O’Malley issue when entering values for the query Filter criteria or New Values in Insert and Update query types? This problem has been around for a long time and should have been addressed ages ago. Here’s a quote from my new book (still in progress)

Unfortunately, someone at Microsoft was asleep when they wrote the Insert Values or Update query type. When the developer fills in the “criteria” pane with New Column values, the routine that captures these values doesn’t know how to deal with the “O’Malley” issue. For instance, if you enter the name “George O’Malley” as a New Value, the Query Designer strips the interior single quote instead of doubling it up (as it should). This means that if you don’t catch it, Visual Studio creates an INSERT statement and sets the Author name to “George OMalley”. Thankfully, George is used to this abuse—but his wife is not, so you had best fix it before she finds out. When working with the Query Designer and Input Values or Update query types (and you have imbedded special characters in a string literal) you’ll need to “double” up the special characters to get them to work correctly. So to fix George, we need to enter his name as “George O’’Malley”—and don’t forget about his wife.

I go on to say that this is handled correctly elsewhere and in ADO.NET when you use Command objects with Parameters.

• And another thing: Visual Studio 2005’s Server Explorer now permits you to create new queries (from the Table and View icons in the Server Explorer). However for some reason there is no way to save the queries you’re working on.
• There also does not seem to be a way to execute maintenance queries from VS without getting several annoying “ya know... we can't create a graphical representation of that SQL“ messages.
• We also lost the ability to set the Visual Studio 2005 font size from the command line. This was very handy for high-resolution screens and for presentation work.

I hear that the Visual Studio team is off working on a whole new suite of features. I just wish they would focus on fixing what they have before reinventing it again.

Posted by William Vaughn at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, at least they’re consistent. Each and every time I’m (forced to) schedule one of my trips on NorthWorst airlines they never fail to disappoint. Until now, they have consistently had rude and uncaring flight attendants and ticket agents, a poor on-time record, lost baggage and shoddy equipment. This last trip was no different as far as their lack of customer service—it was an unusual 3-city tour from Seattle to Minneapolis to Cleveland and back via Minneapolis. To start with, a flight attendant crashed her drink trolley into my knee on the first leg of the flight to Minneapolis. I heard not a peep from her—not even a muted “sorry…”. I was reminded of the ad on TV where the flight attendant bangs each passenger on the head with a briefcase as she walks down the aisle—funny, unless you’re on the receiving end of the blunt head trauma.

When I arrived in Minneapolis I found that my Cleveland session was canceled so I went to the ticket counter and stood in line (for 30 minutes). I told them that I would not be going on to Cleveland—there was no need as my session was canceled at the last minute. They said “If you don’t go on to Cleveland we’ll cancel the entire trip.”. “How am I supposed to get back home two days from now?” I queried. They said I would have to buy another one-way last-minute flight for about $500. (The whole trip costs less than that). Now that’s customer service I can do without. Northwest made out like a bandit—they had three seats they could resell to some other sucker. They also made it clear that I could not use the flight legs later in the future. Thanks so much for nothing. You can be assured that I’ll continue to blackball NorthWorst airlines. At least they’re consistent—consistently awful and not worthy of my business.  

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November 11, 2005 • Vol.27 Issue 45
Page(s) 25 in print issue

I had a private chat with Steve Ballmer during the MVP summit in late Septemberalong with about 2,000 other MVPs. He opened up the floor to questions, and he (bravely) took my question. I wanted to know what steps Microsoft was taking to clean up the trash flowing into my (and everyone else’s) computer each and every day. It’s gotten to the point that I get over 200 chunks of spam every day.

Reading my mail is like trying to filter drinking water from the stuff they’re pumping out of New Orleans: 95% of the volume is, well, unpalatable. I’m using Outlook Junk mail filters, which trap most of the trash, but for reasons that escape me, these rules run before my rules, so my Junk email folder fills up with messages from China, Korea, Croatia, and Whoknowswhereistan (in character sets I can’t read) along with the usual male body part enhancers, drugs, and stock deals. As a result I have to visually sift through this trash looking for legitimate mail. Like many of us, I expect mail from “random” people with questions, offers for work, and other legitimate issuesbut most of these end up in the Junk mail folder along with the filth. Unless the person is in my (very large) contacts list, there is a 50/50 chance that I’ll never see the message.

Why Do We Have To Visually Filter Our Mail?

I think it’s ridiculous for me or anyone to have to visually scan Junk mail several times a day to find one or two messages from legitimate senders. Having to filter our mail is tantamount to having to remove chunks of sewage from our drinking water as it arrives at the house. Why should we as consumers have to screen, filter, and refine? The content being fed to us should be as pure as spring-fed wateror at least as clean as Newark tap water. When we find a source of pollution, we cap it at the source and fine the company.

The problem with spam is that it comes from unregulated sources and countries that don’t care about these issues or are out of reach of our laws. It’s like the air pollution riding the trans-Pacific jet stream from China’s unregulated factories and coal-fired power plants that ends up in the air we breath here in Redmond. There’s no way to stop it once it’s airborne.

What Is The Industry Proposing?

Steve also told us that Microsoft is doing what it can to help stop spam. I did a bit of research and discovered that Microsoft, along with other email hosts, is denying service to obvious spammers. It's not clear that these pollution sources have been deterred by their efforts. According to Accounting Software Advisor and other sources, Microsoft blocks about 90 billion messages a month, but over 12 billion chunks of spam are sent a day, which leaves 270 billion chunks a month being dumped on our desktops.

We must find a technical solution to this problemand soon. There are new laws to fight junk mail, but the lawyers, politicians, and police aren’t stopping it. They’re too busy searching for fingernail clippers at airports or building bridges to nowhere. Given that the majority of the junk mail I get comes from offshore and those nefarious sources that are (apparently) out of reach of the law, no amount of hot air passed out of Washington’s (or Olympia’s) back end will stop this trash from entering the system.

What Might Help

What might help stop spam is to make it too expensive to send. If it costs $10,000 to send a million messages (a 1-cent charge per message), only the politicians will be able to afford to send out bulk mail to random addresses. This is not a new idea: Robert Metcalfe (the inventor of the Internet along with Al Gore) received death threats when he proposed the idea a few years ago. Bill Gates has also suggested a “governor” approach that would force message generators to perform a calculation that would limit the number of email messages sent per day to a few hundred. This seems like a reasonable approach, but I heard that Microsoft wants to collect a royalty on this patented idea. Of course, companies with more computing horsepower will be able to crack this before long.

Other ideas like providing a traceable “sender-id” for mail, so the authorities could track back to the perpetrator seems unworkable. It assumes the government of Whoknowswhereistan will permit prosecution of their thriving spam businesses. I know there are enough bright minds in the industry to fix this problem; it’s a shame it’s taken this long to agree on a solution and implement it.

Personally, I think we should encourage Tony Soprano to take care of spammers and the idiots who launch worms and viruses. It wouldn’t take many reports of broken legs or smashed computer centers before they’d think twice about polluting our mail streams or defiling our desktops. Let’s hope it does not come to that.

Posted by William Vaughn at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As some of you already know, I’m a veteran. I served in the US Army for about four years and did a tour in Vietnam flying for the 7/17^th Air Cavalry. I, along with many others enlisted in the Army because we had very few options, sincerely wanted to serve their country or some reason in-between. Many others were drafted--forced to serve or go to prison or exile. Yes, I was proud to serve. I was not, however, proud of how the government used us young people. In my opinion, we were asked to fight and risk our lives in a war that didn’t need fighting. Yes, some Veterans say that the war was something they believed in and I respect their opinion and most (I expect the vast majority) respect mine. Some have said that all we needed to do was bomb the North into the Stone Age—be even more brutal than we already were. I expect that the companies building the planes, guns, missiles, rockets, grenades, bombs and other ordinance would agree—we should keep using their products with further abandon. Personally, I don’t think that being increasingly brutal would have suppressed the North Vietnamese—at least not for very long. I think that as you squeeze an enemy harder more foes slip through your fingers and more people are radicalized as they are drawn into the conflict. If your mother, daughter, son or wife, cousin, uncle or (perhaps your mother-in-law) were killed by a foreign power wouldn’t you want to get involved in fighting back? Yes, our own people our own family members were horribly killed on 9/11, and that has indeed radicalized many people here and emboldened our enemies here and abroad. But does that mean we as civilized human beings can justify killing tens of thousands of people—the “terrorists” along with the innocents in retribution? Only history will tell how many American and other “friendly” men and women will have to die before the US and its allies realize that this war is not “winnable”—not any more than we could have won in Vietnam.

If you know a veteran understand that he or she is not necessarily proud of what had to be done under the guise of fighting for freedom. Sometimes we were forced to (or chose to) kill or watch others be killed in ways you can’t imagine--others never left the safety of the US. Consider that most of us fighting were between 18 and 25—very young and burdened with orders and responsibilities that few would force on anyone so young. While you might feel compelled to ask a veteran about his or her service, understand that not all veterans want to revisit these memories. Many are proud of how they helped each other survive—and they should be. However, some carry wounds you’ll never see until a car backfires or they’re awakened by a terrible dream. We now understand this very common illness as post traumatic stress disorder—many of us have it; some afflicted more than others. Some of us still suffer (and die) from exposure to chemical agents (like Agent Orange or spent uranium), vaccinations taken in dangerous combination and other illnesses that cripple or kill us before our time. It’s too bad the Veteran’s Administration charged with the veteran’s care does not always understand how to treat veterans without stigmatizing them. I think they do the best they can (in most cases) given their funding but a significant part of the problem is that the Bush administration has consistently cut the VA budget as they increased the troop counts in Iraq and the number of sick and dying vets returning from the war. The problem with how the losses are tallied is that those that return “alive” are often burdened with wounds of all kinds—both physical and emotional that makes it harder for them to live from day-to-day. When they die from these wounds, the military does not count the loss as due to the conflict—it makes the war harder to sell on Capitol Hill. Remember that roughly three people are wounded for each person killed during a conflict. While these people might be alive, too many are horribly maimed or dismembered. They might never be whole again—but still they depend on the government promises of benefits that are slowly eroding.

I support our troops. I support them by trying to get them back home where their families and jobs need them. I support them by willingly paying taxes to pay them an honest (well-earned wage), to pay for their medical care, housing, food and equipment. I support them by willingly buying them the equipment not supplied by the government and military that sent them into harm’s way. I support them by watching after their families while they are gone and helping them adjust when they return. I support them by trying to get the government to stop wasting taxpayer’s money to pay companies that are profiting from the war instead of supporting our men and women on the front lines. I support our troops by trying to elect government officials that understand that you can’t send a man or woman into combat without also funding the care he or she and their family needs when they return—if they return.I support our troops by doing what little I can to stop the war.

I think that before any President takes us to war, he or she needs to have served in the Military and been on the front lines where his or her life is on the line. Perhaps these Presidents would know the real cost of war and (hopefully) how today’s international problems are rarely solved by killing or imprisoning the leaders, combatants and private citizens of other countries. Any President that has been a prisoner of war knows that the only thing a tortured prisoner will tell you is what you want to hear—whether or not it’s the truth.

I’m proud to be an American, but all-too-often ashamed of what the elected government has done to our prestige and honor. It’s time we stood up and make the government know that we want to be proud again—of them and our country.

Posted by William Vaughn at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

November 25, 2005 • Vol.27 Issue 47
Page(s) 23 in print issue

I just read Mr. Sixto Ortiz Jr.’s article, “Is Outsourcing Overhyped?," in the Oct. 28 issue with some interest. It's a subject near and dear to the hearts of developers here in the United States (and I dare say Canada) and probably closely watched by offshore developers in Whoknowswhereistan.

However, this article didn’t mention one of the “hidden” costs that impact every one of usat least everyone who has to deal with offshore support teams. These issues apply not only to those here in North America but in other countries as well; anyone who has to deal with an outsourced customer support organization.

Wasted Days & Wasted Nights

Case in point: I just wasted another 30-some-odd hours trying to get a major U.S. company to honor the warranty on an expensive consumable for my printer. I logged a total of nine phone calls and “chats” with what the company refers to as “award-winning” customer support experts. These calls start with a phone filter that routes the call to the right support staff, assuming your problem falls into one of the categories. (Apparently mine didn’t.)

Once connected I got to talk (very slowly and c l e a r l y) to a phone tech, “Sean,” who could not pronounce “Vaughn” to save his soul. I guess his Irish brogue was lost somewhere in his east-Asian upbringing. As a result, I’m considering changing my name to “Sahil” to save confusion. It took several tries before (I thought) they had my email address (even spelling it phonetically), but they never really got it.

Invariably, when the tech could not answer the questions such as, “Are you going to honor the warranty as stated on your packaging and Web site?,” they either (a) hung up or (b) put me on hold to talk to their supervisor. When I asked to speak directly to this all-knowing expert they either (a) hung up or (b) promised that the supervisor “would be calling me right back.” They never (as in never) did.

If At First You Don’t Succeed . . .

To make a long (too long) story short, I finally got someone in the United States to order the parts. I received them the next day. This person was clearly from the United States; he sounded and acted like he actually cared about me as a customer and wanted to make me happy, at long last. The next day the parts arrived, and he called back again to make sure they were working. But why did it take a month of trying and countless wasted hours? I’ve been using this company’s products for years, but at this point it’s probably lost another customer. That’s the “hidden cost” of outsourcing customer support.

Over the past four or five years I’ve had similar encounters with other large “American” companies that have outsourced customer support. Now I think twice each time I need help. Ironically, I expect that’s what these companies want: for consumers to leave them alone and not bother them with piddling details about their products that don’t do what their ads say or don’t hold up any longer than a carton of eggs left out on the kitchen counter. I’ve already added these companies to my blacklist and I tell my customers to do the same.

Hiring developers to write the best software in the world won’t keep a company out of the red if the support staff can’t help (and keep) the customers that have problems. I think corporate management needs to ask, “Is he talking about us? How do our outsourced support teams really treat customers?”

IBM Does It The Old-Fashioned Way

On the other hand, I’ve had to deal with companies such as IBM that have outsourced manufacturing of their notebook line to China (Lenovo). Thankfully, when I call for support from “IBM,” I’m greeted by an announcement that “This call is being routed to our support center in Atlanta, Ga.”

OK. It’s true that I speak several dialects of “Southern American,” so it’s easier for me to understand the support professionals that answer the phone. But it’s not just the familiar southern twang that makes a difference; it’s the attitude. I can hear that these people are better trained and have genuine customer empathy. It’s like they know I could be a neighbor or someone they know personally; they act like they really want to help keep me as a customer.

The folks overseas don’t seem to have this empathy. They have made it clear that they just want to get rid of me and get on to the next call. Perhaps that’s what outsourcing means. The outsourced employee is not really working for the company whose phones they answer, they’re working for someone else and couldn’t care less about the customers they’re supposed to serve. Now that’s expensive.

Posted by William Vaughn at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)