Re: Cannot Create A Web Site

On Apr 4, 10:03=A0am, Matt Davis wrote:
> That is entirely up to you. You are (and always were) in control of how
> you choose to spend your time. Not Microsoft. Not the people on the
> Internet. You *chose* to spend all 167 hours on this problem. If you
> regret your decision, then the best thing you can do now is learn from
> it.

> I am not saying you did the wrong thing with your time. That is for you
> to decide. I am simply pointing out that you are wasting your effort by
> blaming Microsoft, IIS, Kerbereos, etc.

I actually thought about this argument, asking myself why to I blame
Microsoft when I buy something from Microsoft and it does not work, or
if it does, first I have to find some group on the web that has
already done what I am trying to do and knows how to get it to work:

It's my wallet. My wallet doesn't like it.

> The question should be: how is setting up WebDAV + IIS7 + Vista in the
> domain of a network security researcher? I do not setup my own
> computers, nor mow my own lawn. I hire others for that. It boils down to
> simple economics for me. I can pay someone less per hour to do those
> things than if I had done it myself, because I make more than that
> (hourly), so by getting my time back, I still come out ahead.

Well, as I said, I had the best help one could find: multiple
individuals associated with Microsoft, one who had written some of the
code. It's really hard to get much better help than that.

> > Because the non-experts might be a bit more objective than the people
> > who wrote it?
>
> You imply an inverse correlation between objectivity and experience, but
> if anything, the opposite is true. I don't put a lot of credibility into
> the opinions of non-experts, and neither should you.

No I do not. The people who wrote IIS 7.0 seem to give glowing reviews
of it. I have not seen one bad word written about IIS 7.0 by people
associated with Microsoft, except, perhaps, that the documentation
is...strange. This is a common pattern. I vaguely recall many years
ago when KB articles started saying, "this is a known issue", because
Microsoft could no longer ignore the frustration that their customers
experienced when they asked, "So is it broken, or is it not?" and the
person who wrote the code replied with a euphemism that made it seem
like there was no problem.

Take for example, the XML configuration store of IIS 7.0. I am
*absolutely* certain that I did not manually edit the web.config files
or applicationhost.config files, but after extensive usage of the GUI,
the entire file (I forget which) contained less than 100 bytes, a
single matched, emtpy pair of XML tags. Assuming that I am not
mistaken, the person who wrote this part of IIS 7.0 most likely
encountered this problem before, and just might have come across my
posts on IIS.NET. But you don't see any mention of it anywhere. If it
turns out to be a bug, it will be discovered by someone else at some
point, and Microsoft will put up KB article.

But at present, from the reiviews, you would think that IIS 7.0 is
simply without flaw.

> I was reacting to what you said. You said (and I am paraphrasing here):
> "You know you have done a good job when someone who is foreign to your
> field of expertise says your solution is the way they would do it, if
> they were an expert in that field."
>
> I am saying that experts determine what a "good job" means in a
> particular field. Otherwise, why would teachers need to be accredited?
> Can the average Joe blogger walk in off the street with no credentials
> and no background and start grading medical students at the university
> hospital? Of course not.

No, but the difference here is that we are both software engineers.
We both have experience in the field.

To use your example, I have two younger sisters who are doctors, one a
practicing neurologist, the other a neuroscientist. The neurologist
likes hands-on helping people, and prefers not to be in a lab. The
neuroscientist is the opposite. She likes sitting on her butt 5-6
hours a day behind computers doing research, but does not particularly
enjoy the sight of blood. The neurologist does not work in the same
area of expertise as the neuroscientist, but if the neuroscientist
ever produces something of interest, say a tool that could be used by
a neuroscientist (software or otherwise), I think the neurologist
would be qualified to judge how good it is.

Similarly, many of us who use IIS 7.0 are not strangers to distributed
communication. We, too, have sufficient experience in skills that
might be required to write something like IIS. So while we are not
experts in developing web servers, to some extent we should be able to
judge external quality, I think.

> > > > So I already know how much easier it could be, compared to how it is=
,
> > > > which is why I Microsoft (Research?) could do a lot better.
>
> Perhaps. But if you really know how much easier it could be, you should
> publish your findings. Surely you are not expecting Microsoft Research
> to reinvent what you already have(?) If you have something, put it out
> there. What good is research if it doesn't get applied?

So true.

-Le Chaud Lapin-