Washii Ponderings

Facebook! You are the weakest link, good-bye!

Seriously, how do you solve a problem like Maria…err, Facebook (odd time to have Sound of Music on the mind…).

I like ’social rules,’ they help keep me in check. And here’s why I don’t like Facebook: you’re ’supposed’ to only friend people you actually know (which I take to mean IRL). I have only very few exceptions on my otherwise small Facebook account. I like the people that I have friended there, but I already knew them, didn’t I?
For me, Facebook is _incredibly_ inflexible.

Twitter, however: Twitter’s paradigm is “watch whom interests you;” while this may include friends you already know, Twitter is much more open to ‘friend vagrancy’ than Facebook (somewhat minus private accounts, but those seem more the exception than rule).

This makes me think that Twitter has much more ‘linking’ power than Facebook. Sure you can generate some interesting chains of friends in Facebook, but I’d just rather go watch those friends than have some wall in the form of ‘How do you know this person?’

However, Twitter: I need a better, no-nonsense way to have longer posts. I’m honestly pushing hard on the boundaries of 160 character SMS at times, how do you think I feel about 140 characters? You cramp my style more than…’liberate’ it? Using multiple tweets for a thought feels like a very strong faux pas.

Honestly, though? Twitter wins the fight over my mind. I’ll continue using Facebook occasionally, but Twitter is what will keep me ensnared; sorry Facebook.

A customer service representative at Microsoft got back to me again. How funny that it would be 10 days after I began to de-facto work for Microsoft, and now hold 3 accounts to log onto Microsoft computers in some way! At the largest data-center in the world, too.

Hum.

Text of the reply follows:
>>
Hello,

This is regarding the Service Request SRX1109907523ID.
Thanks you for letting us know about the spelling error and we are correcting it.

We have received a reply from our colleagues that generally the ISO image supported by MSFT is a single flat file – the underlying network transport layer ensures that the ISO is copied correctly. We have also posted the hash values next to the downloads for RTM.

I hope the above information is helpful.

Thank you,

(name removed)
Microsoft Customer Service Representative
>>

So, my impressions:
a.) Huh, this guy referred to themselves as MSFT. Interesting.

b.) Just because an ISO is a flat file means freaking squat if it gets corrupted on-disk! The point was, I want to know should it get corrupted before I get to burn a copy (or burn more copies).

c.) “the underlying network transport layer ensures that the ISO is copied correctly”? Aha..ahahahaha. Unless they were basically using BitTorrent or at least some sort of file verification hash (which, based on the downloader, I highly doubt), the ‘underlying network transport layer’ don’t do squat but try to get some bits to you, especially when using multiple download connections at once.

d.) I’m not really going to bother looking for the hash values posted right now, since it was about 9 days too late to matter, as the downloads went offline the 31st of August. If they did actually post them, maybe a link to such a page would have been a good idea if they didn’t want me to brush it off.

e.) Somebody at Microsoft actually entered the link to my blog from the first contact, or else they wouldn’t have known there was a spelling mistake! I never got to submit the original text to them that said it was misspelled.

So, I got a response from Microsoft regarding “What’s the point of saying things like that to me?”

Here follows the reply:
>>
Hello,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Customer Service.

This is regarding the Service Request SRX1109907523ID.

We have received a reply from our colleagues and they have stated that Microsoft does not use BitTorrent or other P2P as an official distribution vehicle for Microsoft products.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please write back to us.

Thank you,

(name removed)
Microsoft Customer Service Representative

If you have any feedback about your Online Customer Service experience, please send it to my manager, (name removed), by clicking the link below.
>>

Talk about not seeing the forest for the frickin’ trees.

Yeah, I sent feedback. Here it is:
>>
Subject: I wasn’t asking about P2P or BitTorrent!

The answer I got in this case makes no sense whatsoever. I wasn’t asking for Microsoft-authorized BitTorrents or P2P, since I know they won’t happen until they get their heads out of somewhere.

What I _was_ asking for is publically available file verification hashes on your files, especially the large ones like the Windows 7 RC DVD ISO! If I keep the ISO on a computer, I want to ensure it has the proper MD5, SHA-1 or SHA-512 hash.

The only time that BitTorrent even comes up is when mentioning that I had to find a site which DID have the hash around. They just happened to be uploading .torrents of the x86 and x64 ISOs to a particular BitTorrent site and helpfully posted the hashes for the full downloads from Microsoft (and, yes, I DID download the ISO from Microsoft).

I should not have to rely on a third party for something as simple as file verification hashes, especially on files >50-100MB. There is a very good reason that most Linux distributions have an MD5 or other verification file hash side-by-side to the download links.
>>