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Microsoft used to release patches as soon as they were discovered. They worked that way for decades. A hole was found, a fix was built, tested, and released. Patches would come out almost daily sometimes. The big companies didn't like that because besides the plethora of standard 3rd party apps that MS and others tested the patch against, they also all had tons of custom in-house software that each patch had to be tested against.

Microsoft has a free product that allows updates to be released as needed, but still give corporate users the time they need to test: Windows Server Update Services.

So, there is now no excuse for Microsoft not releasing patches as soon as they have finished their own testing.

http://research.microsoft.com/ has reported service unavailable all day. Did we take them down despite not even linking them? Thanks guys, I needed that site today!

The Windows kernel source code is also available for audit and research purposes. Your organization just needs to sign up through Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx. Many governments already have access to the source code for various Windows versions http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/feb05/02-10NISTPR.mspx. Academic access to the source code was also used to port Windows so it would function under early versions of Xen (w/o hardware virtualization support) http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/netos/papers/2003-xensosp.pdf & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen. Access is probably not "free" in the sense that anyone can download it. But source is available.

I just did a GSEC bootcamp where the instructor used the argument that China has access to the Windows source code to stir people's security concerns up. No-one seemed bothered by China's access to Linux, BSD, or other FOSS kernels. It was kind of comical.

Like most security issues it can be framed as a question of trust. You trust a bunch of people you probably don't know personally to audit the Linux kernel, trust your government to audit the Windows kernel, or trust Microsoft to do the right thing. Seems like you need to trust strangers.

Or I guess you could go paranoid and build your own secure operating system...do you trust your compiler and hardware maker? Maybe I better start my own chip fab and compiler project?

The Windows kernel source code is also available for audit and research purposes. Your organization just needs to sign up through Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx. Many governments already have access to the source code for various Windows versions http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/feb05/02-10NISTPR.mspx. Academic access to the source code was also used to port Windows so it would function under early versions of Xen (w/o hardware virtualization support) http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/netos/papers/2003-xensosp.pdf & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen. Access is probably not "free" in the sense that anyone can download it. But source is available.

I just did a GSEC bootcamp where the instructor used the argument that China has access to the Windows source code to stir people's security concerns up. No-one seemed bothered by China's access to Linux, BSD, or other FOSS kernels. It was kind of comical.

Like most security issues it can be framed as a question of trust. You trust a bunch of people you probably don't know personally to audit the Linux kernel, trust your government to audit the Windows kernel, or trust Microsoft to do the right thing. Seems like you need to trust strangers.

Or I guess you could go paranoid and build your own secure operating system...do you trust your compiler and hardware maker? Maybe I better start my own chip fab and compiler project?

I mean, can you seriously name one product that's come out of MS R&D that counts as a success (discount anything that's a blatant knockoff of a pre-existing product, embrace and extend/extinguish is not R&D)?

It's not a runaway commercial success but Office Roundtable is a very neat gadget that came from Microsoft Research - it's a 360 degree videoconferencing camera which intelligently tracks the current speaker. We don't really need videoconf here but if I could justify one I'd get one :-)

http://research.microsoft.com/ shows Service Unavailable. Was it slashdotted?

The question of the shareholders should not be wether MS should invest into R&D or not - but why they are so bad in materializing on it.

Of course I do not have an oversight on all the projects. But I think that very many of the research that is going on at Microsoft Reseaerch is very interesting and could be fun or even useful in the future.

Examples: featured here on slashdot there was Songsmith ( http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/index.html ). And there are many others, just look at http://research.microsoft.com./

MS has a long tradition in missing out oportunities. Because they are big and they follow a monopolist's strategy: that is to wait and see, look out for the profitable markets - then step in.

I keep telling the example of the impressive and really useful technology of RemoteScripting (although I do not know if it came from MS Research!). It was years out before the market understood the power of it.
At that time I had several clients who refused to use it, becaue it was proprietory MS (non-standard) and almost completely unknown in the industry.
Today it has become the underlying technology for something everybody knows: Ajax.

If MS had supported and promoted RemoteScripting ...

you get the point.

The question of the shareholders should not be wether MS should invest into R&D or not - but why they are so bad in materializing on it.

Of course I do not have an oversight on all the projects. But I think that very many of the research that is going on at Microsoft Reseaerch is very interesting and could be fun or even useful in the future.

Examples: featured here on slashdot there was Songsmith ( http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/index.html ). And there are many others, just look at http://research.microsoft.com./

MS has a long tradition in missing out oportunities. Because they are big and they follow a monopolist's strategy: that is to wait and see, look out for the profitable markets - then step in.

I keep telling the example of the impressive and really useful technology of RemoteScripting (although I do not know if it came from MS Research!). It was years out before the market understood the power of it.
At that time I had several clients who refused to use it, becaue it was proprietory MS (non-standard) and almost completely unknown in the industry.
Today it has become the underlying technology for something everybody knows: Ajax.

If MS had supported and promoted RemoteScripting ...

you get the point.

There is a misunderstanding exhibited by many posts here that "R&D" is about "experimentation".

Only the "R" part of R&D is to do with experimentation, and that is what MSR does. The "D" component is product development -- the thousands of developers, testers and program managers, plus all the staff around them, that do the development of the many future products coming down the line, as well as the maintenance on products already shipped. The focus of development is basically to ship something.

MSR is not about shipping products, but about researching new technolgies in general; technologies that could either lead to future product features one day or whole new product categories -- but only after actual development (in a product development group outside of MSR) takes place. MSR does not work on product development itself except in rare and small cases where research can directly spin out into a product that generally doesn't fit into an established product group.

The dollar figures MS posts for R&D do not break out the proportion that is R and the proportion that is D. Since there are less than 1000 researchers in MSR, but multiple 1000s in development, "you do the math."

BTW, regarding tech transfer, MSR has documented its tech transfers for a number of years now. For example, the most recent list is here: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/techtransfer2007.aspx

It does not invalidate the point that the bugs were fixed in the open source versions and not in the MS version.

Other points to make:
1) Open = open to independent security audits. I think the Open BSD audit covers other people's code, so there is at least one example of it happening.
2) MS code has been leaked, and other code is deliberately shared with selected people. The bad guys probably have ways of getting hold of a lot of MS source code; whereas open source is available to you as well.
3) Track record. Not just Windows vs Linux, but IIS vs Apache etc.

Ooohh Come On !!! Microsoft Research: Songsmith is gem !! http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/index.html

There's little evidence that anything useful has come out of Microsoft Research. Ever.

I use Haskell a lot, and I can say that that's certainly not true. Simon PJ has made a tremendous number of contributions to Haskell.

Whatever your views on Haskell, it _is_ being used by a lot of people for practical purposes, so it's clearly not true that "[nothing] useful has [ever] come out of Microsoft Research".

I do not know if there are any other interesting projects being developed by Microsoft Research, but I would guess there are surprisingly many.

Products that were created by or have directly benefited from Microsoft Research:

Tablet PC, Digital Image Pro, Xbox, SQL Server, Windows Media Player, Virtual Earth, SkyServer.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/brochure-6.aspx

Not to mention all the products that have indirectly benefited from having access to Research Teams. How useful is it to be able to consult an expert in just about ANY computer science field you can think of? Microsoft is smart to put money into research. Some peon investor is angry that he doesn't have ridiculous returns on his money and wants a short term payoff by slashing R&D. I am an investor in Microsoft also (not many shares though) and I would be pissed if they cut R&D just to pay out dividends. I want long term growth, not short-term gains.

The original release of C#, which grew out of COOL, was indeed mostly a "let's copy it!" response to Java. But C# 2.0 and above is different. The design and implementation .NET generics came out of Microsoft Research Cambridge team headed by Don Syme, which included Andrew Kennedy. That same Don Syme is now heading the F# team (did you know Visual Studio 2010 will include Visual F#, by the way?), another longstanding MSR project. C# 3.0 and LINQ in general was strongly influenced by Haskell, specifically through Erik Meijer (worked on Haskell with Simon Peyton-Jones, and later designed VB9) and via C-omega and X# projects, both also of MSR - you should read Erik's paper "Confessions of a Used Programming Language Salesman: Getting the masses hooked on Haskell" about his role in LINQ and VB development, and its roots in his Haskell work (it used to be here, but it's down at the moment).

So you're very, very wrong. In fact, as time goes, more and more Microsoft Research ideas and even implementations find its place in .NET platform and the languages.

It may not be popular or known to common users, but Microsoft Research is actually fairly well known for its work and yields plenty contributions to scientific publications - so it isn't like they aren't doing anything. Here are some random pages from the site.

If anything, it's surprising that more of it doesn't bubble up into consumer products. Maybe it's simply mismanaged or mistrusted by the management?

It may not be popular or known to common users, but Microsoft Research is actually fairly well known for its work and yields plenty contributions to scientific publications - so it isn't like they aren't doing anything. Here are some random pages from the site.

If anything, it's surprising that more of it doesn't bubble up into consumer products. Maybe it's simply mismanaged or mistrusted by the management?

It may not be popular or known to common users, but Microsoft Research is actually fairly well known for its work and yields plenty contributions to scientific publications - so it isn't like they aren't doing anything. Here are some random pages from the site.

If anything, it's surprising that more of it doesn't bubble up into consumer products. Maybe it's simply mismanaged or mistrusted by the management?

It may not be popular or known to common users, but Microsoft Research is actually fairly well known for its work and yields plenty contributions to scientific publications - so it isn't like they aren't doing anything. Here are some random pages from the site.

If anything, it's surprising that more of it doesn't bubble up into consumer products. Maybe it's simply mismanaged or mistrusted by the management?

It may not be popular or known to common users, but Microsoft Research is actually fairly well known for its work and yields plenty contributions to scientific publications - so it isn't like they aren't doing anything. Here are some random pages from the site.

If anything, it's surprising that more of it doesn't bubble up into consumer products. Maybe it's simply mismanaged or mistrusted by the management?

It's also not new, as static analysis has existed in various forms for quite a while (lint is a form of static analysis).

The work that the SDV is based off of is called SLAM, and it was as much an advance to the field of static analysis as anything people do today is.

Take a look at the publication list from the SLAM project. The research that has gone into it has seen publication in POPL twice (along with PLDI one of the two top-tier conferences in PL), CAV three times (also extremely good), and many other venues.

The BLAST project, which is in some sense a successor to SLAM (not at MSR work), has seen quite a bit of additional publications.

You quite clearly don't know what you're talking about; PL is my research area, so I somewhat do.

Microsoft Research is one of only a couple industry research labs that publishes research of similar quality and quantity to a good research university (another is IBM; Google definitely doesn't). I am much less opposed to MS than most people at /., but I will steadfastly defend MSR.

A bunch of the .NET languages, runtimes, and compiler features originated in or were developed closely with Microsoft Research, and some parts (like F#) were almost wholly developed there.

Although it's not very much liked by Slashdotters, Songsmith has also been relatively successful. Kodu is also getting a reasonable amount of press, and helping to solidify XNA's lead in the education-via-games space.

More generally, they develop prototypes of a lot of ideas that get reimplemented by the "product" side of the company. For example, MSR has been experimenting with adding machine-learning and data-mining features to MS desktop products for years, something that the product group is now starting to do with Excel. Those sorts of things are harder to quantify of course--- did the MSR experiments in that area help the product team at all? Would they have done the same anyway? Hard to say, but in general I think the advantages of having an R&D division in your company are undercounted in these "soft gains" ways, which is one reason that once companies downside their R&D divisions, the product groups stop producing as many new things as well.

A bunch of the .NET languages, runtimes, and compiler features originated in or were developed closely with Microsoft Research, and some parts (like F#) were almost wholly developed there.

Although it's not very much liked by Slashdotters, Songsmith has also been relatively successful. Kodu is also getting a reasonable amount of press, and helping to solidify XNA's lead in the education-via-games space.

More generally, they develop prototypes of a lot of ideas that get reimplemented by the "product" side of the company. For example, MSR has been experimenting with adding machine-learning and data-mining features to MS desktop products for years, something that the product group is now starting to do with Excel. Those sorts of things are harder to quantify of course--- did the MSR experiments in that area help the product team at all? Would they have done the same anyway? Hard to say, but in general I think the advantages of having an R&D division in your company are undercounted in these "soft gains" ways, which is one reason that once companies downside their R&D divisions, the product groups stop producing as many new things as well.

WM Supports Push e-mail in conjunction with exchange 2007.

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/features/owa_mobile.mspx

Jason.

How exactly do they achieve this? do they send a cd out to Mr/Ms Public? I can't imagine they could just "apt-get upgrade Professional" and pop their CC details into to the pretty pop up...

Depends how you got Vista...

if your OEM loaded vista and didn't include anytime upgrade support, you can do it online, where yes, they send you a DVD.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/anytime-upgrade-overview.aspx

But if you got your Vista at retail, or via an OEM that supports it, their is a control panel you can use to buy it, and all the files you need are already on the retail or OEM DVD.

Bah. Sorry for the google search result link. Here is a direct link to microsoft.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/D/5DD33FDF-91F5-496D-9884-0A0B0EE698BB/%5BMS-ASDOC%5D.pdf

Don't worry, it's standard issue for Microsoft reps to say "our intellectual property" and "our patents" every other sentence when talking to journalists. What they are actually talking about -- does it matter?

To give you an example, I've written a MSFT spokesperson simulator for you. It works on any Microsoft press release. Just remove the [microsoft.com] that Slashdot adds:

lynx -dump http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/feb09/02-09VirtualizationSavingsPR.mspx | sed "s/\. /. Thanks to Microsoft's innovative patents. /g" | sed "s/, /, using Microsoft intellectual property, /g"

There, indistinguishable from the real thing.

What Google has just done is to license PPP from Microsoft. Nice job.

Don't believe me? Read this. [handhelds.org]

All the "Activesync Protocol" is, is good old PPP.

No. Google licensed Exchange ActiveSync, a protocol runs on top of http(s) to provide calendar and contacts synchronization and push email for mobile devices. It only requires an internet connection - unlike BlackBerry, which requires special network support.

On the client side, Exchange ActiveSync is implemented by the iPhone (since firmware 2.0), Windows Mobile devices, and some Sony Ericsson and Nokia devices. Microsoft Exchange is the most popular server, but other closed- (Zimbra) and open-source (Z-Push) implementations exist.

Cool, can you point us to all the other examples?

Sure. You might want to look at the current list of specs covered by the Open Specification Promise (that means no licensing fees, royalty-free, and a patent non-enforecement guarantee) for a start.

IE8 is actually not that bad. It passes ACID2. It doesn't pass ACID3, but neither does Firefox. They've finally added desperately-needed developer tools, and they finally have a proper View Source window with syntax highlighting and line numbers instead of just launching Notepad.

As for security, IE7 and IE8 run in "protected mode" on Windows Vista (not on XP), which should help to prevent sites from exploiting security holes to install malware without user participation.

The biggest problem with IE7 and IE8 for a lot of people is the new UI - they've hidden the menubar by default, and when you turn it on, it's in the wrong place (below the address bar). It's fixable, but this is out of reach for most people and not helpful to IT folks who have to work with other people's computers.

The next problem is that while most Firefox users are very aware of the available extensions, most IE users are not. This isn't due to differences in the browsers themselves - both IE7/IE8 and Firefox provide links to where add-ons can be downloaded. I suspect Firefox users are more likely to look for solutions to problems they encounter while IE users are more likely to just deal with them, and Firefox has had extensions available for a lot longer than IE.

Quote from the fact sheet:
"Simplified task management. With Windows XP Starter Edition, first-time home PC users can have up to three programs and three windows per program running concurrently. Further simplification of the operating system includes setting a maximum display resolution of 1024x768 and no support for PC-to-PC home networking, sharing printers across a network or more advanced features such as the ability to establish multiple user accounts on a single PC."

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/winxp/WinXPStarterFS.mspx

I must admit I didn't know about "Windows 3.1 for Workgroups" or Windows 3.11 "plain" but these both KB articles are quite enlightning:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126746
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/32905

I must admit I didn't know about "Windows 3.1 for Workgroups" or Windows 3.11 "plain" but these both KB articles are quite enlightning:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126746
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/32905

Actually, you are wrong. At least according to Microsoft. With Windows 7 it is Home Basic that will only be available in developing countries. Windows 7 Starter edition will be available worldwide.

We know emerging markets have unique needs and we will offer Windows 7 Home Basic, only in emerging markets, for customers looking for an entry-point Windows experience on a full-size value PC.

We'll also continue to offer Windows Starter edition, which will only be offered pre-installed by an OEM. Windows Starter edition will now be available worldwide. This edition is available only in the OEM channel on new PCs limited to specific types of hardware.

Windows 7 Starter edition will be the low-priced version of Windows that will be available on netbooks worldwide. It will replace the highly discounted version of Windows XP that is available now.

The difference is that starting with Windows 7 Starter edition is going to be available in the first world, and Home Basic will only be available in developing countries. The Starter edition is essentially going to replace the netbook version of Windows XP.

Here's the full text of what Microsoft has to say. And here's a quote from that article that sums up the change:

We know emerging markets have unique needs and we will offer Windows 7 Home Basic, only in emerging markets, for customers looking for an entry-point Windows experience on a full-size value PC.

We'll also continue to offer Windows Starter edition, which will only be offered pre-installed by an OEM. Windows Starter edition will now be available worldwide. This edition is available only in the OEM channel on new PCs limited to specific types of hardware.

I agree completely that previous versions of Starter Edition were basically so that people in developing countries could be induced to pay something for their cracked copy of Windows Ultimate. However, the netbook market, and the discounts that Microsoft had to give on Windows XP to keep itself alive in that market, have really changed the playing field in first world markets. Microsoft is apparently going to combat this trend by offering Starter edition in the first world so that netbook manufacturers can continue to advertise Windows computers with low prices, and then upsell these customers to a version of Windows that actually works.

It will be interesting to see if this tactic actually works.

Windows Server 2008, Recommended disksize: 40GB

bundled with Full-HD p0rn perhaps?

I can't remember reading a lot of upset articles when MS launched XP starter edition or Vista starter edition. What's the story, no computer in the developed world will be sold with starter edition installed, even the cheapest ones.

I can't remember reading a lot of upset articles when MS launched XP starter edition or Vista starter edition. What's the story, no computer in the developed world will be sold with starter edition installed, even the cheapest ones.

This has nothing to do with technical restrictions. The problem is that Microsoft needs to be able to sell Windows at a price point that is suitable for nations with lots of poor people.

Take Thailand for instance -- it was actually that country's government that approached Microsoft back in 2003 and said, "please help us get computers to our poor people", and XP Starter Edition was created as a result. A lot of people in Thailand can't even begin to dream of the kind of power we take for granted with a modern Macbook, Latitude or Thinkpad. If they're lucky, they'll be able to get their hands on something of a 2000 or 2001 vintage. These aren't power-users with multi-megabit broadband and iPhones... these are people who want to do utterly basic things with a computer.

What would happen if Microsoft were to start selling Vista Starter Edition for 1,000 baht**? That's about $30 USD right now, which goes a long way in upcountry Thailand (you can eat very well there for 50 baht a day). People may be willing to pay that, but they wouldn't be willing to pay 3,000 baht** for Vista Home Basic, especially if they don't actually have a computer that can take advantage of all the extra features and ability to run more apps.

So, then, you wonder why they don't just offer Vista Home Premium in Thailand for 1,000 baht, so that it more closely reflects the price point vs. average income that you'd see it at in Western countries? The problem, of course, is that you'd end up getting a whole pile of shady operators who'd buy up legit copies of an uncrippled Vista Starter in Thailand, apply the English user interface pack to it, then sell them in the United States for a fraction of what Microsoft is asking for Vista Home Basic, and they'd make a big profit, and Microsoft would lose the sale.

That's why Microsoft makes Starter Edition both very cheap by Western standards, but generally unpalatable for that market, which (as we see here on Slashdot) balks at these kinds of restrictions.

Finally, I suspect this whole thing about using Windows 7 Starter Edition on Netbooks in first-world countries is bupkiss. By the time Windows 7 comes out towards the end of the year, Netbooks will have evolved enough in power and storage that they should be able to run Windows 7 Home Premium without any difficulty.

(** these are the actual prices)

1. They pay for the software based on Full Time Employees, and often that is seen as the same thing as EVERY MACHINE. That means they think that every machine they don't install the software on, is wasting them money.
2. The agreement is for all of the applications listed in the Product Use Rights document, and can include a large list of applications. Therefore, they may not be having to pay extra, just base price.
3. The software is not purchased, but can be used for the time of the agreement, which means that campuses HAVE TO RENEW or they loose all of their software rights. If the campus has been purchasing computers without any software (as some will do), then every computer would be useless to them if they allowed the agreement to expire.

This is insidious in that for less than $50 per Full Time Employee (FTE), the campus can install the OS, Office, and a large number of applications ON EVERY MACHINE. However, whenever this runs out, they have no software that they can use, so unless they have completely transitioned to non-MS software during the last year of the agreement, they have to renew.

The other side of the problem is that there are applications that will require them to use Windows and even MS Office. Some of this are back-ground programs you will never know about ,such as document imaging and retrieval in the administrative departments, or systems such as the student use systems like Blackboard. While there may be alternatives for some systems, there may not be some for other, critical, applications. Also, switching can not be done incrementally, but has to be done all at once. This causes concerns with data migration, upkeep, and end-user training.

However, all hope is not lost. First, since lab computers don't have to pay for licenses, it can be argued that they are freebies, and not using them is not wasting money. You can then start trying out alternatives there. This can also be done in smaller departments which will not see as much money lost by not using licenses off the Campus Agreement.

Also, Campus Agreements can be negotiated by department. Therefore, you can see if some departments can be exempted completely from having to participate. You can then show them how much they would save by going with the FOSS options, as compared to being forced into the MS CA.

Finally, look for departments with lots of Macs. While they are often hooked on MS Office for the Mac, they are usually more open to alternatives. Showing them NeoOffice or OO.org on OS X can be a first step for them.

As in all things, here is what you need to remember:

1. All universities have money issues, saving them money is always good. However, they see spending money for something (like a Campus Agreement) and then not using it (even on a few computers) as wasting money. Try to ween them off of smaller items first.
2. Educational value is important. Show them how using this software can, and will, actually improve the education that students receive. This is usually good with Faculty Senate or other faculty based legislative bodies.
3. The administrative departments are usually walled fortresses of information. Some are based on necessity, such as the Registrar's Office protecting student data, others are based on fear of loosing budget money. Don't expect to walk up to such a department and expect them to roll out the red carpet for you.

Remember, you want to help them, you want to help students, and they want to help students. Therefore (paraphrasing Jerry Maguire) you are trying to help them help students.

Good luck to you.

Because you can't upgrade WMP in XP? Sounds weird ... I call bullshit.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/11/default.aspx

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/02/06/microsofts-plan-to-upsell-windows-7/

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/feb09/02-03Win7SKU-QA.mspx

If MS really does this, they might as ship windows with a big icon on the middle of the screen that take people to apple Switch site. Perhaps they can demo the multimedia functions with a "I'm a Mac" commercial in Quicktime. People just need one more reason to switch.

Really as if the proliferation of windows versions weren't bad enough. This makes the major desktop versions of linux look easier to decipher.

With Vista (and "above" - 2k8, win7), Microsoft changed the way they do site licensing. Instead of having one key for every computer, every client does a DNS lookup for a Key Management Software Server (KMS server), which then simply activates the client computer. It does not keep a record of how many activations you have used, only the last 50.

Likewise, you just call them up, tell them how many computers you have, and they give you a price. A few minutes and many thousands of dollars later, you have a key to plug in to KMS. Magically, every Vista+ box that you have on site is licensed and activated. This can include student computers if you wish. The activations 6 months, after which time they *must* talk to the KMS server again.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/vol/default.mspx

Now look. I run centos/debian/openbsd/gentoo/xp/vista/server 2008. I really hate (operating system) licensing. I hate the simple concept. But KMS is really the way to go. It takes right next to no system resources. In the KMS docs, they say that most 100k+ client customers are perfectly content with 2 KMS servers (with the same key). Next to zero system load.

Second, Office.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101080191033.aspx

There is also their Software Assurance program.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/default.mspx

Software Assurance has one big downside, and one big upside. The downside is that it is a yearly fee. It is more or less a subscription. The upside is that you are entitled to free upgrades of "the product" as long as you keep paying. This means that if you purchased SA on Office 2003 a year before 2007 was released, your 2003 license can be automatically upconverted to 2007 free of charge. The same applies to... all of their products. XP --> Vista --> Win7, SQL 2000 --> 2003 --> 2008, Visual Studio, the works. It is not a required upconversion either - you choose if and when you upgrade.

As a result, buying your weight in gold worth of Software Assurance also gives you 24/7 software support. It more or less gives you everything. Tech support, upgrades, technical resources... it is essentially the equal to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription in terms of the support you get, the products that you get, and the upgrades.

Really, your best bet to understanding MS licensing is to contact one of their reps. Gather everything that you can find before hand, and give them a call. Grill them endlessly. Ask questions, and don't let them leave until you know everything you needed.

What is the benefit of open source/free software? EVERYTHING ABOVE IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT.

With Vista (and "above" - 2k8, win7), Microsoft changed the way they do site licensing. Instead of having one key for every computer, every client does a DNS lookup for a Key Management Software Server (KMS server), which then simply activates the client computer. It does not keep a record of how many activations you have used, only the last 50.

Likewise, you just call them up, tell them how many computers you have, and they give you a price. A few minutes and many thousands of dollars later, you have a key to plug in to KMS. Magically, every Vista+ box that you have on site is licensed and activated. This can include student computers if you wish. The activations 6 months, after which time they *must* talk to the KMS server again.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/vol/default.mspx

Now look. I run centos/debian/openbsd/gentoo/xp/vista/server 2008. I really hate (operating system) licensing. I hate the simple concept. But KMS is really the way to go. It takes right next to no system resources. In the KMS docs, they say that most 100k+ client customers are perfectly content with 2 KMS servers (with the same key). Next to zero system load.

Second, Office.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101080191033.aspx

There is also their Software Assurance program.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/default.mspx

Software Assurance has one big downside, and one big upside. The downside is that it is a yearly fee. It is more or less a subscription. The upside is that you are entitled to free upgrades of "the product" as long as you keep paying. This means that if you purchased SA on Office 2003 a year before 2007 was released, your 2003 license can be automatically upconverted to 2007 free of charge. The same applies to... all of their products. XP --> Vista --> Win7, SQL 2000 --> 2003 --> 2008, Visual Studio, the works. It is not a required upconversion either - you choose if and when you upgrade.

As a result, buying your weight in gold worth of Software Assurance also gives you 24/7 software support. It more or less gives you everything. Tech support, upgrades, technical resources... it is essentially the equal to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription in terms of the support you get, the products that you get, and the upgrades.

Really, your best bet to understanding MS licensing is to contact one of their reps. Gather everything that you can find before hand, and give them a call. Grill them endlessly. Ask questions, and don't let them leave until you know everything you needed.

What is the benefit of open source/free software? EVERYTHING ABOVE IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT.

With Vista (and "above" - 2k8, win7), Microsoft changed the way they do site licensing. Instead of having one key for every computer, every client does a DNS lookup for a Key Management Software Server (KMS server), which then simply activates the client computer. It does not keep a record of how many activations you have used, only the last 50.

Likewise, you just call them up, tell them how many computers you have, and they give you a price. A few minutes and many thousands of dollars later, you have a key to plug in to KMS. Magically, every Vista+ box that you have on site is licensed and activated. This can include student computers if you wish. The activations 6 months, after which time they *must* talk to the KMS server again.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/vol/default.mspx

Now look. I run centos/debian/openbsd/gentoo/xp/vista/server 2008. I really hate (operating system) licensing. I hate the simple concept. But KMS is really the way to go. It takes right next to no system resources. In the KMS docs, they say that most 100k+ client customers are perfectly content with 2 KMS servers (with the same key). Next to zero system load.

Second, Office.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101080191033.aspx

There is also their Software Assurance program.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/default.mspx

Software Assurance has one big downside, and one big upside. The downside is that it is a yearly fee. It is more or less a subscription. The upside is that you are entitled to free upgrades of "the product" as long as you keep paying. This means that if you purchased SA on Office 2003 a year before 2007 was released, your 2003 license can be automatically upconverted to 2007 free of charge. The same applies to... all of their products. XP --> Vista --> Win7, SQL 2000 --> 2003 --> 2008, Visual Studio, the works. It is not a required upconversion either - you choose if and when you upgrade.

As a result, buying your weight in gold worth of Software Assurance also gives you 24/7 software support. It more or less gives you everything. Tech support, upgrades, technical resources... it is essentially the equal to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription in terms of the support you get, the products that you get, and the upgrades.

Really, your best bet to understanding MS licensing is to contact one of their reps. Gather everything that you can find before hand, and give them a call. Grill them endlessly. Ask questions, and don't let them leave until you know everything you needed.

What is the benefit of open source/free software? EVERYTHING ABOVE IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT.

I see everybody got their disks from this month's Windows IT Pro magazine.

Don't for get the Host requirements:
10GB space
2GB Ram
2Ghz processor
DVD drive

All these questions and many more can be answered at:
http://microsoft.com/forefront
http://microsoft.com/systemcenter
http://microsoft.com/ida
http://microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

I see everybody got their disks from this month's Windows IT Pro magazine.

Don't for get the Host requirements:
10GB space
2GB Ram
2Ghz processor
DVD drive

All these questions and many more can be answered at:
http://microsoft.com/forefront
http://microsoft.com/systemcenter
http://microsoft.com/ida
http://microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

I see everybody got their disks from this month's Windows IT Pro magazine.

Don't for get the Host requirements:
10GB space
2GB Ram
2Ghz processor
DVD drive

All these questions and many more can be answered at:
http://microsoft.com/forefront
http://microsoft.com/systemcenter
http://microsoft.com/ida
http://microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

I see everybody got their disks from this month's Windows IT Pro magazine.

Don't for get the Host requirements:
10GB space
2GB Ram
2Ghz processor
DVD drive

All these questions and many more can be answered at:
http://microsoft.com/forefront
http://microsoft.com/systemcenter
http://microsoft.com/ida
http://microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

And I'm sure that's the sentiment at Microsoft and why they aren't treating Singularity with anything more than speculative, would be nice to dream by we have reality to worry about attention. I would argue though that it is our deep concerns with legacy compatibility that are holding back the state of the art for both hardware and software. The fact that we have application servers such as Zope and JBoss speaks volumes about what we'd like to be doing with our software. Perhaps it is time to cut out some of this middleware and support things at the foundation instead.

I too recognize the importance of leveraging the value of existing resources. I also believe however that there are other ways to accommodate this. In any business with even a modest amount of history there will be legacy systems that the development staff must make interoperable with current development efforts. The usual approach to this isn't to develop new systems that resemble the old. You create a bridge that adapts one to the other. Excellent examples of what I'm suggesting as it relates to operating systems would be Apple's Rosetta or perhaps Wine.

There's little or nothing original that's being presented here. The Phantom people claim originality to the idea of orthogonal persistence, but they are flat-out wrong:

Q: File system?

A: Nope. Sorry. Nobody needs files in Phantom. All the operating system state is saved across shutdowns. Phantom is the only global persistent OS in the world, AFAIK. All the state of all the objects is saved. Even power failure is not a problem, because of the unique Phantom's ability to store frequently its complete state on the disk.

To illustrate the utility and awesomeness of persistence, there's a famous story about KeyKOS, an earlier OS that embraced this notion:

At the 1990 uniforum vendor exhibition, key logic, inc. found that their booth was next to the novell booth. Novell, it seems, had been bragging in their advertisements about their recovery speed. Being basically neighborly folks, the key logic team suggested the following friendly challenge to the novell exhibitionists: let's both pull the plugs, and see who is up and running first.

Now one thing Novell is not is stupid. They refused.

Somehow, the story of the challenge got around the exhibition floor, and a crowd assembled. Perhaps it was gremlins. Never eager to pass up an opportunity, the keykos staff happily spent the next hour kicking their plug out of the wall. Each time, the system would come back within 30 seconds (15 of which were spent in the bios prom, which was embarassing, but not really key logic's fault). Each time key logic did this, more of the audience would give novell a dubious look.

Eventually, the novell folks couldn't take it anymore, and gritting their teeth they carefully turned the power off on their machine, hoping that nothing would go wrong. As you might expect, the machine successfully stopped running. Very reliable.

Having successfully stopped their machine, novell crossed their fingers and turned the machine back on. 40 minutes later, they were still checking their file systems. Not a single useful program had been started.

Figuring they probably had made their point, and not wanting to cause undeserved embarassment, the keykos folks stopped pulling the plug after five or six recoveries.

The notion of a language-based OS exploiting the semantics of pointerless/"safe" programming languages in order to isolate processes, rather than the norm of executing untrusted native machine code in different address spaces, is nothing new either.

If these ideas shift your bits, take a look at some real, interesting work done by real people that have more clue than fashion:

• Coyotos, an OS whose orthogonal persistence falls out of the capability model of security that they embrace. Coyotos is written in BitC, a purpose-built high-level programming language with special focus on formal semantics and reasoning.
• Singularity, a language-based OS in development by none other than Microsoft Research. (Certainly the most interesting Microsoft project that I am aware of.) Singularity exploits language semantics to isolate processes.
• TUNES, a collective wet-dream of what the OS, programming language, and generally computing system of tomorrow should look like. With all due respect towards the insurmountable difficulty and endless complexity of a task like this, it must be said that TUNES is just vaporware.