"Black Box" in Windows

In his keynote address to WinHEC Bill gates talked about adding a “Black Box” capability to Windows. ZDNet commented on it here.

I have written recently about the need for the IT industry to have much better ways to understand and analyse issue. I’m not sure whether a “black box” on the device does it for me though, what we really need is a “black box” on the infrastructure. Many problems are caused by issues away from the device.

• Data sent to server and not returned.
• Name resolution issues.
• Remote application server issues.

A black box in the device isn’t going to tell you anything about these issues.

Every time this issue is discussed people are always concerned about the privacy issues and they are right to be so, but at the same time we need the information to resolve the problem. See all the comments in slashdot. But most of the people who go over-board on it have obviously never been involved in a difficult problem resolution situation. I have and I know how difficult it is. I also know how unreasonable we can be as humans. I must have heard something like this many-many times “why do you need me to tell you what I was doing, just fix it”, at the same time they say “don’t you dare go near my data”. They expect the IT organisation to be Sherlock Holmes, but sit him in a black room with no evidence to go on.

PS I removed ZDNet from my blog list and I still got to know about the information. See I didn’t need it after all.