Slashdot Mirror

From Microsoft's page:

3. Point out the benefits of a legally licensed, preinstalled operating system. Customers have the original CD so they can reload the software.

Okay, now hold up a minute here. I recall a whole bunch of articles just a few months ago about how Microsoft was No Longer allowing major OEM's to ship Windows CD-ROMs[*] anymore. This was, as I recall, to help stop piracy.

First OEM's are no longer allowed to ship Windows CD's, and now this is one of the benefits customers get when they buy a computer with a pre-installed Microsoft Operating System?

Someone help me out here, I'm feeling confused. It doesn't quite make sense, there, does it? Is that not something of a contradiction? Perhaps I'm just not able to completely understand Microsoft's double talk, but this misinformation annoys me.

[*] InfoWorld Article 1, Article 2, Slashdot Editorial

--
Toph

Count out your XACCT change to merge to the Pay-As-We-Go Internet

What an idiot. How are you going to meter "premium" internet services, when all they do is use internet access. Fax? Just send a file, and have it print. Same with anything else. Nothing a little software or hardware can't solve.

Maybe he should start monitoring his own brain access instead.

Richard Henderson ignores the issue of binary compatibility with other distributions, and, I believe, overstates the problems with 2.95.2. The Alpha back end isn't great, but ia32 which most folks use was decent and it was the best C++ front end we ever had. And the kernel developers did a lot of work so that at least the Linux development kernels build ok with 2.95.2 -- but "2.96" can't build Linux (gcc problems building the kernel are often kernel, not gcc, bugs, though sometimes gcc is at fault).

Also, Richard is wrong when he says that their "2.96" is compatible with the forthcoming 3.0 at the source level. It isn't; it still uses libstdc++-v2 (the v3 library is not complete). Streams aren't templates, the standard library is not in the std namespace. It is compatible with 2.95.2 at the source level, not 3.0.

Even so, I could have accepted his arguments much more readily had they been made before the release and not after, and if they had polled customers and software developers about the issue rather than just deciding internally.

Now, I'm grateful for all the hard work the Red Hat/Cygnus folks have put in. But when different (GNU/)Linux distributions can't run each others' binaries, you have exactly the same situation the Linux company chiefs say they won't allow to happen: effective forking of Linux.

(As appeared in Founderscamp.com)

Agreed, WML got hyped way out of proportion, but at the same time, what people don't understand is that cHTML and i-Mode has a unique position in that it was created in a monopolized vaccuum where most of the users don't have landline connections and there is only one telco and that's owned by the government. WAP was able to bridge lots of hurdles, from different governments to different standards.

XHTML 1.0 will make it much easier to create wireless services, plus will have the ability to support all of the images, sounds, movies, etc. that we've been hyped to expect.

for more info on the WAP 2.0 and XHTML 1.0 announcement, go here...
http://www.infowo rld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/09/14/000914hnwap.xml

"The next major version of WAP, a protocol for providing Internet-based data services on mobile phones, will complete a migration to XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) as the foundation of the technology, which will make it easier for developers to write WAP applications, said Michael Short, director of international affairs and strategy at BTCellnet, in Slough, England, and a member of the WAP Forum board of directors."

"The group, which has more than 580 member companies and hosted about 700 delegates here, is also making progress toward enabling additional services on WAP devices, according to Scott Goldman, chief executive officer of the WAP Forum. In addition to animation, streaming media, and music downloads, WAP will display color graphics, provide location-specific content, and allow users to synchronize information with personal information manager software on a desktop PC in a remote location."

The critical thing about online activism is to make it simple to participate. IW goes part of the way but doesn't itself mobilize opponents... maybe a "Fight DMCA" slashbox would be a good way to start.

sulli

Bob Lewis of InfoWorld has a good column on this topic at: http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/09/04/ 000904oplewis.xml

Basically, it says that if you are an older worker and complaining that you can't find a job - look for the problem in the mirror.

Okay, so he figured out how to put the ALOHA radio network protocol on a wire called "Ethernet." He based a company on this and got wealthy doing so. That doesn't make him a visionary any more than ALTAIR BASIC makes Bill Gates a visionary or VI makes Bill Joy a visionary.

Ignore the visionaries. Write code and prove Bob wrong. Again.

Original article is at http://www.in foworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/metcalfe/bm1204 95.htm

Here's a good story about the result: http://computer.muni.cz/internet /v1n3/eats9702.htm

I wouldn't worry about Metcalfe. He Has apparently has lost a few clues since inventing Ethernet.

That's easy to say that Apple lost "world domination" if they had only shipped the Mac OS on Intel. I'm sure Microsoft would have sat back and let them do it, too. If Apple had released something like that, Microsoft would have just pulled the plug on Microsoft Office for the Mac, and guaranteed that people would have stuck with them anyway. They've done that sort of thing before when they threatened to kill Office for the Mac if Apple didn't adopt Internet Explorer. Then Apple would have been left with having to compete their hardware platform with commodity hardware from Intel clones without Microsoft's tepid support.

I'll admit that putting the Mac OS on Intel would have gone a long way towards acceptance of the Mac because people wouldn't have to invest in hardware to try out the system. However, Apple would have suffered the same problem as they did with the later clones. The Macintosh is an integration between hardware and software, and running the software on generic hardware waters down the Mac quite a bit. With that, the Mac would lose a lot of its distinction, and I don't that would have helped Apple's business any.

Shameless self-promotion:

My pithy closing quote on this subject:

In five years, OSS will have changed the commercial SW and IT industries beyond all recognition.
In five years, the commercial SW and IT industries will have changed OSS beyond all recognition.

InfoWorld Electric Forums, September 4, 1998.

After this summer's LWE, I'd say the second half of that comment is largely true.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

DSL or Cable Modem or POTS Modem to your LAN connection.

Connects to your LAN, TV, phone, Stereo System, etc...

Typical "Portal-type" applications (email, calendar, news ticker, etc...)

Simultaneous TV & Web surfing

And the kicker...

IM/Chat overlaid onto live TV

But hey, don't take just MY word for it.
Check out what Bob Metcalfe has to say about the Ucentric's System.

--tribs

Check out Bob Metcalfe's column this week on Ucentric. If they can deliver, it's sure what I want. http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/08/14/ 000814opmetcalfe.xml M.

The thing about the infoworld article was a little bit of details about the US case at the end of the article. More specifically, the part about the API, communication interface, and technical info being available to third party vendors and the "secure facility".

Does this mean, that the linux developers should be able to get all the gory details about the file systems and such? Although I would imagine some of that proprietary stuff would still have to sign those NDAs.

This may have been addressed in one of the trial brief somewhere, but when the brief is some 100 page brief...there is only so much M$ B$ that I can stand.

BreezyGuy

I read a Bob Metcalfe article in InfoWorld where he proposed junking the .com, .org, .net, etc. TLDs and just keeping the country codes. I like this idea. Each country controls its own domain, and can apply whatever bizarre local interpretation of trademark law it has to its domain names. Corporations would need to register in every country in which they want a virtual presence.

The paperwork alone should keep cybersquatting to a minimum...

For starters, I'm a little confused about the past-present tense in the first sentence. Your sentence makes sense, but you might have said it better like this:

Infoworld has an article about Borland's announcement at the Borland Developers' conference - JBuilder will be available next year for Mac OS X with support for the Apple's upcoming Aqua GUI.

Would a Slashdot author please make these corrections and then moderate my post down?

See this.

Yes, I know the difficulties with translations. But there are tools hither and yon with various skill levels.

Here's Inforworld's article

Antitrust battle continues

God what a bunch of clueless IDIOTS the M$ marketroids are. I quote form the article at http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/05/01/ 000501opfoster.xml

"These policies are limited to those PC manufacturers that have direct liscense agreements with Microsoft, so generic OS backup CDs will still be in the distribution channel."

What does that mean to the end user? It means that if you have one of the OEM installs with a disabled backup CD, a warez copy of a generic OS CD will be a mandatory tool. End result? Bootleg copies of Windows OS CDs will become as common as dirt. Move over, AOL, another installation CD is going to become the next popular drink coaster.

Yet another case where M$ proceeds in blind ignornace of the real-world consequences of their design choices.

An IT manager at a large manufacturer says that's exactly what Microsoft officials told him. "I spoke to some of my contacts there, and found out that the medialess format is primarily designed to be a firewall against competitors like Linux," he wrote, explaining it will make it harder to have a back-out strategy in place if an experimental Linux deployment gets into trouble.

An IT manager at a large manufacturer says that's exactly what Microsoft officials told him. "I spoke to some of my contacts there, and found out that the medialess format is primarily designed to be a firewall against competitors like Linux," he wrote, explaining it will make it harder to have a back-out strategy in place if an experimental Linux deployment gets into trouble. "Now I don't have any Windows CDs for the backout. What would you suggest I do if problems with Linux cause me to want to revert back to Windows? To discourage corporations and consumers from changing, they are no longer distributing CDs with every machine, in the hopes that fear of change without any practical possibility of return will discourage most users from even looking at other systems."

This has to be some of the worst anti-competative behavior that we've seen out of the evil empire. While they are likely to be punished severely after the Supreme court battle ending 239 years from now, we consumers would have already suffered severe damage. Bill Gates says that breaking up Microsoft would be one of the most irresponsible things to do, causing great harm to consumers. How ironic, that their own actions, even when you would expect them to start playing nice, cause severe damage to consumers.

Yes, I am an OSS advocate, but we must admit that the world will not switch to OSS solutions overnight. Businesses, old institutions, society in general knows nothing about us. This will slowly change over time. In the mean time, we will still need to keep up with society's standard... which sadly is Microsoft Windows.

Because we still must put up with this monstrosity for a while, we MUST FIGHT THIS. This is not only bad for Windows users (Hey admit it. A lot of you dual boot. I quad boot into Linux, Solaris, Win98 and Win2000 because I have to keep up and support these platforms), but this would SEVERELY HAMPER alternative operating systems. Many systems with Stupid-Evil-Empire-Being-Dumb-Windows-Licenses will effectively lose their ability to re-partition and install alternative operating systems. This will slow down Linux experimentation as the above article points out, because it will become riskier and more expensive for people to experiment.

We're all going to be outraged for a while here, but you know how these things go. We're outraged, and after the article disappears from the ./ homepage we don't hear about it for six months. If the implications of this are correct, this could be one of the worst things to happen since ... umm... err... Sephiroth killing Aeris!

DO NOT LET MICROSOFT GET AWAY WITH THIS! FIGHT THIS!

How? I don't know. I'll leave that to other outraged zealots.

Warren Togami
warren@togami.com p.s. I found this really cool sig today... hehe. Quite appropriate.

If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...
...oh, wait a minute -- he already does.

It just seems that by the time this comes out, Intel will already have much faster

And don't forget, lower-power-consumption chips. Check it out:

"[Paul Otellini, co-executive vice president at the Intel Architecture Group, in Santa Clara, Calif.] reviewed Intel's ongoing investments in mobile processors, including a demonstration of a 500MHz Mobile Pentium III that operates at less than 1 watt of power, which Intel expects to ramp to 1GHz in the near future. Intel hopes the chip will be ready this summer...."

Intel eyes Internet as next frontier to cross. (Company Business and Marketing) Dan Briody
InfoWorld May 1, 2000 v22 i18 p5
Web version:
Friday, Apr. 28, 2000

Intel and AMD can play this game too; it's quite possible to switch parts of their x86-type CPUs off, and they can probably run the clock speeds up and down too.

And that is apparently what Intel is doing:

[Paul Otellini, co-executive vice president at the Intel Architecture Group, in Santa Clara, Calif.] reviewed Intel's ongoing investments in mobile processors, including a demonstration of a 500MHz Mobile Pentium III that operates at less than 1 watt of power, which Intel expects to ramp to 1GHz in the near future. Intel hopes the chip will be ready this summer to enable new, smaller form factors in full-featured mobile computing.

InfoWorld, May 1, 2000 v22 i18 p5
Intel eyes Internet as next frontier to cross. (Company Business and Marketing) Dan Briody.
Web version: Friday, Apr. 28, 2000

Hal Duston

The 128 kbps modem is available from Metricom for $250 to $300 this summer and is not capable of peer-to-peer communication. The 128 Ricochet is going to be used in the wireless service provided by UUnet this summer in certain cities. (See related story)

And you can be sure he'll rub in our proverbial faces. Make sure to keep your eye on the ether. Thanks Bob for being such a closed-minded **** Oh wait, thanks for ethernet. And for all you Micro$erfs living in a Linux world, check out Nicholas Petreley's current article on Infoworld. He suggests things that you should have learned the first time around, gasp!! when Novell was everyone's baby.

And you can be sure he'll rub in our proverbial faces. Make sure to keep your eye on the ether. Thanks Bob for being such a closed-minded **** Oh wait, thanks for ethernet. And for all you Micro$erfs living in a Linux world, check out Nicholas Petreley's current article on Infoworld. He suggests things that you should have learned the first time around, gasp!! when Novell was everyone's baby.

And you can be sure he'll rub in our proverbial faces. Make sure to keep your eye on the ether. Thanks Bob for being such a closed-minded **** Oh wait, thanks for ethernet. And for all you Micro$erfs living in a Linux world, check out Nicholas Petreley's current article on Infoworld. He suggests things that you should have learned the first time around, gasp!! when Novell was everyone's baby.

One of the really cool features of the Novell NetWare Client for Windows 95 is "Automatic Client Update" (ACU). By just putting

#sys:\public\client\win95\setup.exe /acu

This trick is especially useful when installing new machines, because it will even upgrade from the Microsoft Client for NetWare Networks. All you have to do in install Windows 95 from CD, and after logging into a NetWare server once, you're automatically running the latest and greatest client from Novell.

However, Microsoft broke this feature in Windows 98. Trying to install Novell Client 3.x from a network drive causes the installation to fail with the errors

"Install could not find the class type for device id NWWSMGR"
"Install could not find the class type for device id NWNDPS"

There is a nice description of the problem of trying to get your money back at Trent University. Also, despite what the above Knowledge Base article says, this problem was not corrected in Windows 98 Second Edition!

Now, according to Infoworld, the next version of Windows, Windows Millennium Edition (ME), won't have any NetWare connectivity built in. Microsoft is going to remove it from the box. That will fix it! You can't use ACU to upgrade Microsoft Client for NetWare Networks, because you can't have Microsoft Client for NetWare Networks at all!

Okay, so I'm back to my conspiracy theories... Windows isn't done until NetWare doesn't run.

• http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/tidfind er.cgi?2946390
• http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles /q190/6/56.asp
• http://www.trentu.ca/csd/software/netdi.shtml
• http://www2.infoworld.com/articles/en/xml/00/03/ 13/000313enwinupgrade.xml?Template=/st orypages/printarticle.html

• The medium is not the information -- when information is tied to a physical medium it's possible to control copying the information by restricting access to manufacturing the medium.
• By monopolizing the manufacturing process for mass distribution of any arbitrary information, a manufacturer (in this case publisher) could make money exploiting the considerable capitol expense of "tooling up." IOW: printing presses weren't cheap so for end users it made more sense just to pay for the service of mass printing.
• This created a natural economic cycle of publisher producing a product and service for consumers which electronic copying breaks, because to copy electronically requires almost no capital expense (don't need to buy no expensive printing press).
• Therefore, publishers need some form of legal regulation which limits copying and allows imposing some form of "per-use" fees so that publishers and artists can earn a living, or the economic incentive to create new works will dissipate -- along with said artistic expression.

While I think it's reasonable for publishers to require a fee for multiple use, the DMCA goes way too far. For example, I can accept that when I purchase an ebook I should have to pay twice if I want to display that ebook on two display devices at once; just like I should have to pay twice to run a program on two separate computers at once (or two separate instances of a program). Though I argue that an exception should be made for libraries -- readers who enter a library should have access to all the materials therein without the requirement for paying copying fees. But the DMCA, and specifically section 1201(a)(1) of the DMCA provides for Draconian copy protectionschemes. For example it would be possible to electronically limit a newspaper (eventhough there's an exception for newspapers in the DMCA the newspaper lobby is working hard to remove these exceptions; here's their reply comment to the US Copyright office regarding the DMCA and section 1201(a)(1) to this effect.) like so:

• Wrap the newsprint in an encryption copy protection scheme in order to enact the 1201(a)(1) DMCA Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for access control technologies.
• Now enact all sorts of draconian limits on per-use of copyrighted work through technical limitations in the electronic newsprint reader, such as: Install a GPS chip in the reader and limit reading the news paper to a single city, make it illegal to pass the reader to another person (use biometrics such as fingerprint on reader, retina scans, whatever or even legally prevent (though unenforceable) someone else reading over your shoulder.

Bob Metcalfe, who seems to be a hated figure amongst slashdotters, mentioned using regular copper as DSL-equivilant almost three years ago in this article dated July. 7, 1997.

Here's an excerpt:

The good news is that some of you can already buy inexpensive coppertone from telopolies. My ISP and I got some coppertone just last week. Now, don't ask anyone at your telephone company for coppertone or HDSL; this will get you nowhere. Instead, order a "burglar-alarm circuit," put some HDSL electronics at each end, and bingo, you can have 1.5Mbps for a fraction of what telopolies charge for T1 lines.

So give the guy some credit!

Bob Metcalfe, who seems to be a hated figure amongst slashdotters, mentioned using regular copper as DSL-equivilant almost three years ago in this article dated July. 7, 1997.

Here's an excerpt:

The good news is that some of you can already buy inexpensive coppertone from telopolies. My ISP and I got some coppertone just last week. Now, don't ask anyone at your telephone company for coppertone or HDSL; this will get you nowhere. Instead, order a "burglar-alarm circuit," put some HDSL electronics at each end, and bingo, you can have 1.5Mbps for a fraction of what telopolies charge for T1 lines.

So give the guy some credit!

Just make sure the protocol (and perhaps source) is public, so anyone can audit what type of data is sent. Right now Aureate is having similar "privacy" problems because they're closed and not being trusted.

Right -- See Ballmer says Internet is backward, where Microsoft argues for more client control of web content.

Basically, Microsoft sees the industry trending away from client-based solutions (where their revenue stream is), and is scrambling to try to develop more and more client services to stay relevant. AKA, Netscape was right, Windows will eventually be obsolete.

Of course, we may not like the alternative where client control is superceeded by the wishes of content providers (JavaScript, ActiveX, and cookies are already steps in that direction).
--

I think they'll have a hard time convincing the judge that the Apps are part of the OS, yet it seems that Office is about to start integrating completely.

at infoworld
http://www.infoworld.com/ucita

Almost like that great upstate NY city Utica, but I don't think people are protesting against them.

While I dread install wizards from windows, I remember hearing some hype about Zenguin Computing creating a universal installer back at LinuxWorld in August. I Haven't heard anything about this project since. Anyone have some info?

I personally have found debs to be a great package management system, but having some wizards would definately help sell linux to newbies. They simply cannot handle the command line.

And now for some PR goodness. http://www.in foworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?990617.pizengu in.htm

check out http://www.infoworld.com/ucita for more details on UCITA.

Its going to be a national fight and its been around since the fall..

Good greif

Here is an article that pretty sums up what the UCITA is all about
htt p://archive.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl? /features/990531ucita3.htm

A couple of points from the article which would help the Open Source movement.

One-sided shrinkwrap terms
The GPL could be considered a shrinkwrap license. This would strengthen the GPL.

Cost of negotiated contracts
If dealing with GPL software the only contract is the support contract which wouldn't be covered under the UCITA.

Software industry competitiveness
Opensource software by nature isn't competivite along the same lines as comerical software. The quality wold be the same.

Electronic self help
The ability to reposess software would be impossible. You've got the source code!

Reverse engineering
You've got the source code! By nature the program is reverse engineered for you!

Transfer of ownership
There is no ownership. You can do what you want within the limits of the GPL. Which isn't limiting.

Bug disclosure
For open source development to work there needs to be a decient bug tracking system open to everybody.

From this point of view the UCITA would benifit the open source community greatly. But this point of view may be flawed.

A law that has been universally (except by the sponsors, of course) derided as anti-consumer and potentially dangerous to the industry gets passed unanimously?

I honestly believe that there are a lot of people who assume that "someone else" will be the person that makes the call/writes the letter/publically takes a stand. Everyone looks at eachother, no one does anything, and the law passes.

Don't let this happen! If you need to know more, there's a very accessible and interesting series of articles on the topic by Ed Foster at InfoWorld -- look at the GripeLine column (just ignore Metcalfe, K?)

Seriously. Make a call. Make a difference.
------

I don't think it's so much about hardware vs. software, but REVOLUTIONARY technology vs. MUNDANE technology.

You see the linux core for all intents and purposes of the cutting edge isn't really revolutionary, and it doesn't NEED to be! Now every other OS has a journaling file system, ok let's build one for linux. Firewalling, ip chains, etc etc... I'm not a hard core linux developer so I'm party speaking from ignorance, but does ANYONE know of a significant technological advance that linux has spearheaded??

So ReiserFS is pretty kewl, and xscreensaver kicks ass. Bash is a masterpiece and mozilla is on it's way in. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of extremely high quality pieces of ART that the free software community has produced. But there's nothign revolutionary about it.

Now we've got the brains behind it... and we're making steady progress... so what happens when one of us makes up something EXTAORDINARY?! Do we give it away for free and be so do we take Metcalfe's stereotype of the Open Source community and say: "for the greater good i give up all my worldly posessions so that someone can exploit me"???

No! we do what anyone convinced that they have produced a genuine invention would do: develop it in secret, patent it once it works, sell it to the highest bidder (or market it yourself), all the while integrating support for Linux and maybe even giving them a free lisence for it!

In 8 to 12 years when you've made your fortune and your utillity patent is up for renewel, you let it expire. And hey, don't forget that patents aren't incompatable with the GPL! Hey you could GPL your patented invention and have a legal double-whammy for anyone who violates your patent!!!

Hey, if RT-Linux is revolutionary, or if code morphing is really revolutionary (sounds just a bit like a beefy emulator/finer grained scheduler on a better CPU, but I can't honestly know if it was that original or not), or if some little project i'm workin on happens to light a fire under whatever market it's viable in and we patent our inventions... this does not mean that we're sellouts!

if Metcalfe posted on slashdot:

Re:Crusoe Code Morphing (Score:-1, Troll)
by Bob Metcalfe (metcalfe@idg.net) on 1:01 Friday 11 February 2000 PDT (#0)
(User Info) http://www.infoworld.com/op inions/morefromtheether.html

Nah, nah, OPEN SORES!!! Linus Torvalds Naked and Petrified eating goat cheeze and being a hyppocrite!!!

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

I don't think it's so much about hardware vs. software, but REVOLUTIONARY technology vs. MUNDANE technology.

You see the linux core for all intents and purposes of the cutting edge isn't really revolutionary, and it doesn't NEED to be! Now every other OS has a journaling file system, ok let's build one for linux. Firewalling, ip chains, etc etc... I'm not a hard core linux developer so I'm party speaking from ignorance, but does ANYONE know of a significant technological advance that linux has spearheaded??

So ReiserFS is pretty kewl, and xscreensaver kicks ass. Bash is a masterpiece and mozilla is on it's way in. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of extremely high quality pieces of ART that the free software community has produced. But there's nothign revolutionary about it.

Now we've got the brains behind it... and we're making steady progress... so what happens when one of us makes up something EXTAORDINARY?! Do we give it away for free and be so do we take Metcalfe's stereotype of the Open Source community and say: "for the greater good i give up all my worldly posessions so that someone can exploit me"???

No! we do what anyone convinced that they have produced a genuine invention would do: develop it in secret, patent it once it works, sell it to the highest bidder (or market it yourself), all the while integrating support for Linux and maybe even giving them a free lisence for it!

In 8 to 12 years when you've made your fortune and your utillity patent is up for renewel, you let it expire. And hey, don't forget that patents aren't incompatable with the GPL! Hey you could GPL your patented invention and have a legal double-whammy for anyone who violates your patent!!!

Hey, if RT-Linux is revolutionary, or if code morphing is really revolutionary (sounds just a bit like a beefy emulator/finer grained scheduler on a better CPU, but I can't honestly know if it was that original or not), or if some little project i'm workin on happens to light a fire under whatever market it's viable in and we patent our inventions... this does not mean that we're sellouts!

if Metcalfe posted on slashdot:

Re:Crusoe Code Morphing (Score:-1, Troll)
by Bob Metcalfe (metcalfe@idg.net) on 1:01 Friday 11 February 2000 PDT (#0)
(User Info) http://www.infoworld.com/op inions/morefromtheether.html

Nah, nah, OPEN SORES!!! Linus Torvalds Naked and Petrified eating goat cheeze and being a hyppocrite!!!

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Instead of flaming Bob, who doubtlessly is getting congratulated over at infoworld for such a successful article, I suggest we inform the publishers and editors of infoworld that Bob Metcalfe is seriously missinformed, and is feeding the flames of ignorance with his poorly researched article. Here is the letters to the editor address at info world, and here is Editor-in-chief Michael Vizard's email address. Direct politely worded flames to these addresses, not to bob metcalfe.

Spyky

Instead of flaming Bob, who doubtlessly is getting congratulated over at infoworld for such a successful article, I suggest we inform the publishers and editors of infoworld that Bob Metcalfe is seriously missinformed, and is feeding the flames of ignorance with his poorly researched article. Here is the letters to the editor address at info world, and here is Editor-in-chief Michael Vizard's email address. Direct politely worded flames to these addresses, not to bob metcalfe.

Spyky

According to Microsoft, you should not have a fully qualified DNS computer name with more than 64 characters in Windows 2000. If you do, PKI (public key infrastructure) services will fail, which will cause failures in Enterprise Certificate Authority, domain controller and computer automatic enrollment, and IPSec enrollment.

In Windows 2000, if you upgrade your file system from FAT to NTFS, your CA services will fail with this error message in the Application Log: "Certificate Services did not start: Unable to initialize the database connection for (Your CA Name here). Class not registered 0x80040154." Microsoft says you can fix this by uninstalling the CA service and then re-installing it. Make sure to use the same CA name, key pair, and database that you did before.

An upgrade "feature" that you should be aware of: During an upgrade to Windows 2000, Microsoft officials say that the default security settings you would get if you did a clean install will be applied automatically. This means that if you had tighter security prior to the upgrade, those settings are gone. If you want them back, Microsoft says you need to reapply any custom security settings.

You should delay using EFS (Encrypting File System) on a computer that you have upgraded from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000 until you are sure that the computer has actually joined the new Windows 2000 domain. If you don't, you may have problems with your EFS recovery and migrating private cryptographic keys.

Microsoft officials say that if you want to use Microsoft Office 95 on a Windows 2000 computer, you need to have the Office 95 Year 2000 update installed, which is at officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloaddetails/o95y2k. htm. Make sure that you have installed the latest patches for all the Office applications.

If you have Microsoft Outlook 2000 installed on your Windows 95/98 computer, and then you upgrade to Windows 2000, you will have to reinstall Outlook 2000 after the upgrade. Microsoft officials say you will be warned during the upgrade process. If Outlook 2000 is in your Startup folder, it will happen automatically. They also say that the Outlook reinstallation is very slow, and the progress bar will reset a number of times. Do not cancel the installation, even if it appears the computer is locked up.

If you have a Windows 95 computer with the Microsoft Proxy client, with Winsock 1.1 and you upgrade to Windows 2000, the Proxy Client will be uninstalled. You will see a message to that effect during the upgrade. Reinstall the Proxy Client after the upgrade.

Microsoft officials say that if you are running Windows 2000 on a multi-homed computer, and if you have two or more interfaces with an APIPA (Automatic Private Internet Protocol Addressing) address, you may end up with inconsistent routing behavior for your computer. Microsoft will have more information in its online Knowledge Base.

If you install Windows Media Services as part of an upgrade to Windows 2000, you may cause some problems if you are trying to use Netscape Navigator 3.04. That browser may not be able to get the URL of the web page that contains an embedded client, which causes a problem in logging the client information-the URL value of the cs(Referrer) field. Microsoft doesn't mention a fix, but they specifically cite this older version of Navigator, so an upgrade of Navigator may be in order.

If you upgrade to Windows 2000 and add the optional Windows Media Services components, you may run into an incompatibility if you also have Microsoft Site Server 3.0 with the Site Server Membership Authentication plug-in. According to Microsoft, there is a boot race problem, which means the plug-in won't load, and clients won't be able to connect to the Windows Media Services. This error won't show up in the Windows 2000 Server Event Log service. But if you use the Windows Media Administrator to connect to Media Services, you will get an error message saying you must restart the Windows Media Unicast service. Microsoft officials say to follow that advice as a workaround.

If you have installed Windows Media Services as part of a Windows 2000 upgrade, and you then enable HTTP streaming in the Windows Media Administrator, Microsoft officials say you need to restart your computer. If you don't, the Windows Media Services Event Log fills up with errors.

According to Microsoft, if you upgrade to the release version of Windows 2000 from a previous (presumably beta) version of Windows 2000, and you have a disk that is part of a fault-tolerant set, it may become orphaned during the GUI setup. However, they say you will not lose any data, and you can rebuild the disk with the Disk Administrator snap-in. If it is a mirror disk, use the Resynchronize Mirror command. If it is a RAID 5 disk, use Regenerate Parity.

Here is a situation to avoid, according to Microsoft. When upgrading from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000, you may not want to create logical drives within extended partitions on basic disks. A drive geometry translation error in the Logical Disk Manager may trigger this error message: "Parameter is incorrect." There is no workaround.

Microsoft points out a problem with the Windows 2000 Backup procedure that is caused by Microsoft Office. Sometimes, applications won't restore because of long file names. The Office components use short 8.3 names when registering component locations in the Registry. After a restore, some of these may point to the wrong place, because short file name generation is based on the order in which the applications are installed. The fix is to reinstall any applications that fail.

If you do a Windows 2000 System State Restore, which is part of Windows 2000 Backup, your network identification may say that your computer is already part of the domain. This is wrong. Microsoft says you must rejoin the domain, otherwise you may see this error message: "Trust relation failure." The workaround is to: 1) Join a workgroup; 2) Restart the computer; 3) Rejoin the domain; 4) Restart the computer again.

If you are going to do a scheduled backup with Windows 2000 Backup, and the wrong kind of media is mounted in the backup drive, the backup operation will not start. There will be no outward notice of the failure, since a scheduled backup runs without a user interface. However, if you look in the backup log, there will be a notice of the failure.

According to Microsoft, it is only a display issue, but in Windows 2000 Backup the elapsed and estimated times will not be correct. For now, Microsoft says to ignore the display.

If you are going to do a Windows 2000 Backup to an Exabyte EXB-220 Changer with 8-mm tape, Microsoft says you need to upgrade your firmware for the changer to 6.4.3. Otherwise, you may see this error message: "write file mark."

The Windows 2000 Backup applet may not be for you, if you have huge data volumes (more than 100 GB) that have file counts in the millions. According to Microsoft officials, you may not be able to restore files at the end of a large backup set. They have two suggested workarounds. Either use third-party backup software without the limitations, or break up your backup procedures into smaller segments.

In Windows 2000, you may get an access error in NTBACKUP.EXE if you have a path name greater than 1000 characters in length. The workaround use shorter path names.

When you upgrade to Windows 2000 from Windows 95/98, you may be told by Windows 2000 that these network adapters will not be supported: 3Com EtherLink III EISA 10/100 (3C597-TX); IBM Etherjet ISA Adapters; Crystal LAN CS8920 ISA Adapter; Olicom Plug and Play Token-Ring ISA 16/4 (OC-3118) Adapters. After installation, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that they work anyway. Microsoft says you might have to reset any static network settings.

Microsoft says that the following adapters will not support Media Sense in Windows 2000: Hewlett Packard HP 27247A PC LAN/16 ISA Adapters; Hewlett Packard HP 27250 PC LAN/8 ISA Adapters; Hewlett Packard HP 27247B PC LAN/16 TP Plus ISA Adapters; Hewlett Packard HP DeskDirect J2973A 10baseT PCI LAN Adapters; Intel Pro/10+ PCI Adapters; SMC EtherEZ 8416; SMC EtherCard Elite 16 Ultra (8216). Because of this, you may be affected by the following errors: display of the wrong connection speed; inability to updated speed after enabling; wrong status of cable connection. There is no workaround.

When you upgrade to Windows 2000 from Windows NT 4.0, you may be told by Windows 2000 that these network adapters will not be supported: 3Com EtherLink 905x 10/100 series of Adapters; Compaq Ethernet or Fast Ethernet PCI Adapters; DEC FDDI Controller PCI (Defpa) Adapters; HP EN1207D-TX PCI 10/100 Fast Ethernet Adapters; Intel EtherExpress PRO/10 Adapters; Intel Pro/100 Intelligent Server Adapters (I960). Yet after installation, you may find that they work anyway. Microsoft officials say you might have to reset any static network settings.

If you are using multiple 3Com 3c509 TPC ISA adapters in EISA mode on a Windows 2000 computer, once you disconnect them using Network and Dialup Connections, you will not be able to reconnect them to the network without rebooting your computer. These adapters also sometimes have problems with Windows 2000 Plug and Play.

If you have a 3Com Fast EtherLink ISA 100BaseTX adapter (3C515-TX) on a Windows 2000 computer, and you disable or enable the adapter through Device Manager, your computer may lock up. There is no fix yet.

On a Windows 2000 computer with a wimpy power supply, an Adaptec ANA62044 64-bit 4-port PCI Fast Ethernet adapter may not be able to automatically negotiate network connection on two of the ports. The only "fix" is to upgrade to a computer with a greater power supply.

Windows 2000 is incompatible with multiple Madge ISA TR adapters. According to Microsoft officials, this will trigger system instability, especially with network connections.

If you have SMC 8216 Ultra, 8216 Ultra Tiger, or 8416 EtherEZ cards installed on a dual processor, ACPI-compliant Windows 2000 computer, you should not have adapter resource settings of IRQ 10, I/O address 300, and RAM address CC00. This will cause a boot failure. You will have to choose adapter resources that don't conflict with other system resources, say Microsoft officials.

Windows 2000 TAPI is incompatible with any ATI video cards that have TV tuners. This would include the ATI-TV, the ATI-TV WONDER, and the ATI All-in-Wonder cards, according to Microsoft officials. They hope to add support later.

The shipping version of Windows 2000 will not have drivers for Kodak USB cameras. However, Microsoft officials say you will be able to get drivers for these cameras from Kodak at http://www.kodak.com.

If you are going to run Windows 2000 on an IBM ThinkPad 760EL, 760XD, or 765D laptop, you probably don't want to use an IBM Ethernet Credit Card adapter. According to Microsoft officials, this adapter will not receive a DHCP address, which means it won't have network connectivity. There is no fix at this time.

If you use a Macronix MX98713 on an ACPI compliant Windows 2000 computer, the adapter may cause the computer to hang. Microsoft officials say you need to check with Macronix for an update for this adapter.

You will have problems updating to Windows 2000 if you have an NE2000 or compatible network adapter in your computer, and it has an input/output (I/O) address at 340h (0x340). According to Microsoft officials, your computer may lock up during installation when you get to text mode. As a workaround, you can remove the card or change its I/O setting. After Windows 2000 is installed, the card will work correctly, even at that address.

If you install Windows 2000 on an ACPI-compliant computer, and it has a Xircom CE3 PCMCIA or Compaq Netflex 3 PCI Adapter, you will not be able to resume computing from hibernation or standby modes. To avoid the issue, Microsoft officials say to disable Power Management if you are using these adapters.

Do not install or upgrade to Windows 2000 on a computer that has an AVM ISDN adapter. Microsoft officials say to uninstall and remove the adapter, then install Windows 2000. After installation, you can reinstall the adapter and configure it.

According to Microsoft officials, Digi International Datafire RAS PCI onboard DSP-based modems are not supported in Windows 2000. However, they say that Digi will be updating their driver package, which will then provide support.

On a Windows 2000 computer, if you have a Digi International 8-port PCI card installed, and you have an 8-port concentrator connected to the card, you will not be able to install or support modems, according to Microsoft officials. There is no fix.

If you have a Digi International Multiport Serial card, and you go to Windows 2000 Device Manager and change its properties, the Properties window will remain silently active for about twenty seconds, say Microsoft officials. During this time, you will not be able to close the Device Manager window. The workaround have patience.

Microsoft officials say that some PC card network adapters may not be able to handle heavy network traffic on a Windows 2000 network, and may either lose their connection or hang. These cards include: 3Com Megahertz 10/100 (3C575); Xircom CreditCard Ethernet IIps (PS-CE2-10); Earlier versions of the Xircom CE2, although later versions are OK.

If you are running Windows 2000 on a Compaq Presario laptop computer that has a Lucent Technologies modem, you may have some problems. According to Microsoft officials, the modem will be detected, and Windows 2000 will install the correct drivers, yet the modem won't work. They say this will be fixed by Compaq, who will have an updated BIOS.

Windows 2000 may not be a good idea on a computer with a display adapter using the Voodoo2 chipset. According to Microsoft officials, it will only work as a secondary display adapter on a multi-monitor system. Voodoo3 Pass Thru and Scan Line Interleave are not supported. According to Microsoft officials, this will leave you with sub-par performance. You may want to check in with 3dfx to see if they have new or updated drivers at http://www-dev.3dfx.com/.

If you are running Windows 2000 on a computer with an ATI Mach 64 display adapter, with the drivers that come with Windows 2000, Microsoft officials say your computer may lock up when you start the game Return to Krondor. There is no fix yet.

If you are running Windows 2000 on a computer with an Intel i740 display chipset, you may not want to disable PCI bus-mastering. If you do, Microsoft officials say your display adapter may hang. There may also be incompatibilities between drivers for this chipset included with Windows 2000, and the VIA system chipset.

According to Microsoft officials, a bug in the streaming video decompressor may cause problems with display adapters that use the nVidia Riva 128 Chipset. The bug may cause some streaming video to play upside-down. They don't give a workaround, but standing on your head may work.

There is an incompatibility between Windows 2000 and Adaptec CD Creator 3.5b. Microsoft officials say you should upgrade to CD Creator 4.0.

In Windows 2000, if you are looking at a folder in Large Icon view, the icons for Adobe Illustrator 8.0.1 files may show up as black squares. The only workaround is to pick some other folder view.

If you upgrade from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000, you will lose the File, Adjust Color Printing function in Adobe PhotoDeluxe. Microsoft has not yet found a workaround to bring this function back.

If you are going to do a clean install of Windows 2000, or when you upgrade on a Windows NT 4.0 computer, the installation process will not be able to automatically find any ISA-based display adapters. Once you manually install the correct driver, the adapter should work.

If you try to install Broderbund Software Calendar Creator 5.0 on Windows 2000, you are going to get an error message saying that the Setup routine can't find Windows NT 4.0 SP3, which it needs. Since you probably don't want to move back to that OS, you better wait for an upgrade to Calendar Creator.

Microsoft officials say not to use Command Software Systems Command AntiVirus 4.54 on a Windows 2000 computer. If you do, things will get so messed up that you will have to reinstall Windows 2000. Microsoft officials say an update will be coming from Command Software at http://www.commandcom.com/.

If you upgrade to Windows 2000 on a computer that has Eudora Pro 4.2 on it, Microsoft Outlook Express will elbow Eudora aside and register itself as your default e-mail program. When you start Eudora Pro, you will see the prompt asking if you want Eudora as your default. If you say yes, you will then see this error message: "Eudora was unable to update the system registry. Your default mail program has not been changed." Microsoft says you can go to the Control Panel, Internet Options, Programs tab, and select Eudora Pro as the default.

Microsoft says that Asymetrix ToolBook 1.5 and 1.53 DayBook Month View will not run on Windows 2000. They say to check with Asymetrix for any updates.

If you upgrade from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000, and you had HotSync Network installed to synchronize with your Palm device over a network, you will have some initial problems. The network synchronization won't work until you first do a local synchronization between your Palm and the host computer, using the cradle attached to the local PC.

When you upgrade from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000, and your computer had Hummingbird Exceed 6.1 installed, your Exceed XConfiguration file may be lost. This will cause the error message: "INETD Error: Error creating configuration file." Microsoft says to reinstall Exceed 6.1 on to Windows 2000.

Windows 2000, there are some incompatibilities between IBM ViaVoice 98 Executive 5.2 and IBM Simply Speaking Gold 3.5, and some video cards. Because of this, Microsoft officials say that sometimes the Actor will only show up as a black square when you select Begin reading. There is no workaround at this time.

According to Microsoft officials, you will not be able to install Intergraph DiskShare 3.2 on Windows 2000. If you try, you will get this error message: "This Setup process has determined that you are running on the Microsoft Windows NT 5.0 operating system. This version of DiskShare does not support this operating system. Please verify that you are installing the correct version of DiskShare." For now, there is no workaround.

According to Microsoft officials, a number of programs that use the InstallShield 3 Setup Engine will have a problem when trying to install multiple listings under the Start, Programs menu. It may cause you to see a message such as: "Variable is not large enough for string. Check string declarations. Error 401." It may also cause the shortcut to stay on the Start menu even after uninstalling. Some of the software in question: Raxco Software PerfectDisk; Panda AntiVirus; Norton Crashguard; Executive Software International Diskeeper; Iomega Windows NT tools for JAZZ drive; Berkeley Systems After Dark 3.2; Apple Computer, Inc. QuickTime 3.0 and QuickTime 3.0.2; Interbase Client & Server; Master Clips Publisher; Autodesk AutoCAD 14.

According to Microsoft officials, Symantec Norton Utilities 2.0 for Windows NT will not be able to handle FAT32 drives on Windows 2000. If you try to use Disk Doctor or Speed Disk on FAT32, you will see this error message: "Partition has an unrecognized error on it, would you like to fix the problem?" If you say Yes, you may lose data. Check with Symantec for compatibility information regarding their utilities and Windows 2000.

If you are going to install the Novell GroupWise 5.x client on a Windows 2000 computer, Microsoft officials say you first have to install WMS. This will install MAPI components that GroupWise needs. You can do this from the Windows 2000 CD, in the Valueadd\#092Legacy folder.

Special Windows 2000 Bug Report by Bugnet's Bruce Brown and Bruce Kratofil, who are co-authors, with InfoWorld's Brian Livingston, of Windows 2000 Secrets, published by IDG Books.
-------------------

Apparently they are. Check this article, Sun releases NFS as open source , or this one, Sun loosens its grip on NFS . Alas, it looks like it's going to be released under YAWSL (Yet Another Wacky Sun License), but it's apparently only for the Transport Independent Remote Procedure Call (TI-RPC) protocol.

JimD

The UCITA stands for Computer Information Transactions Act ... this was passed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in July I belive. I live in wisconsin, one of the two states that abstained from approving the new proposed legislation. It is currently being set to the state legislatures for approval. I remember reading that there are currently two states ready to vote on it.

Originally it started out being sponsored by cable , movie, music, and software publishers. But the software publishers started making changes to it that even the movie & music publishers thought were bad so they dropped out. At least that is my recollection from reading about it for the past year.

- subsolar

The UCITA stands for Computer Information Transactions Act ... this was passed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in July I belive. I live in wisconsin, one of the two states that abstained from approving the new proposed legislation. It is currently being set to the state legislatures for approval. I remember reading that there are currently two states ready to vote on it.

Originally it started out being sponsored by cable , movie, music, and software publishers. But the software publishers started making changes to it that even the movie & music publishers thought were bad so they dropped out. At least that is my recollection from reading about it for the past year.

- subsolar

Forgot how not-blazingly-fast DSL is compared with wired networking: I was thinking of DSL vs dialup. My bad. On to your other point.

if these devices show up everywhere and each is unique then you can be tracked.

Consider another wireless technology in which each access device has a unique identifier and autonegotiates its connection with the base station: cell phones. They can now be tracked (and if I had to call 911 from mine I'd be very grateful for the fact). But remember the furor that arose before that decision was agreed to. Are you referring to the idea that your transactions from your wireless address might be stored and associated with that address? If so, that risk exists now for MAC addresses (as Nick Petreley pointed out months ago in one of his InfoWorld columns--see here). So has the threat materialized? I haven't seen it myself--I've seen the privacy community doing a great job of shining a bright spotlight on anyone trying to do anything like this. I think the threat may not be bigger than cookies.

Jenny