Why are people surprised when Google uses their data?

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Tony Redmond

I’m not sure that the degree of shock being expressed within the press about Google “reading” email is altogether justified. A good example is the London Guardian’s headline of “Don’t expect privacy when sending to Gmail”, arising from a defense filed against a claim that Google violates U.S. wire-tap laws. That suit alleges that Google “unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires the content of people’s private email messages”. Cue expressions of horror.

Simple economics dictate that Google could not provide the free Gmail service to people without coming up with some method of generating revenue. As Google points out in their Policies and Principles “Advertising keeps Google and many of the websites and services you use free of charge”. Seeing that Google is extremely good at placing ads, it surely follows that they would attempt to use information provided by users to sharpen their placement techniques.

It’s also surely true that you enter into a form of a devil’s bargain when you use “free” services like those provided by Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Yahoo!  You provide your data in return for being able to use the service; the service provider makes use of that data according to its needs, whether that is to improve the functionality of the service or to extract economic advantage from the data. You’d be naïve if you imagined that a “free” service is provided out of the goodness of anyone’s heart, even if the provider avows not to do evil.

Google’s Terms of Service lays out how they can use content uploaded to their sites, which includes the content of messages sent or delivered to Gmail:

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

As the motion filed by Google’s lawyers to dismiss the suit that alleges that Google criminally intercepts email points out, “Plaintiffs’ theory of liability would prevent ECS providers from providing features that allow users to sort their emails using automated filters or even to search their emails for specific words—because these features necessarily involve the scanning of email content and would thus be an illegal “interception” under Plaintiffs’ theory.” In other words, all the email filters used by people to sort incoming messages and perform actions such as removing junk mail automatically could be covered by the alleged interception.

Email servers and other components such as anti-spam services have to perform the same kind of automated analysis of message content to remove unwanted email and apply rules. Do you worry when Exchange or any other email server applies rules to process your email? I doubt it…

The underlying problem argued by the suit is that Google uses the information that they extract through analysis to decide what ads should be displayed to users whereas email filters simply process inbound email and forget what they discovered as soon as they have finished with messages.

Google’s lawyers also argue that “all Plaintiffs who are Gmail users consented to the automated scanning of their emails (including for purposes of delivering targeted advertising) in exchange for using the Gmail service”, which seems to be right on the money. If you agree to something in exchange for a service, you can hardly then complain afterwards that the provider is doing something that they said they would do. That seems consistent with the Terms of Service referred to above.

In fact, Google holds a lot more information about a user than the data extracted from Gmail. Browse the Google Dashboard and you’ll discover that Google knows about your calendar, documents, pictures, alerts, contacts, the videos you’ve viewed and about the Android devices that you use. That’s enough to build a pretty comprehensive view of anyone.

In 2010, Eric Schmidt famously said that Google aims “to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” He followed that remark up with “With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.” The management policy set in Mountain View seems to be pretty clear. Use the data gathered from users (with their permission given by signing up for Google’s services) to improve matters more or less until they get to a point where Google knows what you think about. I imagine that harvesting information from email is quite helpful in chasing that goal.

Given the straightforward claim made by Google to use content uploaded to their services, you have a simple choice to make. If you don’t like the thought of Google’s automated processes analyzing the content of your messages, you can simply switch email service and sign up with another provider. Outlook.com, for example, provides a good service without ads popping up beside messages. But given that your Gmail email address is probably well known to your acquaintances, it will take effort to remove yourself completely from the service. The effort required to move email providers is one reason why people stay put, even if their messages are being analyzed. But then again, the content of the vast majority of email is banal and uninteresting, which probably accounts for some of the weird and wonderful ads that I see when using Gmail. It is, after all, difficult to make sense of a pile of rubbish.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for consumer rights and believe that privacy should be respected by those who provide services. I just have a hard time with the notion that a company that provides a free service that’s funded by advertising that tells potential users that they will make use of content provided by users is then attacked because they do exactly that. We all have brains. Maybe it’s time to engage those organs when selecting an email provider.

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Exchange 2013 Inside Out: Available at the end of September

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Tony Redmond

I received the good news today that printed copies of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Inside Out: Mailbox and High Availability should be available at the end of September. Amazon.com has updated their date to October 1. Paul Robichaux’s companion volume, Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Inside Out: Connectivity, Clients, and UM, is still tracking for an October 21 date. It’s a little behind my book for a couple of reasons. Paul would say that he’s handling all of the complex stuff like connectivity (including hybrid connectivity with Office 365) and his favorite topic, Unified Messaging. I say that he’s just slow at writing and slower in responding to the very intelligent and probing comments from his technical reviewer. In any case, both books will be available soon and I am very happy to be in this position.

The news also means that printed copies should be available at IT Connections in Las Vegas (September 30 to October 3), where we have an excellent line-up of sessions covering Exchange, Lync, and Office 365 alongside the agendas for the other conferences that together form Connections. Should be great fun!

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Migration more complex than a simple methodology might indicate

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Tony Redmond

Thinking about Microsoft’s new FastTrack 3-stage “sales and deployment methodology” for Office 365 projects, which aims to accelerate the rate that customers can move to their new cloud tenant domains (“to advance from pilot to deployment”). The new methodology is intended to allow Microsoft to compete better with Google as a perception exists that it takes more effort to move to Office 365 than to Gmail.

All email migrations are painful. I’m not sure that a new methodology is the answer. Stage 1 is all about deploying some pilot mailboxes and is something that can be done in an hour or so by any moderately intelligent human. As setting up both platforms for pilots is largely a matter of click, click, click through web pages, I can’t see how a Google deployment would be any faster. Moving on to Stage 2 and 3 (“Deploy” and “Enhance”) can be more technically challenging if you want to migrate any data from the old platform or establish ongoing connectivity between the old platform and Office 365. That could be simply a matter of setting up SMTP connectivity but it’s possible that the two-headed hydra of directory synchronization and hybrid connectivity come into view at this point.

It seems clear that this kind of approach is most suitable for those who want to migrate from non-Exchange platforms (like old IMAP or POP3 servers), or perhaps those (like universities) that have to cope with large numbers of transient users. Or companies that want to move off aging Exchange 2003 servers on a one-way transfer to Office 365 rather than execute an on-premises upgrade to a more recent version.

Why do I say this? Simple. All email migrations since the year dot have had to cope with two major issues: quantity and fidelity. Getting people to use their new Office 365 accounts is a great way to allow them to access the rich feature set of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online, but it does nothing to move the huge amount of data that users tend to accumulate in their old mailboxes (the human packrat syndrome) nor does it do anything to ensure that data is moved in a form that it is useful when it gets to Office 365.

It might be acceptable to tell some employees that they have a new mailbox and to forget all of the information that exists in their old mailbox – or that they have to export to a PST and then import back into Office 365, but I doubt that this story would fly for anyone who has used Outlook to run their business life. Imagine losing your calendar, all of your contacts, and all of the email relating to current and old projects – not much fun, and a huge impact on personal productivity. The need to keep people productive and happy is the reason why email vendors and third parties develop migration tools.

In the early days of email, messages were pretty simple and the volumes much smaller than today. It used to be sufficient to export messages to text files and import them into the target system. We didn’t bother much with the various kind of item types that are used now – calendar, tasks, contacts, journal records, and so on. Everything was text, even the formatted attributes at the top of messages.

Today, some mailboxes are larger than the hard disks that we installed on servers in the 1990s. The quantity of mail that might have to be migrated can be problematic for any project simply because it will take time to move from one server to another. That time can be accelerated with fast internal networks but there’s not much you can do when the Internet bridges the gap between internal servers and the cloud. Moving a terabyte of user mailbox data can take a very long time.

Fidelity is the other concern. There’s no point in moving data if it’s not useful when it gets to the destination email system. That means items have to be transferred with all attributes intact so that users can continue to work with their calendar, that telephone numbers from their contacts work with mobile devices, they can respond to messages, and attachments are preserved. Simple but absolutely necessary.

And it’s not just the contents of mailboxes that have to be migrated. If you move mailboxes from an on-premises Exchange server to a cloud system, you’d like if those mailboxes come under the same kind of management regime that exists for on-premises mailboxes. For example, policy settings for client access, for instance, should be the same and retention policies and tags should exert the same control over mailboxes. In short, migration isn’t just all about moving data. That’s where you get into hybrid connections.

Microsoft has a good range of migration capabilities for Office 365, mostly built around the Exchange Migration Replication Service (MRS). Third parties like Binary Tree’s E2EComplete build on MRS to add better scheduling and automation, good attributes to have during migration projects. I imagine that these kind of utilities will still be required to move mailboxes to Office 365, even if Microsoft wants to fast track that activity. Quantity still exists and fidelity cannot be rushed. It’s always been the way.

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Exchange Unwashed digest for July 2013

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Tony Redmond

July – hot summer (or so it should be) – and vacations. But the need to publish posts on my Exchange Unwashed blog on WindowsITPro.com continues, so here’s what appeared in July.

Interesting approach to public folder support in Outlook Web App 2013 (July 2): The month began with some ramblings about how the Exchange product group decided to integrate modern (new, improved, sparkling) public folders into Outlook Web App (OWA) 2013. Instead of the previous approach of revealing the public folder hierarchy and inviting users to navigate to a particular folder each time they want to access it, users add their preferred public folders to their favorites so they are available all the time. It works and I like the approach. Others might not.

Rapid evolution in Exchange compliance features causes some problems (July 8): We all know that Exchange 2013 uses the Search Foundation to build its content indexes. SharePoint 2013 does the same, all of which means that you can have searches that extend across both Exchange and SharePoint. But the problem is that you might still have mailboxes that need to be searched on Exchange 2010 servers, in which case you’ll have to conduct separate searches and merge the results. Not too difficult and understandable when you look at the benefit of operating a common search infrastructure, but something to keep in mind for a deployment.

Exchange ActiveSync to be replaced by Outlook Web App on mobile devices? (July 9): Gazing into my crystal ball, I wondered if Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) has aged to a point where OWA would take over, now that OWA 2013 supports features such as offline access. I did not know then that Microsoft was soon to announce the OWA for Devices app on iOS, so I felt pretty pleased when that happened.

Exchange 2013 RTM CU2 makes its appearance (July 11): Just a week later than anticipated, Microsoft shipped the second cumulative update for Exchange 2013 RTM. At this point there wasn’t too much to report, except of course the appearance of a new DAG Management Service to take over some of the non-critical reporting work previously done by the Replication service. But build 712.22 was to be short-lived…

New servicing model hiccups as Exchange 2013 RTM CU2 public folder permissions bug appears (July 16): Just when we thought it was safe to install an update for Exchange, the nice guys in Redmond told us that they’d found a bug with public folder permissions. Not old, ancient, not-so-good public folders, but with the nice new modern all-singing type. So plans to apply CU2 went on ice.

OWA iOS app makes its debut (July 16): Not being fond of work I don’t usually publish two posts on the one day. But the appearance of Microsoft’s first OWA-based app for mobile devices deserved immediate publication. We now have apps for iPad and iPhone and Android is on the way. The apps aren’t bad, by the way, not bad at all…

Will the PRISM revelations affect customer plans to move to Office 365? (July 18): Proving that I can offer topical coverage, this post discusses the potential impact of knowledge of the PRISM program will have on the plans companies have for using U.S.-based or U.S.-owned cloud services such as Office 365. The consensus seems to be that the revelations have caused some companies to pause. Whether this pause is permanent remains to be seen.

First thoughts on using the OWA apps for iOS (July 23): After the excitement around the release of the OWA for Devices apps had faded a tad, it was time to figure out whether the apps were any good. And my testing on an iPhone and an iPad revealed that the functionality is pretty good. There are some rough edges but knowing Microsoft they will persist and eliminate the glitches over time.

Using Outlook Web App 2013 on a hotel TV (July 25): Time for some travel tales as I fume against hotels that want to rip you off for Wi-Fi fees and found out that the “reach” version of Outlook Web App works very nicely on TVs, thus proving the usefulness of having two versions of OWA.

Exchange 2013 RTM CU2 (improved version) and the new Office 365 FastTrack methodology (July 30): Two for one in this post. First, news that build 712.24 of Exchange 2013 RTM CU2 is available for download to fix that pesky public folder permissions bug. Second, Microsoft has a nice new deployment methodology called FastTrack that they hope will help companies get onto Office 365 even faster than before. The key apparently is to stop planning and start deploying. Or something like that.

August started with an appeal for people to sign the petition to ask Microsoft to keep reasonably priced TechNet subscriptions. I hope that you can will sign too – some 8,500 have already done so and the target is 10,000 or more.

Onto the rest of August!

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Microsoft cloud revenues and investments

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Tony Redmond

Two recent reports attracted my attention. First, at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Steve Ballmer noted that Microsoft runs more than one million servers in its datacenters. Second, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said that Office 365 revenues are now running at $1.5 billion annually.

Both figures are impressive but as always, the devil is in the detail. James Hamilton, ex-Microsoft and now an Amazon VP, took a look at the server number and calculated that the cost of putting this hardware in place is in the order of $4.25 billion, of which between $1.45 and $2 billion is the capital cost for the million servers, plus or minus a few hundred million dollars, depending on the exact configuration of the servers and whatever discount Microsoft managed to extract from the vendors. Throw in networking, storage, operations, and other costs and the economics of putting these massive multi-tenant cloud infrastructures come into view.

The exact annual running cost of the Microsoft datacenters is not clear, but obviously keeping a million servers going consumes a lot of power and cooling, not to mention the operations (people) and support costs. In addition, build-out costs continue to add resources to deal with customers who want to use the new services plus you have the costs of managing the migrations. Then we have to factor in ongoing software development to create and upgrade services like Office 365 and Windows Azure. In addition, there’s the ongoing investment such as the $500m reported by the Sunday Times (July 21) for a new datacenter in Dublin that is required to provide extra space to allow for growth in customers. In short, this is a very expensive business indeed.

Scale is important when you’re selling mailboxes at $6 a month. The $1.5 billion number looks big but it’s not clear how much of it is due to Office 365 cloud services and how much is down to the new Office 365 subscriptions covering the traditional Office desktop applications. Just for kicks, let’s say that $1 billion of it is revenue for cloud services and that an “average” cloud consumer pays $10/month. This means that Office 365 might have about 8.3 million paying customers at this month. The number of actual users is probably higher because Office 365 also supports Microsoft employees . It might be lower too, if the average revenue per user is more than $10/month like the $15/month that Microsoft charges for Office 365 Midsize Business in the U.S.

Azure also delivers some revenue. Bloomberg reported that the Azure and associated programs had passed the $1 billion annual sales landmark in April 2013. Between Office 365 and Azure, Microsoft might therefore be seeing cloud services revenue just north of $2 billion annually.

Put another way, even though the hype is definitely flowing with “the service”, the number of actual paying customers is not particularly high when compared to the number who use on-premises Windows or even those who use Google’s services, all of which are cloud-based. For example, the Radicati group estimated the number of Exchange users at 360 million in 2011, 76% of which were classic on-premises deployments with the remainder spread across cloud and other managed services (many other companies offer hosted Exchange to compete with Office 365).

Microsoft’s latest financial results tell us that cloud services are not currently producing sufficient revenue to realize a return on the investment that Microsoft has made to date to create and run their datacenters. It will be interesting to see how quickly Microsoft can persuade customers to move from on-premises to cloud services to allow them to balance income with expenses. Cloud adoption is accelerating but these numbers prove that a very large transition must happen before profits can accumulate.

Of course, I am not a professional analyst and this interpretation is based on a small number of articles that have attracted my attention. I wouldn’t go and take a punt on Microsoft stock based on this analysis!

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Exchange Unwashed Digest June 2013

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Tony Redmond

June was the month of waiting for Exchange 2013 CU2, but lots of other things deserved discussion and featured in my “Exchange Unwashed” blog on WindowsITPro.com. Here’s what happened during the month:

Outlook Web App 2013 and its morphing user interface (June 27): Microsoft gave Outlook Web App yet another makeover in Exchange 2013. The RTM version was slow and misses functionality, some of which (like public folder support) have turned up in CU1. Apart from complying with Microsoft’s new design guidelines, OWA 2013 is much better at coping with the demands of different forms of devices, so we discuss how OWA deals with tablet, touch, and smartphone devices.

Exchange 2013’s version differences and testing difficulties (June 25): We seldom encounter a situation where a new major version of a software product seamlessly interoperates with previous versions. Such is the case with Exchange 2013 where architectural changes mean that its interaction with Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007 servers is sometimes problematic. Or even when Exchange 2013 servers transfer information between each other… The devil is definitely in the detail.

Statistics, vile lies, and mailbox data (June 20):  By now you’re probably aware that the mailbox sizes reported by Exchange 2013 differ (considerably) from those reported by earlier versions because Exchange 2013 is better at counting the database overhead incurred by mailboxes. But something else is afoot because some new mailbox properties have turned up in Exchange Online. The question is what will those properties be used for?

Once a quarter is not once every thirteen weeks (for Exchange 2013 cumulative updates) (June 18): When Microsoft announced details of the new servicing model for Exchange 2013, they said that cumulative updates would be released once a quarter. Most assumed that this means literally once every thirteen weeks, but that’s not the case.

Exchange 2013 books gradually appear – deployments must be starting (June 13): Writing a book about a software product that appears when the product first ships means that you end up describing beta code. Microsoft’s new servicing model for Exchange 2013 also means that we have to cope with constant change, which makes writing books very difficult indeed. But some good books have started to appear – and maybe these books are based on real-life experience of code that’s newer than RTM. We live in hope.

Suppressing the journaling of Exchange 2013 Managed Availability synthetic messages (June 11): Managed Availability is one of the more interesting, if not the most interesting, new feature introduced in Exchange 2013. But it does create some awful chatter in terms of the synthetic messages that are sent to make sure that databases are functioning correctly. And you don’t want these messages to end up in journal repositories as they’re not really interesting. This post discusses some of the options.

Fantastic session line-up selected for Exchange Connections (June 10): Exchange Connections comes around in Las Vegas next October and we have a great line-up of sessions from MVPs, other industry experts, some of Microsoft’s most experienced support personnel who will cover the intricacies of modern public folders and DAGs, and even some of the well-known members of the Exchange product group. Come along and join us!

Database limits head north in Exchange 2013 CU2 while LinkedIn causes headaches elsewhere (June 5): Microsoft took the opportunity afforded by TechEd North America to report that CU2 increases the limit for mounted databases on a mailbox server back to 100 from 50. The reduction from 100 supported by Exchange 2010 was a side-effect of rewriting the Store using managed code. Now that Microsoft has had the chance to do the necessary performance testing and see how Exchange 2013 works in production environment, they figure it’s OK to go back up. And in other news, LinkedIn caused a fuss when it was revealed that they use Exchange Web Services (EWS) to read contacts from Exchange to publish them in personal LinkedIn accounts. It just doesn’t seem right, but you can block this from happening.

Comparing results from different calculators is a fool’s game (and Exchange 2010 SP3 RU1) (June 4): People love configuration tools to help planning the hardware necessary to run applications. Exchange 2010 has a nice mailbox server calculator as has Exchange 2013. However, the huge difference in the relative internal architectures means that you cannot compare the results output from the Exchange 2010 calculator with those produced by the Exchange 2013 calculator, however much you’d like to. I explain why here.

July has already started well with the release of Exchange 2013 CU2 (I’ll post my views on CU2 on Exchange Unwashed tomorrow). Stay tuned!

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Lions trip comes to an end with a great series win

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Tony Redmond

ANZ Stadium

Those present at the Australia vs. Lions 3rd test in ANZ Stadium, Sydney on Saturday night were treated to a game full of passion and surprises. Traveling to the stadium, the consensus among the majority of the fans was that the Australians held the upper hand – a feeling confirmed by the bookies. There seemed no way that a Lions team could recover from the loss in Melbourne a week earlier, especially with all the controversy surrounding the team selection.

Alex Corbisiero scores the Lions' first try after 2 minutes

Alex Corbisiero scores the Lions’ first try after 2 minutes

Our seats (only $175 this week) were behind the Australian goal posts (first half), so we enjoyed seeing just how an early score can work wonders for a team. The Lions scored a try a couple of phases after an Australian error on the kick-off and then kept the scoreboard moving through penalties forced by a dominant scrum. The Wallabies recovered somewhat to end the first half 10-19 behind by scoring a try at the end of the half to crown a period of pressure that discomforted the away fans. We had seen the same pressure build in the previous tests and scores had come. The Wallabies seemed to be able to build and maintain pressure in a way that the Lions could not match, or at least had done so until now.

Lots of yellow hats but no joy in the ranks of the Wallaby supporters

Lots of yellow hats but no joy in the ranks of the Wallaby supporters

Our worst fears seemed to come about after two quick second half penalties reduced the gap to 16-19. That proved to be the high watermark for Australia as the Lions scored three more tries to thrill the 35,000 or so fans present in the 83,000 crowd and leave the final score at 16-41. Many of the home fans started to leave well before the final whistle, exposing vast swathes of empty seats that confirmed the dominance achieved by the Lions. And they were helped with choruses of “you’re only wearing yellow ‘cos it’s free” (because of the yellow hats distributed to Wallaby fans) and “cheerio, cheerio”.  Meantime we got on with the job of enjoying the spectacle of the Lions’ players celebrating their win as the stadium sound system blasted (and I mean blasted) out “Beautiful Day” by U2 and “Delilah” by Tom Jones. Truly a memorable rugby experience that made the trip well worthwhile.

The Lions celebrate in front of their fans at the end of the game

The Lions celebrate in front of their fans at the end of the game

Overall, the Australians organize and run sports events extremely well. The only problem we had was to get hold of match programs. These were reasonably easy to find in Brisbane but disappeared from view in Melbourne until some sellers came through the stands in the second half. Programs were available outside the ground in Sydney but once through the barriers, the only place to find a program was in the official merchandise stand. Lots of the Lions fans wanted to buy several programs as souvenirs or because people at home had asked for copies so the queues were incredible. By comparison, I cannot think of any Six Nations game where I have ever queued for more than a minute to buy a program. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing here as the programs are bigger, have more pages, and are more expensive than the average Six Nations publication – maybe fewer are normally bought at a game. For whatever reason, programs became an issue for many fans who were disappointed at not being able to buy some.

Some fans started the long journey home today. We leave tomorrow. Even though it’s been a great trip, after 24 days on the road it will be nice to get back to home turf – but then I have to do some real work… Oh dear!

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Tasmanian devils and a close test match

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Tony Redmond

29Jun6-1

After the Rebels game in Melbourne we took the chance to escape from the Lions tour and headed down to Hobart for a couple of days before returning for the second test. Staying six nights in Melbourne, especially in a hotel that few in the party liked, seemed too much and we were glad of the chance to visit Tasmania for the first time.

Once there, we were delighted with the hotel (Leena of Hobart), the beaches (mostly deserted and sandy), the restaurants, and the two attractions that we visited on Thursday. As its name suggests, the Tasmanian Devil Park at Taranna focuses on these small, apparently cuddly but absolutely vicious animals. Feeding time at this zoo was neither peaceful nor cheerful as the devils tore into what seemed to be half of a dead animal. Poking a finger over the fence wasn’t recommended and after looking at how a devil can reduce a lump of meat to nothing in a few minutes we know why. The park also features birds, wallabies, kangaroos, and other Australian mammals and was an interesting place to spend a few hours.

TassieDevil

Later on we arrived at Port Arthur, a site dedicated to the memory of the penal colony that operated here from the 1830s. It’s quite a place to visit. A number of buildings from the penal colony and later are preserved in different states. The commandant’s house, for instance, is reasonably complete while the penitentiary and hospital are in ruins. A good visitor center and exhibition makes an interesting start and a 20-minute boat tour around the bay provides an excellent perspective of what it must have been like to enter Port Arthur in the past. Definitely a recommended place to visit if you are in the vicinity, even if the 95km drive out from Hobart is long because of the winding single-lane carriageways. The drive took us through the areas devastated by the bushfires in late 2012 and early 2013 and it was surprising to learn that only a hundred or so houses had been lost given the amount of damage visible from the road.

Telegraph station at Port Arthur

Telegraph station at Port Arthur

We headed back to Melbourne through what must be the easiest airport transition that I have had in some time. If only every airport was as empty, calm, and peaceful as Hobart (HBA)! En route we took a small diversion to walk on the aptly named Seven Mile Beach, a wonderful spot that is only slightly disturbed by the planes landing at the nearby airport.

Saturday was occupied with minor housekeeping like laundry (a necessity on a 22-day trip) before we could concentrate on the second test in the Etihad Stadium, a marvellous location in Melbourne’s revamped docklands.

Because we’re part of a tour group that provide match tickets we weren’t aware of the ticket cost for the first test. This time round the price was printed on the ticket and we were amazed to find that Ticketmaster had charged AUD$240.21 (about EUR185) for a “Gold” level ticket on Tier 3 of the Etihad Stadium. In practical terms this means that we were between the 22m and half-way line in the third tier, about 50m away from the pitch. Unlike the SunCorp Stadium in Brisbane or all Six Nations grounds, the Etihad curves to accommodate Australian Rules, so you end up quite a bit away from the action. Paying such a large amount for what really wasn’t a great seat came as a bit of a shock. I certainly won’t complain too much when the IRFU ask for EUR100 for much better seats in Lansdowne Road for a Six Nations match or a game against New Zealand or another headline nation. It seems like the Australian Rugby Union has taken every opportunity to extract money from fans on the Lions tour.

29Jun3-1

Being so far away and so high up and on a curve, the pictures from the game are very different from the norm. However, I like the perspective in the shots, especially those of Tommy Bowe facing a group of tacklers or the player reaction after Brian O’Driscoll smashed into his opposite number.

No way through for Tommy Bowe

No way through for Tommy Bowe

The game itself was not one for casual viewers as it offered little in the way of obvious highlights such as the tries scored in the first test. Instead, this was a full-on tense encounter with many forced errors and stoppages. The atmosphere in the stadium was charged from start to finish but I wonder how many people actually enjoyed watching the game simply because of the pressure that steadily developed as time advanced. Being a referee, I was amused by how many spectators are able to detect marginal forward passes and offsides from such a distance, especially when movements are executed at real pace. The beer being consumed in the stands obviously helped to increase the accuracy of their observations.

Australia's winning conversion

Australia’s winning conversion

In any case, the game eventually came down to two kicks in the space of a few minutes. Australia converted their late try while the Lions couldn’t kick the (far out) penalty they had late into added time, leaving Australia the winners by 16-15. The Wallabies deserved the win on balance; they scored the only try of the game and came up with an amazing steal in the line-out that the Lions had forced inside the Wallaby 22m in the 78th minute. Oh well…

The tour group has moved on to Cairns for some non-rugby downtime before going to Sydney for the deciding test next Saturday. Melbourne airport was chaotic yesterday because Virgin Australia had oversold a flight to Cairns, which affected another tour group. The resulting confusion took quite some time to resolve but the flights thereafter were uneventful.

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Early access versions of Exchange 2013 Inside Out now available

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Tony Redmond

O’Reilly has made early access versions of Exchange 2013 Inside Out: Mailbox and High Availability and Exchange 2013 Inside Out: Clients, Connectivity and UM available for $39.99 each. The deal lasts until July 3. Early access editions allow you to get electronic access to the raw and unedited (well, edited but not completely edited) text as chapters go through the production process.

Paul and I are still updating the books to reflect new developments in the Exchange world and to add new information as we learn more about the ins and outs of the product. That process will have to stop very soon if we are to make the desired publication date in October.

Have fun with the early editions!

– Tony

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Lions Tour: Melbourne (part 1)

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Tony Redmond

Melbourne night skyline

Melbourne night skyline

It was quite a relief to reach Melbourne on the next stage of the Lions Tour. A three and a half hour delay exhausted all the amusement that the small Gold Coast Airport could offer while we waited for fog to clear. Eventually the weather relented and we arrived in cold but dry conditions on Monday evening.

Tuesday dawned bright and clear. Some shopping was required and we headed downtown to explore the center of Melbourne, eventually ending up in Federation Square (after a brief stop in St. Paul’s Cathedral for a burst of Evensong) where we saw the Helix Tree light up at dusk, apparently in reaction to the singing of a choir. After this brief outburst of culture we headed toward AAMI Park to see the Lions take on the Melbourne Rebels.

The Helix Tree in Federation Square lights up at dusk

The Helix Tree in Federation Square lights up at dusk

Walking from Federation Square we realized the amazing array of sporting facilities that Melbourne possesses. AAMI Park is the smaller of the two stadia used for Lions’ games as the 2nd test will be played at the larger Etihad stadium. Most cities would be more than happy to have a ground as well-equipped and smoothly running as AAMI, which coped extremely well with the crowd of about 28,000.

Ben Youngs sprints away to score the last try for the Lions

Ben Youngs sprints away to score the last try for the Lions

The match itself wasn’t very exciting. The Lions were always in control and ran out easy 0-35 winners, declining any chance to score through penalties. The Rebels played as well as they could but never threatened significantly. Our seats were behind the Lions’ goal line in the first half and most of the action occurred at the other end, which ended at 0-14.

Simon Zebo causing some concern for the Rebel defence

Simon Zebo causing some concern for the Rebel defence

The second half was pretty fragmented due to frequent substitutions. Simon Zebo provided most of the excitement that was on offer and was rewarded by several “Zebo” chants from the crowd. Apart from that, the most exciting thing that happened was the presence of ex-runner Sonia O’Sullivan in the Irish crowd at the game.

A win is a win and I’m sure that the Lions management was pleased to have it without any further injuries. Saturday is a completely different matter and it will be interesting to see if they make any changes to the Test team. In the interim, we’re taking a side trip to Hobart and will return to Melbourne on Friday.

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