This is a trend that should end.

One can only wish, right?

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I either got this from macdailynews.com, macnn.com or msnbc.com. I’m not sure which. I did a force-quit on Safari and moved on with my life, but still… beware.

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You will likely hear about Yammer after your corporation or business signs a deal with them. Your users will start to flock toward the service and sign up. Lo and behold you will discover that they will be offered a piece of software to install. During the software install they will have the option to invite other users in your organization.

It appears this feature enjoys crawling through your local address book or global address list to invite folks. If you’re in a large organization with thousands of employees, congratulations! You now have a spam attack.

Yammer needs to fix this. Other social startups need to learn from this. Because of this, I’m actively staying away from Yammer, even though my large business is asking us to use it. Screw that. I have work to do.

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When we were looking to get our son a Nintendo DS I pushed hard to get him an iPod Touch. My reasoning:

• There were no cartridges to lose
• The games weren’t overpriced
• The games were more “throwaway” – he’s a six year old boy. His interest level in a game will come and go as quickly as the day

He pushed back. He really wanted the Nintendo DS. After 7 months he barely ever touches the thing and has lost multiple cartridges. In his defense, he found them pretty quickly, but still, managing your game collection is just stupid.

Sounds to me like Nintendo is upset about the loss of business. Why are they losing business? It’s the same reason the entertainment industry and press are losing business. They refused to innovate and evolve the business model.

Nintendo chief slams iPhone, Android for devaluing games | Electronista: “”

(Via Electronista)

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5 Red Tape Traps: Getting a credit score – The Red Tape Chronicles – msnbc.com: “”

(Via MSNBC)

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My favorite part of the article is the comments. Someone claims in the article that AOL invented email and uses that to defend paying them a monthly fee. Hilarious.

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I’m here to tell you it sucks.

Now, first a disclaimer – I’m moaning about the generation 1 Drobo.  I know that a 2nd generation Drobo and a DroboPro have both been released and I’m sure they are much better devices – but there are still some serious problems here that you, the prospective buyer, need to be aware of.  If that’s you, maybe you can skip down to the bullet list for consideration below.

I purchased a Drobo for use in our studio that is expecting to have terabytes of data and loaded it up with 4 1TB Seagate 7200.11 drives.  The Drobo saw them, fired itself up and ran beautifully… or so I thought.

I noticed that the Drobo’s throughput was pretty slow.  Oddly slow.  No, ridiculously slow.  It was so abysmally slow that it was clear from minute one that this thing was only going to be useful for long term storage of archived data or as a Time Machine disk.  Okie, so it’s so slow that even as a Time Machine disk it’s problematic, but I suffered through it.  I was “feelin’ droovy” like everyone in twit.tv said I would.

Then I lost a hard drive.

At first, the Drobo didn’t indicate there was a drive failure.  It suddenly acted like it was out of drive space – at least that’s what it tried to indicate by flashing all four of the drive bays red and green.  Uhm, okie.  Either I lost all four drives or you’re trying to tell me something.

After a reboot of the Drobo, it told me that one of the drives was just bad.  It flagged it with a red light and the software, Drobo Dashboard, informed me as such.  (NOTE: If you use Snow Leopard, you can forget about using Drobo Dashboard in the 64-bit kernel as they still haven’t updated it yet.  Snow Leopard has only been available to developers for almost a year now, guys).  If you want to do anything in regards to checking error messages or updating firmware, you have to use the Drobo Dashboard kids.  That means you won’t be using the 64-bit Snow Leopard kernel.  Oh well, Drobo’s not the only folks guilty of this oversight.

Anyway, after going back to the 32-bit kernel and checking to see what’s going on, the Drobo was upset about a drive failure.  I ordered a replacement drive from Seagate and brought it into the office and replaced the dead one.  Drobo then warned me that it couldn’t protect me from hard drive failures because it was rebuilding the array.

…and it was going to take 1,447 hours to rebuild.

What?  Yes, that’s right.  Better yet, the time to rebuild changed repeatedly.  Sometimes it went to 887 hours, then 2,088 hours, then 48 hours, then back to 1,447 hours.  Drobo couldn’t make up his mind.  The drives were spinning relentlessly.  It was beating on the drives so long and so hard that I became concerned after about a week that another drive might fail in the process.  Fortunately, I could access the data on the drives and copy it off just in case, so I did so.

It’s been two weeks and the array is still building.  It’s also still copying my data off the drive.  That copy has been going on for about three days now.  I’m sure the data copy isn’t helping the throughput at all, but having my array in a compromised state for two weeks without an accurate time estimate to completion is completely unacceptable.

I started to research what was going on here and noticed that other people around the net were experiencing incredibly bad performance issues as well, especially as it pertains to array rebuild times.  The support kb at Drobo says “it can take some time” (not a direct quote), but two weeks is outrageous.  Oh yeah, and it’s still not done by the way.

My copy still has about 11 hours left, so hopefully the data will be copied off the Drobo before it dies completely.

I started thinking about the ramifications of this problem and realized that the Drobo wasn’t entirely a good idea.  I thought I’d bullet those out for you here.

• Drobo uses a proprietary technology that is NOT based on RAID.  The proprietary technology has marketing materials on it, but that’s about all you’re going to get.  It’s the company’s secret sauce.  It’s something akin to ZFS, but all in all, you’re just going to have to trust your data to them.
• A key selling point to the Drobo is that this secret sauce allows you to use drives that are varying in capacity and it will squeeze every byte out of it that it can.  That’s nice, but the performance of the unit is so poor that I no longer give a shit.
• Drobo is very, very proud of their proprietary technology.  So much so that they’re willing to charge you a premium for the privilege of using it, even if it is slow.
• Drobo performs adequately for almost nothing (other than long-term get-it-out-of-my-site storage) until it has an issue.
• If it has an issue, you will not know about it under the 64-bit Snow Leopard kernel, if you’re not within eyeshot of the unit.  The Drobo Dashboard can send you alerts.  But if you’re using the 64-bit kernel, it’s not going to send you jack.  It’ll blink at you from across the table… that’s about it.  Hopefully this changes VERY soon.
• The company charges a mandatory fee for firmware updates and support.  If you don’t pay them a yearly fee, you will not get any support beyond the knowledge base.  You also will not get software and firmware upgrades.  I realize that charging for support is not an entirely new thing and many companies do it, but paying a fee for firmware updates is insane.  (Garmin, I’m looking at you and those maps you want me to buy for the Nuvi, too).
• The last bullet sucks so bad that you should stop considering a Drobo purchase.
• Drobo is proprietary, expensive and forces a regular maintenance fee upon you.  You are handing your data over to an unknown, unproven algorithm.  Don’t do that.  I shouldn’t have.  I need to remember to be skeptical of things like this, stop buying into the hype and stick with a solution that has been proven (also known as RAID).

I ordered a Promise Smartstor DS4600 to replace the Drobo.  It’ll do good ol’ RAID5.  Once the copy finishes, I’ll be pulling the drives out of the Drobo and putting them into the DS4600.  I’ll put the Drobo someplace else… maybe hang it off the server for large archival storage one day when I feed it some more drives.  Until then, forget it.

ONE OTHER NOTE: No, I did not call Drobo Support.  Perhaps I should have, I don’t know.  I’m not sure what I was expecting them to do aside from saying, “Yeah, that will take a while.  Sorry buddy!”  So I didn’t.  Mea Culpa if you want to hold me to that, but I’m sure someone out there understands why I didn’t.

Update: Just in case any of you think I’m off my rocker (which I am, but that’s besides the point) – here’s a screen capture of my Drobo Dashboard.  Keep in mind we’re starting on WEEK THREE of the rebuild.  Check out the estimated time to completion after two full weeks…

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One of the fortunes I’ve had this year was to finally obtain a “real” TV set to replace the small dinky tube I’ve had since I moved out of my house.  In case you’re wondering, that’s about 19 years ago.

I had promised myself that once I obtained a home theater-type of setup, I was going to load it up with plenty of HD services.  When analyzing the bills, I realized that I was paying some fairly outrageous fees for Internet, cable and phone.  I could consolidate all of those services into Knology (added bonus: drop Comcast, which is not pro-consumer) for less than half of the monthly price.  I could then take those savings and get Chinese televsion for my family.

My wife has been here 7 years and has been quite tolerant of the lack of Chinese television.  As a matter of fact, the move is more to expose our half-Chinese children to the world of Mandarin rather than for her own enjoyment.  She really, really wanted to get ahold of YOYO-TV in particular.

Unfortunately, Dish Network is the only available option to obtain this channel.

I started off by calling the 1-888 number advertised on their website.  I wanted to add some HD channels to the package as well since, frankly, I’m a hair disappointed in the amount of HD offerings from Knology.  I wanted Sci-Fi Channel and Cartoon Network in HD and for some unknown reason, Knology does not offer them.  Dish Network, however, does.  I decided to go for the all-HD silver package and the Taiwanese mega-pack to obtain the YOYO-TV channel.

I called the number and was greeted by a very helpful young man named Alan.  Alan understood exactly what I was after.  He priced out a fabulous package, made sure the installation was completely free and signed me up.  He scheduled the appointment for 8am – noon on the following Tuesday.

Great, thought I.  I’ll just telecommute from work that day and it’ll all go well.

Tuesday comes and my wife runs the kids to school.  I stay home and join the regular telecons and whatnot (sometimes what I refer to as a job).  Noon comes and goes.  By 12:30pm, I’m pretty sure they’re not going to show up.

So I call the 1-888 number once again to get an idea of what might have happened.  I was flabbergasted at the answer.

They had cancelled the appointment.  Not only did they cancel the appointment, no one bothered to call me and inform me of the cancellation.  It gets better.  They rescheduled the appointment for the following Thursday from 8am – noon.  I presume they just assumed an adult would be available anytime they pleased, since they can apparently reschedule the appointment without notice.

I asked why the appointment was cancelled – especially since the day before they had called to confirm the appointment and verify someone would be there in the house.  I was told that this confirmation system was not tied in to the dispatching system at all – they had no idea if the appointment would be held or not.  Unfortunately, my appointment was not held because they did not have the required international dish in stock.

I was furious.  It usually takes a lot to get my blood pressure boiling this hot, but the incompetence was not only so appalling, they seemed to be incredibly indifferent about it.  I kicked into instant pushback mode.  “I work in the service industry too,” I growled, “and if I had given this type of service to my customer I would be fired.”

“I understand your disappointment sir but there’s nothing I can do.  We have no way to determine if they have the part.  We can only schedule the appointment.”

“So you’re telling me that I have to reschedule the appointment, take off of work to be home to meet you and you guys may or may not show up?”

“If the required parts are in stock the appointment will be kept.”

I was seething at this point.  There was absolutely no way in hell this could be true.  “You’re telling me that I have absolutely no recourse whatsoever except to just sit here and wait to see if you have the part?”  At this point, I decided to make it sound far worse than it really was.  I wanted her to think that I had devoted vacation hours to this appointment and lost.  “I have to take off work again and you may not show up?  Are you kidding me?”

She wasn’t kidding.  Really.  She wasn’t.  Apparently, there is absolutely no way between appointment scheduling, inventory and dispatch for them to predict if they will be able to keep the appointment.  Due to their process, they cannot tell you if they will keep the appointment, confirmed or otherwise, until the day of the appointment.

This must be pure insanity.  I could not believe it.

After pushing back and arguing on this further, I finally gave in and made them reschedule the appointment for the following Sunday from 8am – noon.  I also asked for the manager so I could at least get a free month out of this.  I was assured that I would get a free month of service for the “inconvenience.”

Fast forward to Sunday.

At least this time they called.

That’s right.  At 8:30am they called and said that again, they didn’t have the required dish in stock and would not be showing up today.  It was my wife who took the call and the bad news.  She tried to reschedule the appointment and they refused!  She told them that since I was the one that ordered the service, only I could call back and reschedule the appointment.  Again, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not they would have the part – but I still had to reschedule.

While writing all of this, I wish I was making this up.

At this point I made another check with DirectTV to find out if I could get YOYO-TV from them.  Sadly, no.  I must just bend over and take this Dish Network abuse.

Anyway, so I call back in on Monday and get a very helpful rep who hears this entire story.  She apologizes profusely and decides to call dispatch herself and find out when they will have the dish.  Amazing.  Why didn’t the others bother to do this?  Dispatch confirms that “for sure” they will have the dish by Friday, so I went ahead with rescheduling the appointment.

So we’re 48 hours away from that.  We’ll see what happens.

My first impression of Dish Network?  Very unimpressed.  No wonder they hired a talentless comedian to try to pep up their commercials.  They obviously want to cheer you up before they put you through this ridiculous customer service racket.  Their process is so horribly broken that I wonder what I’m in for if I actually do get the service.

I guess we’ll see.  From what I see at dishnetworksucks.com I’m not in for a good time.

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This is just fracking brilliant.  Now you’re going to let your child be put as risk for these killer diseases and expose the live bacteria to my children just because you’re some stupid-ass hippy parent who wants to be all New Age and shit?  Get a brain.  Why do you think we almost eradicated these diseases?  When was the last time you knew any children that died from these diseases?  Can’t put up with a little prick to the arm?  Grow up and get responsible, dumbasses.

I cannot fathom for an instant why parents would put their children at risk like this.  I hope when the children grow up they thank you for your negligence.  I’ll leave it up to you to determine how.

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First of all, that kind of talk does nothing to help peace in the world.  Shut up.

Secondly, let’s examine the country of China.  China is a country full of over a billion people and thousands of ethnic tribes with thousands of dialects of thousands of languages.  When you have a country where people can barely communicate with one another, how do you have a democracy?  You can’t really do it, that’s how.  In places where democratic-style freedoms can be enjoyed, they are (a la Shanghai and Hong Kong).

As sick as it may sound, I believe this also relates to the human rights abuses and crises that we so often pinpoint.  I agree that the laws are tough and unusual, but again – with a population that could absolutely turn the entire country into a complete lawless anarchy (is that redundant?), what else do you do?

Now for protesting at the Olympics.  C’mon people.  Is there nothing safe?  Can we not have a gathering of countries without politics and harsh words?  Wait for the next WTO meeting if you want a real chance to protest.  Just because the world’s eyes are on you does not mean that you have the obligation to ruin the chance for forgiveness and giving peace a chance.

I’m also trying to get my head around the idea that it’s a GOOD IDEA to go to a country like this that has laws against protesting… bucking the system and trying to do things that you get away with in the USA… and then fracking whining all of the net and other communication mechanisms when you get fracking ARRESTED.  Newsflash, id10ts… this is a country with laws UNLIKE OURS.  If you’re IN THEIR COUNTRY, you must FOLLOW THEIR LAWS.  If I ever get my head around that mentality, I’ll let you know.

Now for the darker side of things.

Yes, I agree there are human rights abuses in China, but these are largely the part of corrupt government officials.  Before you try to convince me that this is a problem only in China,  you need to look no further than the current fucking morons running our country to understand that government corruption is rampant even in the good ol’ US of A.

Stop and take a look at your own country before you criticize what another country is doing – and give them the chance to explain why they’re Commies to begin with.  It makes sense, trust me.  The human rights abuses do not, but human rights abuses are occurring here in the USA every day as well – why is China any different?

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