Insiders from Danger, the Microsoft subsidiary that handled Sidekick data storage say Microsoft execs are ‘clueless idiots’ who botched everything from the start.
This does not appear to be sour grapes. Read the Apple Insider article. It describes a Microsoft culture that must replace any technology not invented by them. (Danger ran under an Oracle database) and which repeatedly made major errors in developing the mobile phone software.
The Sidekick debacle that caused users to lose all data might have been due to Microsoft attempting to replace the Oracle system with their own.
But where was the backup? I’ve been a database developer for twenty years and have been wondering that too. Making backups is Rule #1.
The fact that no data could be recovered after the problem erupted at the beginning of October suggests that the outage and the inability to recover any backups were the result of intentional sabotage by a disgruntled employee. In any other circumstance, Microsoft or T-Mobile would likely have come forward with an explanation of the mitigating circumstances, blaming bad hardware, a power failure, or some freak accident.
The very long outage of core functionality, followed by an incapacity to recover any data, both point to the possibility that “someone with access to the servers at the datacenter must have inserted a time bomb to wipe out not just all of the data, but also all of the backup tapes, and finally, I suspect, reformatting the server hard drives so that the service itself could not be restarted with a simple reboot (and to erase any traces of the time bomb itself).”
I agree. The inability of both companies to provide a backup or a coherent explanation as to what happened points to deliberate sabotage. Backups had to have been done. If they’ve disappeared along with the current data and apparently the system software too, then this could not have happened accidentally.
If so, it wasn’t a random hacker attack either as too much inside knowledge of the system would be needed. And skilled programmers don’t destroy entire systems unless they are seriously pissed-off.