1and1 Makes (ASP.Net) 2.0

German host company 1and1 has some really good specials right now. Windows Server web hosting with IIS 7.5 (that’s the latest one!) for just $9.99/mo. Wow.

Their web site is very modern. They are one of the biggest hosts in the world. And, hey, they’re German. If it’s coming from the makers of the Sham-wow! it’s got to be good, right?

No. Unfortunately it does not have to be good.

When I glanced over the numbers on the sales page it all looked good.

• Unlimited drive space.
• Unlimited bandwidth.
• 20 MS SQL databases.
• WebDav!
• IIS 7.5!
• ASP.Net 3.5.

It all looks very modern except for that last one. They are running the latest version of IIS but the version of ASP.Net from 5 years ago?

So I inquired. I asked the sales dept when they would be supporting ASP.Net 4.0 because I am eager to use MVC 4. The sales person said that it could easily be configured after creating the account.

What I found was quite different. The tech team seems very unfamiliar with the Microsoft platform. There is no IIS info in the control panel.

My SQL imports were not working. What’s more is the “Progress Report” showed the file name, type, and the time that I initiated the import. But what it did not show is the progress! Each time I imported a new file it just added it to the list. No results.

When I told the tech support person, “Jared”, he said, “Yes of course. What you have to do is go over into the database view and see if there is data in the database.” as if I had never thought of such a thing. I waited for him to go look in the database and then asked him how many files he saw. “It looks like the imports did not work. I think they are still running.”

I asked him how long he expected it to take to import a 60 MB bak file. He said about 6 hours.

And it seemed reasonable to him that I should come back in six ours and check if there was data in the database. If there wasn’t that would mean that it was still importing. This is what I should do instead of looking at the “Progress Report”!!

He also told me that the servers could absolutely not run anything newer than .Net 3.0, which came out 6 years ago. He said it with great authority. When I told him that the ads say that the servers are running .Net 3.5 he asked me where I had seen that. I told him that I saw it online at 1and1.com/MsHosting and he came back a minute later and told me that the servers could absolutely not run anything newer than .Net 3.5, which is only 5 years old. Again, presented this information to me with great authority, like I should trust what he was telling me. He entirely ignored the fact that I had just told it to him, and it contradicted what he had previously told me with great authority.

I threw a script up on my site and checked the version. It’s ASP.Net 2.0.

Oddly, they are running PHP 5.3.5, which is only a year old, on the same server. I think they are really a LAMP shop.

Technology does not make people intelligent. Not at all. It is the product of intelligence.

1and1 also has a very nice feature for transferring domains. The automated process goes and checks all your MX records and asks if you would like to import them. Very nice. But that only works when you are transferring from an outside domain.

When I created my hosting account 1and1 created it as a separate account, even though I was logged in. In order to use my domains, which I already owned, I had to transfer them to my new hosting account. It took another day!!! AND when I looked at the domains I saw that it had now thrown out all the MX records!!! What it handles well from external domains it drops when moving across arbitrarily created internal divisions.

I am sure someone there would tell me that it has to be this way. I’m sure he would say it with great authority.

Addendum

I guess I could have detected the anti-Windows bias by looking at Windows vs. Linux help topic.

• LINUX: “When it comes to Web hosting, Linux is widely considered to be the best operating system for web servers….”
• WINDOWS: “Windows facilitates varying degrees of design and management through a drag-and-drop philosophy…”

The Cause of the Crisis

The reason I am exploring 1and1 is because my previous web host, dotnet-host, was hacked, canceled everyone’s recurring payments, and has not responded to a single tweet or email or anything and their main site is down. That was several days ago.

My experience with the total collapse of DotNet-Host is still, to this day, a VASTLY SUPERIOR experience to the one I am having with 1and1. In every dimension. DotNet-Host answered all inquiries within about an hour. Their web control panel, websitepanel which is made by OuterCurve who also make Orchard, is superior to the 1and1 control panel. All my tech support items got 5 stars with DotNet-Host. And each question about the control panel turned out to be that it was simpler and more straight-forward than I expected. I will miss them.

The Good News

The good news is that I have found a replacement for 1and1. It’s Arvixe.com. They support all the features I need, allow remote administration of IIS (where 1and1 required a call to tech support), and I was able to set up an account completely in the space it took to wait for tech support at 1and1. I was able to import a 60 MB database in about six seconds, instead of the 1and1 suggested six hours, and that included the time to verify the tables were in the database after the progress bar completed!

User Guide for my 2Wire 3801HGV Gateway - Page 2 - AT&T Community Support

This is a forum in which a user tries for 7 months to get the User Guide for AT&T U-Verse's 2Wire Residential Gateway. He is posting on the AT&T forum after having spoken to every tech support person he could find.

Finally another user posts a link to the User Guide on someone's personal Wordpress Blog.

Sometimes AT&T's tech support seems almost obfuscatory.

User Guide for my 2Wire 3801HGV Gateway - Page 2 - AT&T Community Support

Microsoft kills Linq to SQL - Ayende @ Rahien

As good as Google Search is it still returns tech blog items like this three year old one for the search "linq to sql" that dances on the grave of LINQ to SQL which it says is dead.

Only it's not dead. The comments on this page were closed two years ago, so there have been no updates. Why has the author not edited the post? And why does it show up #5 on such a generic search on a popular tool?

Microsoft kills Linq to SQL - Ayende @ Rahien

Online privacy at-risk with pending legislation | Kansan.com

Another attack on the internet. Lamar Smith says he wants to help the country by removing regulations on small businesses, but he keeps proposing more.

Here is the latest salvo in the War Against the Internet.

Online privacy at-risk with pending legislation | Kansan.com

SOPA, PIPA and Tech Support

The following link is a single forum post on dslreports.com of people having trouble with IP routing on a single router type on a single service type from AT&T.

This forum goes on for 4 pages. Many people in the post say they have been working on the problem for weeks. There are many threads like this for many routers from many providers.

U-Verse Static IP's: Not Working, Can't figure out problem

The point is that this is the technology that SOPA and PIPA would give beurocrats license to mess with. How would they mess with it? With care? With their customers needs in mind? No! With a moral justification to do anything they feel they need to do to protect the public.

This is the number of steps of IP addresses that my post will take on it's way to be posted to the Blogger website. It is not exactly where SOPA and PIPA would be insinuating the influence of bearocratic whim. But it does give you some idea of the complexity of the system. If these steps below are not completed, the post does not get posted.

Tracing route to blogger.com [173.194.64.191]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 8 ms 7 ms 2 ms 192.168.16.1
2 29 ms 32 ms 27 ms 99-71-132-2.lightspeed.breaca.sbcglobal.net [99.
71.132.2]
3 * 31 ms 32 ms 75.20.0.64
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 27 ms 25 ms 24 ms 12.83.38.129
6 28 ms 25 ms 27 ms gar10.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.104.45]
7 112 ms 111 ms 112 ms 12.248.3.6
8 29 ms 27 ms 36 ms 64.233.174.41
9 27 ms 29 ms 27 ms 64.233.174.186
10 91 ms 66 ms 64 ms 64.233.174.143
11 69 ms 73 ms 76 ms 209.85.243.178
12 75 ms 67 ms 67 ms 216.239.46.39
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 69 ms 69 ms 71 ms oa-in-f191.1e100.net [173.194.64.191]

Trace complete.

Sure there are back-up routes, but the routes and backup routes are maintained by people. Now imagine this whole system, but instead of the 4 pages of tech support on this router, where people are trying to overcome the arbitrary decisions of engineers who were at least building something, we would add in to the mess the arbitrary decisions of beaurocrats who are trying to impress their boss, or not get in trouble with their boss.

SQL GetColums Procedure « Tech Talk in Fullerton

SQL GetColums Procedure « Tech Talk in Fullerton

I like a lot of the features on Wordpress.com free blog hosting site. I created some free blogs there not even to make money off publishing but just to hold a bunch of my words when I didn't have a more durable place to host or house them.

You can create a diferrent blog for each of your interests. It has taught me to catagorize my thoughts and concerns.

But much of what I am trying to post there is code snippets that I want to have always available and that I would like to share with others.

But my efforts are frustrated by Wordpress.com's iron fisted control over style. Sure, they have several nice themes that are styled well and work for many types of blogs. Some of their themes are very high quality. You don't see many Wordpress.com sites that look like crap, with font-ugly cramming of many styles into a discordant mess.

But you can't even use a code syntax highlighter. There is no standard code styling. They have abandoned code bloggers.

Updraft

Hear you can see the liquid being sucked back up by the heat.

Fireball Air Rush

In this picture you can see the faint trails of fuel continuing towards the ground having outpaced the fireball before they get sucked up by the heat air rush.

Top 5 Reasons You Need a CMS

With millions of developers around the world working on the internet every day it should be no surprise that the internet is evolving. Many of the website problems of just a few years ago have been solved. Now a person who has very little experience with the web can envision, design and create a website with text pictures and video. That is something that an expert would have spent weeks on a few years ago.

But the problems aren’t gone. They have just moved up a couple levels. Instead of worrying about getting tables and fonts to line up correctly with pictures and the safest way to post regular updates or connect to a database, we have to consider how often our site is searched and what conclusions the search engine might make about the purpose and intent of our site. If a user searches “hard candy” should a candy maker be listed above a candy store? Much of that is determined by the arrangement of the site, or of the site’s content.

A CMS system is the logical progression from low-level website implementation concerns to higher level content and concept management.

1. Reduced customer interaction cycle time.  If the loop from customer-having-an-issue to customer-issue-solved is shortened customer satisfaction goes up drastically. If you can shorten this cycle with very little cost, you both win. Picture a customer who used to have to call in and wait for a call back from a specialist who now can see the solution posted on the site by the decision maker. Does she look happy?
2. Decision makers post data, not technicians. There is something nice and comforting and efficient about having the person who is in charge of the timing, sense, wording and look of a post be able to actually post the data. There is no middle-man converting your post into HTML. Modern CMS tools are advanced enough that managers and non-technical people think they are as easy as Word, or easier. With web 2.0 you don’t have to draft your content in one program and then have someone squeeze it into a website. You just hit send.
3. Technicians aren’t posting your data. That means they can be doing something else. Most programmers and IT types have long lists of to-do’s that effect the efficiency of your whole system. The more time they can spend on building, improving and optimizing your system, the faster your company moves into the future. They really don’t need to be interrupted to do a rush post of the latest press release.
4. Improves data integration. Relational databases are great, but it is many web technologies that are improving data integration and data fusion. Web search tools find data relationships that would take weeks using standard database searches. Wiki’s and free or cheap search technologies can help you find data items or files almost instantly. They can do it over and over again. Wiki’s or other “loosely coupled” data structures are also about a thousand times easier to set up or to modify.
5. It’s what everyone else is doing. This is not merely a call to follow the pack. It has more of the sense that, “everything is moving to the internet” or “everyone is starting to use cell phones” over a decade ago. The more people using similar systems, the more integrated you will be. Your clients are using CMS. Your vendors are using CMS, or they will be. It also means that this is where developers are developing. New products are coming out every day, some of them free, most of them cheap. Many tools even have videos telling you exactly what to do and where to click.

There are many free or cheap CMS’s to choose from. The best way to pick one is to choose the smallest one that has everything you will need to use for the next six months. If you are only going to be blogging and keeping a few lists Wordpress should be fine. If you know you want group calendars or data integration within the next 6 months choose Joomla or Drupal or another more full-featured CMS. Download the trial and give it a try.

Test post

Want to see how this works from my phone.

HP Help and Support Center

Now it's not so much that the Microsoft Help is very useful, but that the HP version that overrides it is so un-useful.

You run into an error on your computer and it asks you to report it by clicking a button. You do that and usualy the Microsoft version will take all that info run through some processes and check it's database and inform you that you can find the information regarding your problem by following a link to: www.microsoft.com... and then doing a search for whatever just happened to your computer. (TIP: you will get much better results by searching the Microsoft problem on Google.) More about the Microsoft focused search suckage in a later post.

But the HP version that replaces it takes you nowhere!! It says that it could not possibly find any information on the problem you just had anywhere. Now you've sent it the error number and the process that caused it. But it can't find anything. Take the exact same two data elements and type it into Google. You'll get something like 200,000 results, the first ten of which are probably very useful. The HP Help and Support results are worse than the Microsoft ones that it replaces. And here is the kicker; try to remove it.

There is nothing in add remove programs so I clicked on the HP Help chat button. At least that should be handy. The guy tells me that I have to hit ALT+s and type in the model, product and serial numbers. They are each like 12 chars long mixed case and cannot be copied. This is the first thing he told me to do! He would not help me until I transcribed those lengthy character strings and I thought, "this is the first thing every user chatting with their help has to do. You would think they would have made it easier on the user by now." I mention this to the chat-helper and he says this is just how it is and it's required. Then I noticed that the data is in the Help page and that I could copy it. I told him I would just find the solution on Google.

The highest paid virus writers are working at HP, Dell, and Symantec and they are getting paid to put this crap on your computer by the manufacture in order "to help" you. And we pay them to do it.

Official Google Blog: A renewed wish for open document standards

Official Google Blog: A renewed wish for open document standards

Google says OOXML is an insufficient standard designed around Microsoft Office. Are they saying that Google Docs is sufficient to replace Microsoft Office? I mean it is clear that they are trying to use the international standards body to favor their product (although that is mentioned nowhere in the document) but shouldn't they allow some integration with existing standards for office documents? If their free product won't provide a current conversion path how much are we going to have to pay them for the premium version?