Microsoft Rep To Keynote Unix Conference

An anonymous reader writes "According to ZDNET Microsoft is going to be keynoting the Australian Unix and Open Systems Users Group conference. From the article: '"Don't be put off by Chris' Microsoft badge -- he is actually a long time Unix hacker," the user group said today in a statement updating users on presentations at the conference ... Green, Microsoft's local Unix Interoperability and High Performance Computing specialist, will update the conference on his company's "Unix and open source-related activities, including their efforts to provide a POSIX environment in Windows, and to integrate Windows and Unix systems."'"

Comments

What's that term?

[turtled]

...a day late, and an iPod short.

Re:What's that term?

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf! windows + posix may rule the world!!

Re:What's that term?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the expression has something more to do with a fox and a henhouse, and maybe there is some guarding involved, too, but I can't remember for sure...

Stigma

[Namronorman]

Maybe this will help relieve the stigma people have about a lot of MS employees that are well known. Not every person there is a microsoft recording.

Re:Stigma

[rtb61]

Yeah, you have to have some gullible front men, so that the microsoft recordings can sneak in the door behind them ;-). Of course implying that any IT aware person could be that gullible and not know exactly what they are being used for would be akin to saying that arn't aware of what their monthly pay check is ;-).

Re:Stigma

[Foofoobar]

Yeah well, when they are the keynote at a conference for their company, you can guarantee that his speech was written for him by the Microsoft marketing department.

Re:Stigma

[Anonymous Coward]

every MS employee has sold their soul.. thats one stigma that will take a fuckload of effort to remove from my mind matie.. once a whore always a slut. I hope they enjoy sucking off gatesie..

Re:Stigma

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah lol!

Re:Stigma

[_Sprocket_]

Maybe this will help relieve the stigma people have about a lot of MS employees that are well known.

Of course - it doesn't matter. This guy isn't setting policy. He's not directing business strategy. And it's Microsoft's business history that makes it very odd to have them as a keynote speaker.

Re:Stigma

[boaworm]

Yes of course. That's the whole point, isn't it ?

I'd be more interested in listening to the Microsoft perspective on OSS, UNIX/MS integration and Windows/Posix, than just a guy telling me his ideas.

Why would it be a bad thing?

Re:Stigma

[Foofoobar]

Bacause it never differs. They don't talk about open source, they talk about 'Microsoft's shared source'. And they don't talk about UNIX, they talk about 'Microsofts UNIX services'. They have yet to even embrace open source and are still in denial.

So why would I want to hear about Microsoft's perspective on open source when they have yet to embrace it?

I call bull hockey!

[yagu]

From the slashdot article:

will update the conference on his company's 'Unix and open source-related activities, including their efforts to provide a POSIX environment in Windows, and to integrate Windows and Unix systems.'

I call bullhockey on this. A lot of slashdotters probably aren't even old enough to remember when Microsoft first came out with NT. Their PR releases were all abuzz with their new advanced technology OS with special emphasis on their intent to have a POSIX compliant OS. At the same time they talked me into working for them (took three offers, a signing bonus, and a pretty nice stock option offer), under the ostensible work they'd have for me to provide support for their POSIX subsystem.

Once I was in the door, and within the first week I attended what was described as a "presentation on NT's POSIX subsystem", presented by the POSIX team. That team turned out to be a guy named Matt (don't know his last name).

The project manager Margaret (don't remember HER last name) got up before the presentation and said (and I can only paraphrase, I don't remember verbatim, but guarantee the accuracy of the spirit of her comments): "Before we proceed with this presentation, there's one thing I (Microsoft) want to make clear. The POSIX subsystem is a check box. We're only doing it to fulfill the requirement to have POSIX so we can get government contracts."

I was almost physically ill, what was to be MY role (my background was Unix) if their POSIX was to be a sham? (BTW, not only did they not intend to support it, they only implemented the API portion of POSIX, not the user environment and utilities.)

I called Larry Kroger who was in charge of things and desparately asked him what I was supposed to tell people who were asking POSIX support questions. He told me, "tell them we don't support it.". What if they ask about future plans for POSIX? He replied, "tell them we have no plans.".

Forgive me if have doubts about Microsoft's purity in "plans" today to do POSIX.

Oh, and for the record, anyone who doubts my accounts... the entire presentation was videotaped (1992), as were all of their internal presentations. I only assume it would still be available today but if it is, it will reflect my accounting of events.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[SuperDuG]

Bullhockey indeed. I too was brought in to start the design specifications and class role functions. I remember that meeting, HER name was Ororo Munroe and man did she have one hell of a stormy attitude. I didn't get three seperate offers, but I did manage to get a stock offer along with what at the time was a pretty decent salary.

They did video tape the presentation and it has been added to the microsoft underground archives at 1407 Graymalkin Lane. So much has been put away there, ideas that were deemed to "risky" but never allowed their creators to have because of non-compete and non-disclosure agreements. I remember my lawyer spent almost 8 hours going over my NDA and NCA before he even new what all I was agreeing to.

The POSIX design was needed for the certain government contracts, but don't forget the way that we managed to get the CMMI Level 5 before we even had a released product. The one thing that bothered me more than anything was the conversation they had 3 after the one you mentioned..

After getting the entire crew on board with the design specs and milestone timeline the NT CTO Erik Lehnsherr called a meeting of the respective heads. The delimna was the actual networking protocol, at the time there was NetBios, AppleTalk, and TCP/IP and they all pretty much sucked. We had some code from meeting the IEEE standards for IPv4, but the implementation was beyond ugly.

We ended up actually "borrowing" a lot of the code from FreeBSD. So I guess while the filesystem, operating structure, standard binary compliance, and pretty much everything else, NT did have POSIX compliance.

Did you ever work with Henry McCoy while he was there?

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Always good to hear from people who have first
hand knowledge of matters. I would point out that
what you say was widely known anyway. It wasn't
really a secret. The POSIX subsystem in NT was in
it's own domain/environemnt and wasn't really
accessible from the "Windows" domain/environment
of NT. So, as you said, it was largely a requirements
checkbox so that they could bid on Government
contracts which required on OS to be POSIX compliant.

I don't know what their current plans for POSIX
integration are but if the made a POSIX API that
was accessible from the normal "Windows" enviroment,
that would be awesome.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is a troll, moderated accordingly.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[silsor]

Some idiot didn't take a close look at this comment before hitting "Interesting".

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it was better they didn't go POSIX compliant? I mean really now, where would the antivirus vendors and Marketing Research companies be? Microsoft being non-POSIX compliant has been a boon to the GNP. I am sure if you think about it you can list a lot of ways Microsoft has expanded the economy.

*The above is a sarcastic seed, now let's see the real talent here at /. grow this into worthy tree, consider yourself challenged ladies and gentlemen*

Re:I call bull hockey!

[hkb]

Welcome to 1995. I guess you didn't hear that Microsoft bought OpenNT (later known as Interix) back in the mid-1990s and created a product called "Services For UNIX" out of it, and that this component is free, mature and gives you virtually a full UNIX-like environment. So, it's not "in the works", it's already out there. However, it will soon be included in Windows by default, which is what these marketdroids are essentially saying.

That Microsoft created the original POSIX subsystem for government compliance is NO secret at all, as it's been openly "admitted" at several official MS events throughout history. It was basically a stupid little feature thrown in to meet a stupid little government requirement thrown in by some UNIX zealots to try and keep UNIX around.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except now Microsoft has Softway's Interix POSIX subsystem which is a full POSIX subsystem both by API and environment. Microsoft has been offering the product for years, rolled it up into Services for Unix about three years ago and then decided to give it away for free about two years ago.

But we knew about this story. Only months ago did Microsoft mention that Services for Unix was going away. Instead it will be rolled directly into Windows.

So it's not the same old game. It's not the POSIX subsystem that MS put together for NT. This is the POSIX subsystem that Softway sold as a commercial product. 3000 API and 300 applications, including a slew GNU applications (yes, MS does have the source on their FTP site.)

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Halfbaked Plan]

Actually, as a registered owner of two copies of Softway System's Interix, and one copy of the crippled subset of it that Microsoft released after purchasing it, and further an observer of the further crippled version they now call Services for Unix, I call bullshit on you.

Microsoft bought Softway Systems to keep it a limited phenomenon, and to make sure it shrunk in power, didn't grow. They probably had Softway Systems by the balls in the first place, of course, because in order to get access to the trade secrets to integrate a powerful POSIX api with the NT kernel, they probably signed mega-NDA contracts.

I do remember that there was a period before Microsoft purchased Softway Systems when Softway was sending out appeals to the Open Source Community asking if Interix should be 'open sourced.' Not sure if that was a sham appeal or not.

But 'Services For Unix' is not _For_ Unix. It's for defending against Unix.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ABSOLUTELY DEAD ON with your observations. We discovered Interix, and had very high hopes for using it, and even were in contact with its engineers about their product, how we liked it, how we wanted it to grow, etc. But they were living in constant fear of their lives. You are right, they had to do heavy duty NDA, and then when it came time to renew licensing Microsoft turned the screws essentially squeezing them out, then buying them. Forget growing THAT market... the last thing Microsoft wanted happening was people being able to have multiple accesses from remote Xwindows stations to ONE Windows box! I hated what Microsoft did for that!

As for Unix Services... it is the most convoluted and nightmarish suite to install. And it's (at least not yet) free... I typically run Home Edition cuz I don't think the extra $100 is worth it just to have IIS (I run apache). And you have to have PRO XP to install Unix Services. Yeah, Microsoft know exactly what they're doing.

Posting anonymously.... -yagu

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. The $64,000 question is: if he's such a Unix geek, what the $&@*! is he doing at Microsoft? They're not exactly the top place for Unix hackers these days ... or even in the top 90%.

I'm wondering if he's going to say:
- Microsoft is doing great things with Unix! Obey!
- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm trying, but, I'm sorry...
- Anybody hiring?

This is almost like having Captain Hazelwood to give the keynote at the Sierra Club. What could you possibly say that's true, other than an apology?

Re:I call bull hockey!

[slashdotnickname]

"The POSIX subsystem is a check box. We're only doing it to fulfill the requirement to have POSIX so we can get government contracts."

I was almost physically ill, what was to be MY role (my background was Unix) if their POSIX was to be a sham?

How is implementing something that passes POSIX compliance levels a sham? Did you think you were coming aboard to turn their whole OS into something more like Unix? Sounds to me like they were honest to you developers upfront regarding their goals... and those goals, software-wise, were COM (and later .NET) instead of POSIX as the primary development interface. But one of their main customers, the government, came along and required POSIX, so they hired some experts to meet that requirement.

Life's full of things you have to do just because others expect it of you. I pay a lot in taxes, not because I want to but because I have to. Is my check writing to the government a sham now because I don't do it out of free will?

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether it was intentional or not, they were very dishonest with me during the interview process. At one point I confronted them and asked them if they really wanted to hire me, cuz, "I didn't like DOS, and I didn't like Windows, and I didn't like any of their products"... They were emphatic.... "No, no!, We're dead serious about this POSIX and Unix thing and we NEED you!"

They finally convinced me to (temporarily) leave a job I was happy in because they convinced me they WERE going to be more Unix like. That was deception. That was the sham.

anonymously, -yagu

Re:I call bull hockey!

[bani]

they hired him promising him one thing, then reneging.

of course, it's simply par for the course for microsoft. speaks volumes about their lack of ethics.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

GP is +5 funny. It's not the GP poster's fault if you have no clue and no sense of humour.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

...and now it's the Microsoft zealots running rampant in Government. My how things have changed.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[PhotoGuy]

If memory serves, OpenNT was a bunch of ex-MKS'ers who split off (pretty much violating their non-competes, I would say), and did a very MKS-like-thing on their own, and sold it to MS. Very sleazy. (At the time, MKS was big into producing POSIX-compliant API's and Tools for a variety of operating systems.)

Re:I call bull hockey!

[hkb]

I believe you're right, but I don't believe they spun off just to be bought by MS. They existed years before that and apparently had some level of success.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[hkb]

If that were true, why, after they bought it, did they immediately give Interix out for free to MSDN developers and post MSDN development articles about it?

I'll answer this question for you. To enable developers to port and UNIX apps on their Windows servers. It's been a long-time strategy with mixed success (I could go on and on on why I think it was mixed).

But 'Services For Unix' is not _For_ Unix. It's for defending against Unix.

It's for integrating into UNIX-based (and NIS) infrastructures and providing NFS client/server functionality. It's also for porting UNIX apps for execution on Windows boxes. A pretty good strategy if you ask me.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[halleluja]

And here I thought NT (at least 4) only implemented a subset of POSIX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posix) with some 3rd party software (cygwin/posix utils).

The rep will attend with the purpose of interoperability of Windows with Unices, but I highly doubt the interoperability will be positive considering the stories and history of Samba.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[in10d]

You say it's not the same old game. How do you know?

Softway was acquired by MS in 1999, after the succesful half - POSIX compliant Windows NT release. See here, here, and here.

Since then, we have no evidence of real work towards POSIX compliance in Microsoft operating systems. Just marketing, for now.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Their NFS is so badly broken that you may not even mention it.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Halfbaked Plan]

I posted my observations about direct before- and after-Microsoft experience with Interix. Yes, I bought 'Microsoft Interix' after the Microsoft purchase thinking it MIGHT be the same thing as Softway's Product.

It wasn't. With Softway Interix it was easy to install various services that made it trivial to install services to telnet into NT and run a command prompt, with programs like vi and other common Unix shell-based tools. The vi editor mysteriously disappeared in Microsoft Interix, becoming an awkward binary you could at considerable effort locate, download, and install. With Pre-Microsoft Interix you basically had a complete and fairly robust POSIX shell to log into on your NT box.

Stating at the end of your comment what Microsoft re-purposed Interix to be for is a distraction from what Interix was before the Microsoft acquistion. Be honest and admit Microsoft's strategy was to castrate the product.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Halfbaked Plan]

In fact with Interix you have a very robust POSIX subsystem, including a port of the whole GNU toolchain, for example. Cygwin doesn't count at ALL, because it's just a layer that rides on top of the Win32 api. IOW- with Cygwin you communicate to the kernel through Win32 DLLs. With Interix, you're interacting with an API that runs in a subsystem in parallel with Win32 and communicates directly with the NT kernel.

And in a letter to registered Interix users, the CEO of Softway asked if the product should be open sourced. The silent non-response was deafening.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[petermgreen]

it was a sham because they were ticking a box in a way that was of virtually no practical use. IIRC the posix subsystem couldn't even access the network.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[hkb]

Anyone's NFS (yes, even Sun's) is so badly broken that I may not mention it. NFS itself is a kludgey pile of dung.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

They sure didn't give us a copy it cost $120.00 and was COMPLETELY broken. What a waste of money. It is obivious that you haven't use the product. As for NFS yes in SFU it is broken and a real piece of shit, Still I've never had any security or files issues from NSF between Unix flavored machines. Really look at the files in the sub system and read the copyright in the flat files and config files. You will see BSD all over the place.

We have Linux machines here of differant flavors, a Sun box, had a BSD box, yes we have three W2K servers and the graphics guy comes in with is OSX laptop. The ONLY machines that have a problem with NSF are the W2K machines running SFU.

So are the 18 Unix flavored servers broken or are the 3 Windows machines?

And talk about security of sharing files and file systems. Just open up ports 135 to 139 on a Windows machine to the Internet and see how fast you'll get owned! Put a network sniffer on the Internet and watch the port scans for SMB ports. Then tell me about the mighty MS.

"Ease of use" is removing the locks from your house so you don't have to keep up with your keys....

Re:I call bull hockey!

[hkb]

First off, go take some fucking grammar and spelling lessons. Even on Slashdot, you'll look like a total tool with the nightmarish version of English you use.

It is obivious that you haven't use the product.

I'm using it right now, dumb ass.

Still I've never had any security or files issues from NSF between Unix flavored machines.

Then you follow under one of the following categories:
1.) Haven't been using NFS long
2.) Are blissfully ignorant
3.) Lying.

NFS is legendary for its security problems and shoddy performance and design. The end.

Really look at the files in the sub system and read the copyright in the flat files and config files. You will see BSD all over the place.

Yes, that's old news. The BSD license allows this specifically, and why should anyone re-invent the wheel when a solid, free solution is available?

And talk about security of sharing files and file systems. Just open up ports 135 to 139 on a Windows machine to the Internet and see how fast you'll get owned!

Ports 135-139 are obsolete. Modern Windows machines use port 445, which is SMB/CIFS over IP. The old Windows shit used 135-139 for (a stupid) SMB over NetBIOS over TCP/IP scheme. Actually it's wasn't entirely stupid, as it was devised back when Microsoft (laughably) thought they might be able to beat this new TCP/IP revolution, similarly to what Novell and IPX had done for a while. Now, SMB runs directly over IP.

Put a network sniffer on the Internet and watch the port scans for SMB ports. Then tell me about the mighty MS.

Oh wow, SMB scans, I'm gonna get hacked!!! Oh wait, what's this? Snort shows some exploit scans for ssh, smtp, rpc/nfs and vnc, too. Oh no! The sky is falling.

PS: I have port 445 open to the world on this box. Do your best.

Predictions

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

MS resurrects XENIX

Re:Predictions

[Tackhead]

> MS resurrects XENIX

...transfers license to SCO in exchange for a 25% interest in the company, and it's 1987 all over again!

Re:Predictions

[thedcm]

LOL!

Re:Predictions

[DragonTrainer]

Digital resurrects Ultrix!

It's either I'm sooo confused...

[TarrySingh]

or just some folks are sooo left out!

Re:Yeah it's odd

[MightyMartian]

Experience thus far indicates that whatever the Unix guy might have been before he walked into Redmond, when he comes out, he's just a marketing shill whose purpose is to say nothing of any substance with as many words as possible.

So it's come down to Unix against Linux now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think memory allocation and time-sharing of CPUs is getting a bit mature; and it's the development philosophies of GNU/* software thats fundementally different. I'm not at all surprised that Unix & Microsoft are aligned.

Re:So it's come down to Unix against Linux now?

[samxiao]

I studied Operating System last year in my university. Basically I agree on that for Windows 2000/XP's memory management and time-sharing (scheduling or priorities).

Re:So it's come down to Unix against Linux now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of what you studied, practice shows otherwise. I also studied OS in University.

Gross Stupidity

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Politeness only goes so far. This man has nothing to say that Linux, Unix, or Open Source advocates need to hear. Whatever this guy has to say can't be anything but snow. When despite repeated warnings, you let some smooth talking psychotic into your home, bring you milk and cookies, and tell you a bedtime story, who is to blame when you wake up with an arm around your neck and a sharp knife in your gut? When Microsoft comes knocking, do yourself a favor and tell them to hit the road.

he must be the "token unix guy"

[Anonymous Coward]

which is a bit like including 3 black people and a handicapped guy in your 20,000 workforce
"see we are not racist, we employ minorities"

Re:he must be the "token unix guy"

[Anonymous Coward]

And to top it off,

he's only into Xenix...

bait and switch

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the oldest fucking con, bait and switch.

Re:Yeah it's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be put off by Chris' Microsoft badge -- he is actually a long time Unix hacker

Don't be put off by the 666 tattooed on his forehead and the left leg, which just incidentally looks like a goat's, either.

Don't believe his twodigit-millions make him a worse man.

Microsoft to lecture us on unix?

[pmike_bauer]

Isn't that sort of like asking Ms. Hilton to address MENSA?

Re:Microsoft to lecture us on unix?

[pmike_bauer]

Please mod me down; I regret posting this on several levels.

Re:Microsoft to lecture us on unix?

[eosp]

I wish I had mod points...to mod you up though. Sorry.

Re:Microsoft to lecture us on unix?

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be the best karma whoring I've ever seen!

Obviously

[ryanw]

Can't beat em, join em, then beat em.

Re:Obviously

[Chulo]

Yeah, and many Microsoft employees are actually former Unix/Linux advocates. Maybe someday if you profess your love for Windows you could be a Microsoft employee, and your soul will be saved a place in digital heaven.

Re:Obviously

[thedcm]

LOL?

get ready for Visual UNIX#

[Anonymous Coward]

"Embrace and extend" says Bill == bye bye interoperable open standards.

First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Spy der Mann]

Support reiserFS and ext2 / ext3 file systems in windows!

Thank you.

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be great if MS supported ReiserFS... because then scandisk would actually be able to fix errors in it, as opposed to the reiserfs-tools.

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[sctprog]

You could flip that around and say that it wouldn't hurt to have decent NTFS support in Linux either. Even the "new and improved" version in more recent kernels shows writing to the partition as dangerous. What's the point in that?

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_NTFS

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

If microsoft would actually give anyone sufficient information about NTFS to write good support for it, it would be written.

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the "new and improved" version in more recent kernels shows writing to the partition as dangerous. What's the point in that?

Well, here's the point in that:

I routinely use a Linux boot CD to recover data from XP systems that are too damaged to boot anymore without reformatting and reloading XP. I don't need to write, I only need to read the NTFS volume to be able to get their data from the drive before I wipe and reload. XP doesn't offer anything like that!

For those who say XP is soooo stable right now, I gotta wonder why I get one of these calls a month?

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Mistshadow2k4]

Try being known as a nerd and working in a factory. You'd think a call a month was slow! Funny thing, it's not me who works in a factory - it's my husband. He bragged that we didn't have the problems they were always griping about because I knew how to handle and fix Windows. Now his co-workers call me at home at home to get help with Windows problems. I kid you not. And almost all of them have XP too.

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[seweso]

You can write your own plugin, and someone already made an ext2 plugin :D (just google on ext2)

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say it's up to whoever creates an arbitrary filesystem (for example, FooFS) to provide the appropriate drivers for popular operating systems. Why is it Microsoft's responsibility to provide filesystem drivers for a competing operating system for Windows?

Re:To MS, "integrating" really means "switch to MS

[mordors9]

Everyone seems to keep hoping that MS will play nice and that they really mean it this time when they say they want to get along. It seems we are always left with the wolf in sheep's clothing metaphor.

doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for MS

[Locutus]

Since he now works for MSFT and they have NO HISTORY of working productively with competitors, he and his company will only do harm. Why on earth would anybody let an MSFT badge keynote a *nix conference is beyond me... It's bull that they say it'll be about interoperability and most likely all you'll get is how you can ftp into their system if you use their ftp client, written in MS.net, and run on Mono. And if your dumb enough to think that you'll have any future supporting a *nix interface from MSFT, good luck with that. Remember Bristol and Wind/U?

I sure hope he gets heckled out the door, cause MSFT hasn't done anything to earn more respect than that. IMO.

LoB

Ms. Hilton

[game kid]

"What is Microsoft? Do they, like, sell micro stuff?"

In othe news,

[Hershmire]

we were never at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Re:In othe news,

[radarsat1]

Off topic? that's the best slashdot comment i've read in a _while_...

Re:In othe news,

[thedcm]

LOL;

Re:In othe news,

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it, will someone explain it to me?

Re:In othe news,

[Anonymous Coward]

Read 1984.

Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[rheotaxis]

We only want Windows Servers running inside virtural machines running on a Linux OS that owns the real hardware. Products like VMWare. We can host complete Internet web apps for clients that insist that their web site has to run on Windows. Is this viable?

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[Shawn is an Asshole]

You're thinking of Xen, not VMWare. Xen support in Windows would rock.

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[Chirs]

Why is he thinking of Xen? It would certainly be faster, but running Windows in VMWare on linux is certainly doable.

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Because VMWare is way too slow. He said he wanted to use it as a server under a Linux host. Even if Microsoft supported VMWare it would not get any faster due to the way it works. If he wanted to use a virtual Windows server, something like Xen is the only choice.

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[csirac]

You can't have read their product brochures very carefully... a VMWare image is a VMWare image is a VMWare image. Whether you run with Windows or Linux as the host OS. I've taken one VMWare .vmdk image that was running under Windows, and ran it unmodified on Linux.

Yes, it works, and there's a whole slew (if you believe their newsletter) of VMWare consultants who will happily set you up with such a setup.

For me, the "workstation" version suited my "windows server running on Linux" needs, but they do have specific versions for servers and datacentres, that among other things like providing enhanced managment and deployment tools, will even migrate running images between physical machines in a cluster of VMWare ESX hosts. Their "success story" propaganda/examples provide instances where a customer has a set of blades and particular images can be migrated to different blades as the cluster grows/shrinks.

Perhaps I sound like a marketing droid, but seriously, VMWare is one of the few commercial pieces of software I own. Worth every penny. And I'm a full-time Linux weenie. Xen doesn't really achieve the convenience that VMWare does (for example, you must physically partition your resources with Xen and so modifications that affect the resources allocated to your dom0 instance require a reboot (adjusting RAM is my biggest issue).

With VMWare, I notice that even if I allocate 384MiB RAM to the virtual machine, top (1) shows VMWare seems to only request the amount of memory the guest OS actually hits. So on bootup, my virtual machine is only occupying say 196MiB RAM even though it has 384MiB available. Additionally, although it can wire physical disks (sidenote: usb, rs232, lp0 devices too) up to the guest OS, you can create virtual disk files of an almost arbitrary size (as far as guest OS is concerned), but actual disk space usage will be much less and will closely reflect the actual amount of data on the guest OS's filesystem.

Not necessarily a useful feature for servers where accurate dimensioning and predictable performance is required, but overall VMWare feels very "dynamic" and Xen very rigid.

That said, I am very impressed with Xen. a) that it's so powerful, and b) that it's open source. Now, if only I could rig my Debian initrd.img so that it didn't require TLS library support when booting from LVM on software RAID...

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Definately doable, despite what the other guy wrote.

It WILL be even slower under virtualisation than on bare hardware, of course. But unless your load will be heavy in relation to your hardware, who cares?

It's much a much safer and more stable route than bare hardware with Windows, actually.

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[csirac]

Because VMWare is way too slow.

Have you even used VMWare? Servers are headless. As long as you're not doing anything graphically intensive, VMWare performance is quite acceptable. The GUI is still quite responsive. In fact, browsing, word, etc. activities fool the user into thinking it's running native when in full-screen mode. You honestly can't tell until you go to play a movie or a game (movies still work, mostly).

In fact, using VMWare to manage servers is where VMWare excels.

He said he wanted to use it as a server under a Linux host.

And this, along with running servers under Windows hosts, is a _EXACTLY_ what a large portion of VMWare's core business is, apart from being useful for helpdesk operators. Check out their two most expensive products: "server infrastructure". And not that everyone uses GSX/ESX for "server" work either; I'm not the only one who has found VMWare Workstation edition useful in consolidating windows (and *NIX) servers onto one machine.

Even if Microsoft supported VMWare it would not get any faster due to the way it works.

MS _DOES_ support VMWare. WHQL certified drivers and everything.

If he wanted to use a virtual Windows server, something like Xen is the only choice.

Perhaps you should add a little disclaimer to your comments, something along the lines of "that's what I think, but I don't know because I've never used it, never researched it, and in fact I don't know anything about it all".

See my other post in this thread.

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not talking about your toy box running your l33t h4x0red copy of VMWare you got from piratebay, he's asking about products such as VMWare Server GSX & ESX. The sort of product you run on fuck-off big server with Terrabyte disk arrays and so much memory the 0's run into the margins on your Purchase Order.

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[Glooty-Us-Maximus]

I don't see why not, though VMWare's performance isn't exactly stellar. Throw it on a beefy-enough box and it should be adequate. I assume you will only be running the code part of the application (ie: application server), with the database/webservers being located somewhere else?

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[rheotaxis]

Migrate running images? What about running Exchange server on a virtual Windows server using VMWare GSX/ESX? (I realize now, that these products run on the bare metal, there is no OS underneath them.) I need to find out who else is already doing this.

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Have you even used VMWare?

I've used it many times over the last few years, though only for desktop use. Most recent time was just a few months ago, with the latest VMWare Workstation trial. Machine is a Athlon 64 3400+ with 4gb ram and 10,000rpm SATA drives (RAID 0). Found it to be too slow to be useful. Ended up settling on a Dell Optiplex GX1 (450MHz, 128mb ram) over Remote Desktop.

The GUI is still quite responsive. In fact, browsing, word, etc. activities fool the user into thinking it's running native when in full-screen mode.

Are we talking about the same application, or did it make some major improvements in the last four months?

In fact, using VMWare to manage servers is where VMWare excels.

Haven't tried that since I'm not interested in Windows servers. Currently I use UML for all my virtual server needs and am beginning trials on Xen.

MS _DOES_ support VMWare. WHQL certified drivers and everything.

True. However, that's not what I meant. I was meaning more along the lines of optimization. If Windows was ported to Xen, which do you think would win in terms of performance?

Perhaps you should add a little disclaimer to your comments

My username does state that I'm an asshole...

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[csirac]

Machine is a Athlon 64 3400+ with 4gb ram and 10,000rpm SATA drives (RAID 0). Found it to be too slow to be useful. Ended up settling on a Dell Optiplex GX1 (450MHz, 128mb ram) over Remote Desktop.

I think what you saw was the exception, not the norm. VMWare is a very successful product. For the majority of applications where I've deployed it I have not seen anywhere near the slow-down you have noticed. You say you aren't interested in windows, but you're talking about "Remote Desktop"? If you ask me, I think you had a misconfigured host system running some dodgy windows installation.

Like I said, VMWare works best if you're running headless servers. It has half-decent gigabit networking support. Disk I/O is slow when living in .vmdk image files rather than a native disk. If your server tasks are CPU-bound, VMWare fits the bill in the majority of cases. Even if it isn't, the vast majority of "server hardware" out there is grossly under-utilised, and the performance penalty VMWare incurs is unnoticeable.

If you're talking about high-performance, low-cost, then no, VMWare isn't going to fit. They do sell a rather expensive 16-CPU version which supposedly has very good performance on a select list of big-iron hardware ("big" as in x86 "big"). From their marketing propaganda, it seems to use a Xen-like (heh) approach where special VMWare software/drivers/OS hooks are required for the host OS. Difference being, of course, that VMWare has Microsoft support to make a modified Windows run in high-performance virtualisation a reality.

Are we talking about the same application, or did it make some major improvements in the last four months?

I've been using it since 4.0. Specifically to run legacy Windows shit on Linux. It's really the "only" solution (you imply Xen is the "only" solution for the OP, when it clearly is not and likely never will be a possible solution at all). The biggest performance hit I see is in disk I/O. Overall, the VMWare machine seems to be about 70% the speed of what it should be running native on the host hardware, but I haven't done any subjective tests. It just works, and I was and still am surprised by the performance it manages. As far as RDP access is concerned: it is indistinguishable from a real Windows box. I was making use of the gigabit vmnet drivers on P4 boxen with 1GiB RAM.

Haven't tried that since I'm not interested in Windows servers.

Then you have no relevance to the discussion... OP wanted to know about Windows virtualisation.

MS _DOES_ support VMWare. WHQL certified drivers and everything.

True. However, that's not what I meant. I was meaning more along the lines of optimization. If Windows was ported to Xen, which do you think would win in terms of performance?

Again, I'd ask you to read the VMWare propaganda. If you ask me, a tossup between VMWare ESX server and Xen 3 (when finished) with Windows support (unlikely) would be interesting. Because they both seem to use similar technology. I'm not sure who would win.

As for VMWare Workstation/GSX vs Xen, you're comparing apples and oranges. Despite that, the performance disparity really isn't as drastic as you claim, for the majority of deployments where I have seen VMWare being used. If you're trying to squeeze blood out of stone, striving for the best utilisation of your cheap hardware - then you're talking about a scene where VMWare isn't even trying to live in. You really mis-understand the target market for VMWare. It's a competent, fast-enough solution for admins wanting to consolidate, partition, and easily manage their low to medium-traffic servers. Not to mention software developers and support desks.

Currently I use UML for all my virtual server needs and am beginning trials on Xen.

Compared to UML, it seems to be quite a bit faster, but I find the need to reboot when changes to the dom0 parameters are made a little restrictive. Additionally, SMP suppor

Sounds familiar

[Sponge Bath]

Don't be put off by Darths' black helmet -- he is actually a long time Jedi night

Re:Sounds familiar

[thedcm]

LOL

Strange Days

[FishandChips]

Looking forward to the next Washington State Unix and Open Systems Users Group which will be keynoted by Dame Edna Everidge (mistakenly hired by Microsoft as an f/oss advocate after Eric S. Raymond turned down the job offer).

Hey, maybe they do things differently down under. Take folks as you find them. Whoever this guy is, he could well have some very interesting and useful things to say. Claiming that the guy couldn't have anything worthwhile to say because he works for Microsoft is pretty dumb as well as rude to the local Australian group.

Re:Strange Days

[iggymanz]

Some of us have been listening to Microsoft say dumb and rude things about Unix and Linux for over 7 years; after a bellyfull of their slander and FUD and lies and "unbiased studies" conducted by paid stool pigeons, all the while causing businesses to lose billions due to poor security and blue screens of death, we're supposed to treat their new mouthpiece with dignity and respect?

Re:Strange Days

[hayden]

we're supposed to treat their new mouthpiece with dignity and respect?

Rumour has it that as a condition of him speaking, all the chairs in the hall have to bolted to the floor.

Re:Strange Days

[Anonymous Coward]

"Down Under" it's true - we "do things differently"! For example, we're less reactionary when faced with new ideas. We're still pretty cowardly just like you seppos, but slightly less fat.

But in Aussie land, I can assure you, an arsehole is still an arsehole.

Great opportunity!

[Locke2005]

All I need to do is secure the rotten tomato concession outside that conference, and I'll be rich beyond my wildest dreams! Oh wait... it's in Australia... never mind.

Re:Great opportunity!

[UserGoogol]

Are you suggesting that Australia is a land where the streets are red with rotten tomatoes? Well I assure you that you are MISINFORMED! I've been to Australia, and the number of rotten tomatoes I found was RELATIVELY SMALL. I will not allow you to promote this VICIOUS SLANDER when in actuality a MAJORITY of tomatoes I saw in Australia were NOT VERY ROTTEN AT ALL!

Re:Great opportunity!

[McGiraf]

You will have to compete with my rotten eggs concession.

Re:Yeah it's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir are an ignorant fool.

POSIX?

[shareme]

Would that be the same POSIX that they thought TSCO Group had IP lciense to when in fact Novel was the actual IP owener? I think MS should get their IP story straight before showing up at Unix conferences..

Re:POSIX?

[VGPowerlord]

No, it's the IEEE 1003.1 standard, dubbed POSIX by everyone's favorite open source advocate, Richard Stallman.

Source: The Open Group's POSIX FAQ

Re:POSIX?

[TheRaven64]

open source advocate, Richard Stallman.

Wow, he's going to be pissed off with you for calling him that...

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[ebuck]

Quotes the parent poster, "Why on earth would anybody let an MSFT badge keynote a *nix conference is beyond me..."

I imagine it's the Krusty the Klown defense on why one must sell out:

Sobs for a few breaths then exclaims in anguish, "They parked a dumptruck full of cash on my front yard! What else could I do!?!?!?" More emphatic sobbing.

War is Peace

[FusionJunky]

Ignorance is Strength?

POSIX Would be Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

If MS really did provide a POSIX/SUS3 API and
environemnt that was accessible from the normal
Windows domain then that would awesome baby! I'd
be real interested if anyone has a pointer to more
info on this.

Obligatory reply

[Raul654]

[He] "will update the conference on his company's 'Unix and open source-related activities"

EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE

Re:Obligatory reply

[DumbparameciuM]

I was envisioning something from the Battlestar: Galactica series "For 20 years, the Cylons didn't come...."

MS rep gave a presentation at our LUG meeting

[ylikone]

And basically it was the same old MS shiat we've come to expect. MS wants to work with the OS community... yeah right, by showing how easy it is to tie all your systems together with a windows server box... so you can eventually phase out those nasty open source boxes. There are NO good MS employees, they have all been brainwashed and are really only interested in the money.

Re:MS rep gave a presentation at our LUG meeting

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bit hard dude. Executives at MS do very well, true, but the average grunt gets barely market rate over there. The fringe benefits are good for many of them though.

Since I live in the Seattle area, I meet a lot of these guys. Many of them really want to build great software, and like the backing of a big, powerful company like Microsoft in acheiving that end. Like the rest of us, when push comes to shove they are just normal guys trying to make a buck and feed their families.

Re:MS rep gave a presentation at our LUG meeting

[aweraw]

"No one ever thinks about the family of the henchman"

MOD PARENT UP

[blackcoot]

you have no idea how much i wish i had non-suck options for large files being shared between windows and linux. i would *love* to see native support for reiserfs or ext3 (in fact, why not xfs, jfs, and ext2 too) --- this would make my life a lot easier. i do a lot of work with video, typically raw dv streams. while kino does have its strengths, playing nice with the camera i use is not one of them. so i'm forced to use windows to capture the raw dv streams and then work with them under linux (not a big deal — lets me run off and get lunch while my machine is working for me, so i don't mind too much). the problem is then sharing the large dv avi files between linux and windows. can't put 'em on a vfat/fat32 partition because they break the 4gb file size limit. keeping them on ntfs gets to be painful because i need to be able to move equally large video files the other way as well. so i'm forced into my current "solution", which involves using 3rd party apps to allow access to the ext3 partition on my external drive. i would love, more than anything, to have a single large ext3 partition on that drive which can be mounted and used transparently from windows and linux. too bad it's not happening anytime soon.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[cortana]

You can use ext2fsd to read from and write to ext2 partitions. It can handle ext3 in read-only mode.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Halfbaked Plan]

That sounds like scary stuff.

Any tool that allows a Linux filesystem to be penetrated by the sea of binaries Microsoft releases as an OS is a big security risk to the Linux system that created said filesystem.

Tools like that render dual-boot systems vulnerable to malevolent Windows stuff that is run on the machine.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Spy der Mann]

Not if you only hold data in the partition you're trying to access.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[qbwiz]

Linux systems were always vulnerable to malicious software on dual-booted systems - the software could always overwrite the linux partition with random data. This just lets windows do useful things with the partition.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try Captive NTFS.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Just Some Guy]

read from and write to ext2 partitions. It can handle ext3 in read-only mode.

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't ext3 basically ext2 plus a journal? How could you be able to write ext2 without being about to write ext3?

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[SmittyTheBold]

Simply because the ext2 driver isn't going to know how to write the journal, so the journal would immediately become out-of-sync whenever ext2 data was written to it. Sure, you could repair the directory structure with no loss, but being able to easily fix the shit that happens isn't exactly "supporting" a filesystem.

Re:Should we assume that VISTA is actually ...

[showardkid]

GASP! We know that has never worked before, right?

READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[GameMaster]

Every name listed in the parent is the name of a person from the X-Men comics.

Ororo Munroe = Storm
Erik Lehnsherr = Magneto
Henry McCoy = Beast

1407 Graymalkin Lane is the fictional address of Professor Xavier's mansion.

The parent post is a troll.

-GameMaster

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[SuperDuG]

duh :-)

+2 points for knowing not only all the characters, but catching the address too ... NICE

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And -2 points for actually being such a sad sack of shit that you're gloating about posting trolls on Slashdot. Go back to masturbating, at least you were accomplishing something then (i.e. ensuring there won't be any of your line of idiots polluting the gene pool).

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[GameMaster]

hehe,

Honestly, can't really take credit for it. My good buddy Google helped me out there. Something about the names just sounded off. Once I figured that out it wasn't too hard to figure that the address might be off too.

-GameMaster

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[Coniptor]

Maybe it's my slashdot preferences but I don't see where any of you saw those names or that address.
Someone please hit me with the clue stick.

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[GameMaster]

As of this posting, the post we are referring to has been moderated to (Score: 0, Troll). If you really want to read it go back to the first post in the thread that refers to the names and addresses and click on the green link at the bottom of the post that says "parent".

Basically, the original post in this thread claimed to have worked at MS during the development of the original Windows NT and have first hand experience with the original POSIX compliance project. Someone posted a response claiming to also have been working at MS during the same time period and to have attended the meeting that was referred to in the original post. He claimed that the meeting was run by "Storm" and that the CTO of NT project was "Magneto". He went on to mention that MS hides all documents that they don't want to leak out at "Professor Xavier's mansion" and further asks if the original poster had run into "Beast" while working at MS. Of course he used the characters' real names and the fictional street address of the mansion so that most people wouldn't realize he was full of crap.

Personally, I find this one of the worst types of troll because it spreads incorrect information in what is otherwise a reasonable sounding post. I can enjoy a funny troll as much as the next person. But, when it's presented in a way in which most people wouldn't realize it's not serious, then all it really does is promote false information.

-GameMaster

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[justins]

You just know that anyone brought in to work on POSIX compatibility has got some problems. Being an X-Men freak is probably just the beginning...

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[efuseekay]

Actually, it's the BEST type of troll. If the parent wanted to be malicious, he/she could have used some fake names. Instead, he dropped enough clues for a sharp eye like yourself to call on him/her.

I thought the troll was hilarious.

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[SuperDuG]

it actually wasn't meant to be a troll ... it was meant to be funny ... I figured SLASHDOT would be an okay place to pretend that comic book characters were real people.

I couldn't do something stupid like say Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, or Peter Parker worked with me. Those names are too "famous" and sellout wannabe's would be able to get the joke.

No, my joke could only be appreciated by someone with a minimum level of nerd to them, or in this case, someone with a minimal amount of sleuthing skills (IE: google the names).

I thought it would be OBVIOUS as a joke seeing as all the "factual" people and places were made up with the same theme.

Oh well, I'm happy to see that some people were amused :-)

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[just_another_sean]

Troll? No... You think? Well it's good to know we have alert folk like you to protect us from these monsters. I mean, hell, I almost laughed for a minute there.
Sorry, sarcasm aside, you have to admit this was a pretty appropriate response to the "cloak and dagger" scenario described by the gp post.

Re:READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Big props to SuperDuG!

His post should be +5 funny! We all know who the real troll is here!

--Still rofl...

Pfft

[vcv]

Yeah, Like Microsoft would ever offer anything POSIX compliant (coughSFUcough), like Linux does across the whole system (coughpthreadscough).

Hell

[CDPatten]

has frozen over.

In other news; next week Steve Jobs will be announcing an XPod video player for the Xbox 360.

And his script reads:

[Lister]

Developers, developers, developers, developers.....

Here you go (sort of)

[ag-gvts-inc]

http://www.fs-driver.org/
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/
http://freesourcecodes.tripod.com/ext2.htm
http://p-nand-q.com/e/reiserfs.html
http://www.wolfsheep.com/map/#RFSGUI
http://www.it.fht-esslingen.de/~zimmerma/software/ ltools.html

The above links were all gathered from http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm I've not tried any of them, but this one looks the most polished. YMMV, knock yourself out, etc.

Re:Here you go (sort of)

[mixmasterjake]

I used Ext2FS Anywhere by Paragon a while back on a dual-boot machine. The Linux partition just shows up like a regular drive in windows explorer. I paid the $29 or whatever for it. Used it that one time, then never again. They also make Mount Everything which does the same thing plus more stuff.

Long-time Unix Hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny they say that because I went to Microsoft career talks at my university (York University in Toronto) and every time a (different guy) came in and the first thing they said was:

  "... I was unix hacker for a long time before I decided Microsoft's the way to go ..."

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a rocket scientist for a long time before I decided to just use a damn catapult.

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[Profane Motherfucker]

That's because all the other "long time unix hackers" got tired of waiting in the bread line and starving all the time.

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[Xrathie]

Because they werent being hired and Microsofties were being hired by everybody doing business.

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[kevinadi]

Somehow that phrase reminds me of Amway.

I can see it now. MS desperate to beat UNIX down, now turning to MLM type scheme when the FUD stops working.

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[Mistshadow2k4]

I don't mean to troll, but so what? I can say I'm an expert Unix hacker if I want to. I can say I'm a better coder than Torvalds if I want to. Can I prove it? 'Course not. If I'd been at those career talks and some MS employee claimed to have been a Unix hacker who switched to them, I'd have asked for proof. Simply put, that makes no sense. Why decide such an insecure, unstalbe OS is better than the stable, more secure OS that started it all?

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[cgenman]

On the one hand, I can see the appeal of Microsoft's development ideology: Make it big, cheap, slow, and usable by idiots. Sadly, though, it tends to be used by idiots. And why would you pay an idiot 80 dollars an hour to setup your mail server and another 200 dollars every two weeks to reboot it, when you can pay someone competent to set it up once and have it run consistently indefinitely?

It's possible that everyone there was a unix geek. If they've been around long enough, that's really the only option. But the fact that they're doing recruiting at a university instead of coding should tell you something about who they are. I leave the ramifications of that as an exercise to the reader.

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[1u3hr]

Simply put, that makes no sense. Why decide such an insecure, unstalbe OS is better than the stable, more secure OS that started it all?

They didn't say Unix was "better" than Windows -- but that working for MS was better than working in Unix. Which is likely true for them and many others. Lots of people spend their days working on useless crap, because that's what you get paid to do. The product isn't really that important, it's your quality of life, at the office and what you can buy with the paycheque.

Re:Long-time Unix Hacker...

[NickFortune]

It's a persuasion technique called "pacing".

It works on the principle that if he introduces himself as a MS guy, the Linux faithful will think "This man works for The Enemy" and disregard everything he says.

On the other hand, if he stands there and says "I was a UNIX hacker..." then folk start thinking "one of us! Let's hear what he has to say..." instead of keeping keeping firmly in mind that A) he's still employed by the Enemy B) would not have been sent except to evangelise and C) probably had his speech written by marketdroids at Redmond.

You can see the same approach at work in a couple of dozen Slashdot posts every time there is a Linux thread: "I used Linux for years until I finally realised..." "Much as I love Linux, I have to say..." "I use Linux on all my home machines, but in the real world..."

It's just another scummy marketing trick. That's all.

BS ... and freedom matters

[argoff]

The first way to tell that this is BS is to see if Microsoft is willing to guarantee Linux won't be sued for software patent infringement like IBM did. The fact is they won't and they don't want to. The deal here is that Microsoft has figured out that they can't beat Linux head on in the marketplace, so now they are trying to co-opt it. Watch out for the bullshit monster chasing after you and trying to give you a big fat kiss! I'm sure this is just the beginning.

Do not fall for it at all. Free software is inherently better than proprietary software because it is first of all free, and then and only then is it often better for technical or usage reasons. In free markets, freedom maters. None of the fundamentals have changed, you are what you hold yourself accountable to.

Re:BS ... and freedom matters

[cerberusss]

Get off your high horse, man. This is a techie, talking about the technical aspects of "Unix and open source-related activities, including their efforts to provide a POSIX environment in Windows".

If I would attend, I would be glad if everyone kept their goddamn politics out of this and just let me hear his talk about this bit and that packet.

Re:BS ... and freedom matters

[Mistshadow2k4]

So this is why most open source apps are exact copies of their Windows counterparts(The UI especially)?

Since when? I use both OS software and Windows, and few of the OS software are exact copies of Windows anything. KDE, for example, is definitely not Explorer. It's not only more stable and far more configurable, it's just plain different. QtParted compared to Partition Magic? QtParted is way better and faster and has a simpler interface. Parition Magic is painfully slow by comaprison. There is no resemblance between K3b and any other cd-burning software I've seen on Windows, and I've had Roxio, NTI, Nero and a couple of others over the years. OpenOffice.org compared to MS Office? They're similar only to the point that they're both office suites; MS Office bears just a smuch resemblance to Corel's office suite. Xmms and Winamp? Again, they're similar because they do the same thing; there's as much resemblance between them as there is between all multimedia players. Well, with the possible exception of Xine, the GUI of which bears little resemblance to anything I've ever seen on Windows. The Gimp compared to Photoshop? I've heard that the Gimp's UI does bear a resemblance to the older versions of PS, but there's certainly little resemblance between them now; I've used both. And how do you compare OS software that there is no counterpart for on Windows except ports? Fluxbox the windows manager is one of these. Before Blackbox was ported to Windows, there was absolutely nothing like it on Windows at all. And what about Vim? And other text editors that bear no resemblance to Notepad or Wordpad whatsoever?

Firefox crashing? Yeah, it does that occasionally. Not even half as much as IE. Again, I've both; I used IE for years and it usually crashed about 3 times on a good day, not to mention all those "page cannot be found" but could easily be found by Opera or any othe browser. Now I'd rather break my finger than use IE. Not to mention that you can turn off software installation in both Mozilla & FF and this helps protect your Windows from spyware and viruses. And both can block popups without needing tird-party software. You can't do either with IE. Give me Firefox or Mozilla any day.

I don't know what universe you're in, but in this one, most OS software are not copies of Windows anything, let alone "exact" copies. If you're going to glorify MS against OSS you should come up with some facts instead of easily-refuted lies like that.

Re:BS ... and freedom matters

[Americano]

I'm not sure why a couple responses to this got modded down as trolls, but the parent gets a 5/insightful. The parent post is certainly not "insightful", unless you also subscribe to the theory that Dr. Phil's stale bromides & vague generalities are "insightful".

Free software is not inherently better because it is free. In free markets, merit & usefulness matters -- if your software is good, then it will be used. If your software is a pile of crap hacked together by a kid that doesn't know what he's doing, then even if it's free crap... it's still crap.

"Free" doesn't matter. Technical or usage reasons are the only reasons to use a piece of software. I use some free software every day -- perl, gcc, Apache, Samba, Firefox, Thunderbird, Fedora... and I use some "non-free" software every day -- MS Office, Windows XP, Quicken, Visual Studio, various IBM/Rational tools, Solaris & its compiler set (used to be Forte?) -- all of them have their merits, but NONE of them were chosen primarily based on cost. If two packages are absolutely the same, and the only distinguishing factor is cost, then (and only then) you should choose the cheapest one for your needs.

God, people, this whole mantra of "Free is the best, non-free is the devil" is completely pointless. Computers, and the software they run, are tools -- choose the tool that suits your requirements, don't let the tools dictate what your requirements can be based on some sort of political agenda.

Re:BS ... and freedom matters

[argoff]

...In free markets, merit & usefulness matters -- if your software is good, then it will be used. If your software is a pile of crap hacked together by a kid that doesn't know what he's doing, then even if it's free crap... it's still crap.

You don't understand freedom. For example, in the old USSR they had steel mills that were for more advanced and far more larger then their western counterparts. They were superior by every measure, the russian space program also. But the reality was that they were useless because the western industries could adapt and change and grow to finance new ventures where the USSR couldn't. Linux was a free piece of crap in 93, now it's a high end enterprise system used by IBM, hp, and sun. People who figured that out in the mid 90's and held themselves accountable to Linux did very nicely and have far more utility in the marketplace than their competitors now.

....all of them have their merits, but NONE of them were chosen primarily based on cost. ....

This also shows you don't get it. Free here has nothing to do with free as in cost. Hell I could charge $1000 for my Linux distro if I wanted to. Free has to do with freedom to copy and manipulate without liability. That freedom creates an accountability and growth stream that does for services what the industrial revolution did for production in a way that is unmanagable with colsed software. Nobody wants technology that stagnates as the rest of the world advances, free software guarantees that it is not pre-destined by forces outside your control.

Re:BS ... and freedom matters

[Americano]

[ . . . ] You don't understand freedom.[ . . . ]

Well, I stand corrected then. Where your stale bromides & vague generalities failed to convince me before, your obvious partisan leanings and irrelevant examples (Soviet steel mills? The space program?) have me solidly on your side now...

Let's look at the steel industry for a moment. Massive tariffs on imported stell and subsidies are the only thing that has kept the American steel industry afloat in the recent past (take a look at recent WTO rulings against the US, I think as recently as this past summer). I'm sure you, as a proponent of freedom and free markets, will agree that those are bad policies. I think they're bad policies, myself. Now, if you really want to understand why the Soviet steel mills (and the entire USSR) failed, here's the secret -- it's because there was no profit motive for ANYBODY involved, except the owners in the government who grew rich by oppressing & mistreating their workers. In a capitalist (free market) economy, people are rewarded based on the value of their contribution. If their contribution is crap, they will be rewarded with nothing.

Oh, and your example of Linux back in 1993? Thanks for making my point for me. Linux was not adopted until very recently as a viable contender in the enterprise market, and it still doesn't have a very big share. The reason? Because for the first few years it was out there, it was crappy. Unstable, flaky, and just plain a pain in the ass. It hasn't been until recently, when people have figured out how to make a profit off of open source projects (your "accountability and growth stream", I believe you called it?) that large-scale adoption of Linux has been possible by enterprise customers.

If "freedom" (in the sense you're using it) was the only reason to pick Linux, do you really think that IBM, HP, Sun, et. al. would be embracing it? Of course not. They're embracing it because:
a) It makes for *great* public relations for them... "IBM, the friend of the little man."
b) It makes *great* business sense for them. They've found a way to make money off of it, by selling services, hardware, support contracts, customizations, etc., for software which is essentially "found software" -- free, in the cost sense, in other words.

Do you *really* think that IBM and all the other companies adopting and supporting Linux are doing so because of some sort of noble philosophy about openness and freedom? Those companies don't care much for your noble philosophy... but they certainly do care about their bottom line.

Re:BS ... and freedom matters

[argoff]

My point about the steel industry was relative to the time. And this ...

it's because there was no profit motive for ANYBODY involved, except the owners in the government who grew rich by oppressing & mistreating their workers...

You answered your own question right there. There is always a profit motive, but government interference shifts it. Like with copyrights. There are no natural limits in supply and demand of information, so when government microregulates and creates some artifically then it has unnatural consequences like Microsoft and Hollywood - instead of centering profit arround services and value. In a copyright system, it would be natural for few little people to get rewarded as it centers arround monopoly and controll over distribution - oh hey, lookie what happened.

As far as free markets, you still don't get it, you don't succede by positioning yourself in a market when it's at it's peak. You succede by positioning yourself when it's emerging. And how could IBM or anyone else know that Linux was a real market and not a hippy movement, because free markets are about freedom first, markets second, when peoples have freedoms then they tend to use those in new and innovative ways to look out for their best interest and create markets. How funny, lookie what happeneed.

I thinkie you have the horsie before the carragie here problem. Property rights don't exist to incentivize people, property rights exist to deal with the fact that not everybody can controll the same things at the same time. The stability and justince in that system leads to an ownership incentive - but creating "(intellectual?) properties" out of thin air for the sake of property does not lead to stability and justice. The plantation system of 1850 had the same problem with slavery ... what's the matter, don't you believe in property rights ... don't you believe in the greatness and prosperity of American enterprise! Bullshit, free markets are about freedom first, profit second. Just because a bunch of cronies wine about something being a property right, doesn't mean that it is.

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[pulse2600]

"Why on earth would anybody let an MSFT badge keynote a *nix conference is beyond me..."

LOL yeah it's like having gweeds ranting at H2K2 concerning hackers that sold out...

Re:Yeah it's odd

[Wonko]

Don't be put off by the 666 tattooed on his forehead and the left leg

Yeah, it just means his is readable and writable by himself, his group, and others :).

Re:Should we assume that VISTA is actually ...

[AngstAndGuitar]

It ought to be, if they just took WINE and worked from that codebase, I think windows-on-top-of-BSD would be very feasable.

They just reset

[mattr]

That's okay, sounds like the borg decided to do a soft reset and now it's back in the Embrace stage. Scary thing I suppose is.. it seems to be learning.

What's a "Useres Group"?

[1u3hr]

FFS spelling...

Good sign, don't hold your breath.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best thing microsoft could do for itself is to support unix, keeping in mind the market for their other products.

Windows isn't everything, if they're able to get in with the open source crowd they could design components, get everyone hooked and essentially take over the platform. This would take more than a fiscal quarter, which is probably the only reason they haven't already.

Well, thats what I would do if I were the CEO.

Re:Yeah it's odd

[cide1]

Don't be put off by the 666 tattooed on his forehead and the left leg

Yeah, it just means his is readable and writable by himself, his group, and others :).

Its a good thing he's not executable, or this joke would be killing him.

Bullshit...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I unserstand in the real world we are supposed to act all civilized and polite, but I say FUCK THEM, it's too late for MS to play nice. Welcome to the future, enjoy Linux and OSS, and FUCK YOU.

Now excuse me as I go back to finish working, I was using OpenOffice.org (latest beta of v2) and it's wonderfull and I'm carefull to make sure I submit any bugs I find. That's my part.

Re:Bullshit...

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice.org sucks. Use LaTeX.

Re:Bullshit...

[Dogtanian]

I unserstand in the real world we are supposed to act all civilized and polite, but I say FUCK THEM, it's too late for MS to play nice. Welcome to the future, enjoy Linux and OSS, and FUCK YOU.

It's not too late for them to play nice, but they won't.

Here's what will happen; MS will *never* genuinely "play nice" unless it benefits them (although they may briefly try to give that appearance to screw over some naive customers etc.)

MS's mentality is such that even if it were to their benefit to "play nice" starting right now, it would take them years to realise it, and quite a bit longer for the entrenched attitudes in the company to be changed.

And since MS have proven themselves not to be trustworthy, it would require several years of them actually playing nice for everyone else to believe it, and MS to start reaping the benefits.

So don't expect a love-in between MS and anyone else within the next 10 years. If things are going to change, they'll have changed by then.

Anyway, for what it's worth, this guy is a tool of MS whether he realises it or not; if he doesn't, he's merely a "useful idiot". This comment sums it up nicely IMHO.

Chris Green's presentation slides

[Anonymous Coward]

And his presentation has been leaked:

Slide 1: Hi, My name is Chris.
Slide 2: MS SFU has already been end-of-lifed.
Slide 3: Thank you, good night.

http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2005/09/mic rosoft_servi.html

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[Tuross]

You have to understand the Australian IT environment. The only people with any money to spend on *real* IT stuff is federal government and big business. FedGov are a subsidiary of Microsoft - they sold out 6 years ago - and big business, needing to talk with FedGov (public servants are a closed-minded bunch of lazy-arse neanderthals), have gone that way as well.

The Australian Unix & Open Systems Users Group is a bunch of old *BSD people wishing their OS of choice was relevent today, all the while working in Microsoft environments. It doesn't surprise me Microsoft have sent another person to rub their nostalgic egos into staying silent on the real issues, like the complete & utter illegal monopoly Microsoft have that has been destroying the IT industry for almost 2 decades, and how this has gone on unpunished.

Microsoft Spinning Unix Via Slashdot

[RentonSentinel]

Microsoft Spinning Unix Via Slashdot

Proof that slashdot is shilling for the military-industrial complex!

Troll here often?

[roystgnr]

It was basically a stupid little feature thrown in to meet a stupid little government requirement thrown in by some UNIX zealots to try and keep UNIX around.

No, it was a necessary feature thrown in to allow the government to avoid having to throw away all their software once the operating systems they originally developed on were no longer optimal. Games of "catch the moving API" can be fun and profitable for operating system vendors, but they're not so great for third party developers and users. The idea behind having a portable interface was to allow customers to choose different operating systems based on price, features, and performance. Obviously that's not the kind of market that a vendor can siphon tens of billions of dollars of profit from, however - I'm sure Microsoft much prefers the current situation where customers can choose different operating systems based on price, features, performance, and having to rewrite or replace all their unique applications.

Re:Troll here often?

[hkb]

No, it was a necessary feature thrown in to allow the government to avoid having to throw away all their software once the operating systems they originally developed on were no longer optimal. Games of "catch the moving API" can be fun and profitable for operating system vendors, but they're not so great for third party developers and users

1.) That's funny -- when Microsoft does this, it's called "vendor lock-in".
2.) Microsoft is notorious for backwards compatibility in their APIs. Probably a bit too much, actually.
3.) Microsoft's XENIX was still going strong back then.
4.) Microsoft wasn't a 300lbs gorilla back then, they were the IBM underdogs just over their honeymoon period.

The idea behind having a portable interface was to allow customers to choose different operating systems based on price, features, and performance.

s/different operating systems/UNIX/

The POSIX spec is based off of, and therefore highly prejudice towards UNIX. And since there weren't but a few major versions of UNIX, there wasn't really much choice involved. You picked your OS, and then got locked in via server hardware and maintenance contracts.

Obviously that's not the kind of market that a vendor can siphon tens of billions of dollars of profit from, however - I'm sure Microsoft much prefers the current situation where customers can choose different operating systems based on price, features, performance, and having to rewrite or replace all their unique applications.

Microsoft's monopoly appears to be dwindling, either due to the rise of opponents like Linux, or per the natural cycle of life and death.

What API CAN'T you write for on Windows? We have the shitty POSIX subsystem, SFU, cygwin, win32, .net, qt, gtk, xlib, perl, python, php, java, etc etc etc. So where exactly am I locked in, again?

Re:Troll here often?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are APIs unique to Windows, so if you use them, you are locked in, they are unavailable for other OSes, and you are locking in customers, as they can only use MS's OS to run it.

Re:Troll here often?

[justins]

What API CAN'T you write for on Windows? We have the shitty POSIX subsystem, SFU, cygwin, win32, .net, qt, gtk, xlib, perl, python, php, java, etc etc etc. So where exactly am I locked in, again?

Don't forget, unless you've moved up to a 64-bit architecture, you've still got compatibility with win16 and MS-DOS (for the love of God). Early OS/2.

Anyone who claims that Microsoft doesn't do broad, highly backward-compatible API support is just arguing out of ignorance.

Re:Troll here often?

[schon]

That's funny -- when Microsoft does this, it's called "vendor lock-in".

What's funny about it? Are you suggesting that the customer shouldn't be able to set their own specifications?

When the customer does it, it would be called "customer lock-in" - oh, well *that's* funny.

Re:Troll here often?

[wzzrd]

So where exactly am I locked in, again?

'cause you use .doc. That's why. Not because of some API. The main locking-in MS is doing, it does with .doc. And yes, that sucks.

Re:Troll here often?

[Bananas]

What API CAN'T you write for on Windows? We have the shitty POSIX subsystem, SFU, cygwin, win32, .net, qt, gtk, xlib, perl, python, php, java, etc etc etc. So where exactly am I locked in, again?

• Win32 POSIX: Has never worked properly from day one, and never will. Next, please...
• SFU: Should have been named Microsoft STFU for Unix folks. Does a complete assrape of your registry to "bend over backwards" for Unix compliance. This is embarrassing given that there are commercial products that perform similar functions without the degrading treatment given to your already degraded Windows server.
• win32: It's an embarrassment when there were environments like Intuition on the Commodore Amiga that did more work in less lines of code...Intuition was not exactly the pinnacle of GUI achievement but it makes my point about where Win32 programming really stands.
• cygwin: why again are we porting a Unix-style environment to Win32? Isn't Win32 good enough to do real work in? Ya know, you could always just wipe your Windows install and do something like a Linux distro, FreeBSD, etc. Oh wait, that wasn't the point, was it...
• .net: as in Microsoft's patented Systems.Forms .net? Tell me again why the Mono project had to come up with their own replacement for Systems.Forms?
• qt AND gtk: that's some great crack you're smoking there...let me know when they make it non-addictive. (read: I have yet to see developers/vendors banging the doors down to write apps for Qt/GTK, UNLESS they were planning on doing the Win32 version as an afterthought and their primary product as something *nix based)
• perl: a first-rate language in the Unix world, reduced to a 2nd-class citizen in Win32 land. Cry tears for the poor perl programmer stuck in Win32 hell.
• python: don't get me started. I just finished a "portable" python script, using "Official" python interpreters. Tell me why my script doesn't run on Windows, Linux, and OS X without minor changes? Hint: it runs on both Linux and OS X with NO changes.
• php: another first-rate language made into another 2nd-class citizen in Win32 land. In Unix land, there are adequate tools to allow for a fairly painless build and setup. Just how long did it take to get it to compile, install, and wedge into IIS? Are you even using IIS still?
• java: Remember J++? How about MS Java? Lawsuits, anyone? Sure, they settled for millions of dollars, and admitting that their implementation was bork'd on purpose from the beginning...erm...wait...

When you get around to it, it seems people continue to use tools that gear code to Win32 for a reason. It also seems that the reasoning isn't along the lines of "gee, we can code for just about anything on Win32 and make it really feasible for production use". It also seems that there is a dearth of products that are being ported from Win32 to X-Windows, Qt, GTK, or other "non-Microsoft" platforms. Why is that? Market Share? What does Market Share have to do with the abstract concept of "portability"? Could it be that it really does help if you are the biggest monopoly on the block? Does it help when you can throw your weight around and "sway" vendors to do as you say? If you write code for Win32, are you a -- dare I say it and summon the Monkey Boy of Redmond -- a "Developer"? If you're a developer, are you writing software to become a vendor?

Here's a better one:

Why are they breaking about 60% of all existing Win32 software with Vista? Could it be that the platform was such a cluster in terms of design that they simply can't extend the cruft for much longer without the whole thing collapsing in on its own weight?

Now...tell me...just WHY you want to write for Win32 again?

Re:Troll here often?

[Bananas]

DOS? Please demonstrate an int13 call in Windows 2000.

Re:Troll here often?

[Anonymous Coward]

Works fine. w2k runs DOS apps in vm8086 mode, just like NT4 did. w9x ran dos apps in a similar way, but with a radically different implementation (NT series dos boxes look a lot more like dosemu than they do w9x).

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[fatboy]

EOM

Microsoft barred from integrating Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

YIPEE!!!! I made my first post!!!! :-)

Hey Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot ball lickers with mod points! The parent post is spot on. If you didn't have your mouth firmly wrapped around some young street boi's teenaged cock, you would have seen it.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they just underestimate our collective memory. They have to realize that it is just too late to make friends in the Unix world. All the FUD was very destructive, too long.

Just piss off and go home, Microsoft. It's too late.

Trade with them.

[houghi]

their efforts to provide a POSIX environment

We could make it easy for them. They tell us the underlying secrets of NTFS and we tell them the secrets of the POSIX environment.

Sounds like a fair tradeoff and everybody wins. Please till that time, nobody tell the POSIX secrets, as it would undermine our negotiations.

Re:To MS, "integrating" really means "switch to MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as a benchmark, consider that back in the mid-70's there was no shortage of sub-MIPS machines with less than 128kB that could reliably support dozens of running processes and handfuls of interactive users.

16k TRS-80s and others of its ilk were, understandably, not up to multitasking, but they were very useful for single-tasking. Thanks for the handy BASIC, Bill, it was your last useful contribution.

It seemed like a no-brainer to assume that once the machines had faster processors and more memory that proper multi-user, multitasking OSes would become commonplace on them. Boy was I wrong.

---Fast forward---

1983: Here comes the PC-XT with 128k and a 10MB hard drive. We were solidly into PDP-8 territory. Multitasking was doable. The hardware was missing a supervisor mode, but that was a minor obstacle. The new 286 chips had already (mostly) addressed that issue. MS-DOS was the crater in the runway.

1986: 286's were as powerful as a PDP-11. The hardware still lacked a proper supervisor mode, but decent multitasking had reached the desktop. Unfortunately, most people were stuck with DOS. MS was selling Xenix on 286 because the market demanded it, but they had no intention of standing behind it.

1987: MS told the world that the next PC OS would be OS/2. With IBM, they developed a real operating system! They sold Xenix to SCO.

1990: 386's were here with their fully functioning real/protected modes. They were as powerful as a VAX. MS fucked the world by dropping OS/2 and started touting the multitasking abilities of Windows 3.0. Three years late and it was a major disappointment. It could barely manage a background print job, never mind the comms program I wanted it to run.

Dell was selling Unix on boxes identical to our Windows boxes. I could run jobs as multiple users... concurrently. Ahhhhhh! The DOS comms program actually ran better under an emulator (VPix anyone?) than it did on Windows. I hung a half dozen dumb terminals off a 386 and had a multiuser system running apps against a SQL database. This was a real business computer. WinDOS was a toy.

1993: MS released NT. There was no multiuser support, but at least it could multitask (between reboots). Congratulations guys, welcome to 1975. It's too bad that it would still be another seven years before they thought that non-powerusers should be blessed with this innovation. And even then, they floundered. Millenium Edition? Kill it already; it's fucking DOS.

IMO, XP is their first decent standalone OS, but you need to spend big money on it if you plan to have concurrent users. Licensing is a bitch. Security issues abound. Networking is fine, as long as the network is all Windows.

So that's the OS story, as I remember it. They wasted decades trying to rig the market and convince customers that when they release a twenty year old feature, it's an innovation. They're still getting away with it, but the end-game is near. People are moving away from this dinosaur lest they be squished when it falls.

Micrsoft needs true POSIX

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is doing too little too late. Their POSIX implementation is lacking, which has led to a FUD campaign to exploit Red Hat weeknesses by vertically integrating the SCO platform.

IMO the open source community should provide compatibility for NTFS implementations, which would surpass IBM's effort. I really like the MS SUS3 API, but the licensing agreement is too strict to allow for full-scale development.

Re:Should we assume that VISTA is actually ...

[Teresh]

Already been done (well, with a Linux kernel, anyway). It's called ReactOS.

Re:Strange Days / Slashdot ways

[Viper233]

I guess this is a good case for peoples attitudes/beliefs/opinion regarding Microsoft on Slashdot. Yes Slashdotka say microsoft is evil because the they have been so over their enitire history and continue to be. Yes we scrutinize and criticize all of their attempts at innovation to be deemed evil and a tightening on their strangle hold because from their past actions this is the case.
It's like saying the government is doing a great job, has our best intentions in mind and we shouldn't criticize them for the job their doing. Corrupting people by fear, lying and intenionally being decitefull is a bad thing and should be slandered. It seems though if people keep doing and it becomes the status quo that it becomes morally and ethically OK. People become decensitized to lies... and then start believing in them.

Microsoft brings about innovation
The War efforts in Iraq were just

People can be taught anything if they hear it enough

--"I can't spell for shit!" (there, I said it :P)

Re:Should we assume that VISTA is actually ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft can't even support the Open Document file format. And you think their gonna put Windows on top of BSD? sigh.

Huh?

[Mike Savior]

Isn't XP like.. POSIX compliant by a bare minimum? Or some such nonsense?

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[thedcm]

LOL =)

gui interoperability! ssh and X11

[pixel fairy]

remote apps still exist, they are still usefull. including a well done ssh and X11 implementations (preferably based on xfree86 and openssh) would make life soo much easier....

im not talking about full sessions (remote terminal/vnc/nx etc) but apps that blend in with your desktop and those running from other machines. X11 is the already used standard for this.

its like windows is hostile to X11 or something. on a mac (yes, 10.4 on a g4) i can watch a movie in firefox over X11 over ssh and forget its even remote, hell, i can even run blender like that.

but on windows ssh + X11 are hacked on 3rd party kludges...how long will MS pretend ssh doesnt exist? single sign on with ssh and X11 and SMB is like from a windows PDC/KDC only (for you konfused KDE freaks, thats key distribution server, as in kerberos) and still looks like a hack easily ruined by the next upgrade (new to smb, so maybe its my ignorance)

those two would make windows play so much better in a unix network. of course, it would also mean that windows is just playing along, and NOT the needed master so MS would probably not see "value" in it...

Re:gui interoperability! ssh and X11

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm Cygwin/X does that if you configure it properly. Just because you're not able to figure it out yourself doesn't mean it can't be done.

Has borg been mentioned yet?

[caller9]

We will add your technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile. Developers! Developers! Developers!

Re:Should we assume that VISTA is actually ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reactos' Kernel isn't linux. It's a re-implementation of the NT kernel. Wine on a linux kernel is generally just called wine. :)

Money Dictates, Not Fancies

[Anonymous Coward]

A conversation with a friend who just came back from a visit to Redmond...

(21:07:04) him: man
(21:07:06) him: m$ is so nice
(21:07:10) me: yeah?
(21:07:15) him: free food
(21:07:16) him: two hotel keys
(21:07:19) him: queensized bed
(21:07:20) him: internet
(21:07:22) me: two hotel keys?
(21:07:23) him: rental car
(21:07:34) him: $200 worth of food + free dinners
(21:07:40) me: how are you allowed to rent a car, you're not 21??
(21:08:10) him: microsoft
(21:08:11) him: dictates
(21:08:12) him: not
(21:08:13) him: law

Thats like Bush at the UN

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Folks. Next Year, President George Bush will deliver a keynote speech at the UN. And oh, dont get put off by the "US President" tag. Mr. Bush is actually a long time advocate of international cooperation and joint action.

Only if ...

[KwKSilver]

He doees something out of character for a MS employee/spokes-creature. Like tell the truth.

Re:Should we assume that VISTA is actually ...

[AngstAndGuitar]

Feasable and going-to-happen are parsecs apart.
No, I do not think they are going to do this.
Because it's a good idea.

Re:Yeah it's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU Billy G!!

David Korn

[gswallow]

I recall a story I heard from someone years back, when MS spoke at a conference of UNIX geeks. A man stood up and criticized MS's POSIX subsystem for Windows NT 4.0, stating that a feature in Korn shell wasn't compatible with true Korn shell. The conversation went something like this:

UNIX geek: Feature X in your korn shell implementation isn't true to the korn shell spec. Wnen do you plan to fix that?

MS guy: We're certain it's copmatible with the standard. Are you sure you don't have it wrong?

UNIX geek: Yes, I'm sure. It's broken.

MS guy: And who are you?

UNIX geek: I'm David Korn.

May or may not be true, but it was an amusing story, nonetheless.

Re:David Korn

[BlueLightning]

It didn't go quite like that, but the basic story is true. Here it is, from the man himself:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/06/203020 5

Re:David Korn

[10Ghz]

"Due to Korn shell being one of the more popular shells written for the UNIX Operating System, Microsoft decided to include a version of it produced by Mortice Kern Systems in a UNIX integration package for Windows NT. This version was not compatible with ksh88 (a Korn shell specification), and David Korn mentioned this during a question and answer period of a Microsoft presentation during a USENIX NT conference in Seattle in 1997. Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager who was participating in the presentation, not knowing who the commenter was, insisted that Microsoft had indeed chosen a "real" Korn shell. A polite debate ensued, with Sullivan continuing to insist that the man giving the criticisms was mistaken about the compatibility issues. Sullivan only backed down when an audience member stood up and mentioned that the man making the comments was David Korn."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Korn

Yeah, right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this kinda like putting vampires in charge of the blood bank?

Will he show?

[jonoton]

At this years Networkshop (the UKERNA annual conference) one of the keynotes was to be given by a Microsoft employee on 'security'.

The entire lecture hall was packed, it being one of the last sessions.

"And now Mr [name] from Microsoft", the courteous round of applause followed, then "Mr [name]?" (whispers), "Has anyone seen Mr [name]".....

He just didn't show up, no explaination was given....

It wasn't that tough a crowd!

Open Document and encrypted file system

[julie-h]

Don't be fooled to beleive tjat MS want to bridge Unix and Windows!

They fight against Open Document and have jsut encrypted the FS of Vista.

Like Stallman says: Open your document format, then'll talk.

Heh

[thesnarky1]

"...and to integrate Windows and Unix systems." We are the Borg, resistance is futile. You will integrate into the MOAOS (Mother of all Operating Systems). Your designation shall be SH of IT.

Valid and intresting

[timmarhy]

say what you like about MS, but they ARE a key player in the IT world and if they have any plans to try infect, sorry i mean intergrate with POSIX systems it'd be intresting to hear. naturally everything will be taken as a grain of salt. lets be realistic here this guy is only in the position because he has some street cred. but he will still be spouting a marketing deparment written speech.

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[toadlife]

What's the matter the with *BSD?

So what?

[ClearlyPennsylvania]

So what if he works for Microsoft? People are not defined by their jobs. The vast majority of people from Microsoft are good, decent people. They admit that Microsoft has done some shady things in the past and believe that can change, should change, and is changing. Many of them in fact joined Microsoft in part because it's easier to change things from the inside than from the out. Chris Green probably is very much a unix fan. Just because he accepted an offer from Microsoft when he was applying for jobs doesn't suddenly make him anti-unix. In fact, it probably re-affirms his love of unix as he is probably trying to help unix *and* Microsoft. Unix and Microsoft can co-exist, and someone can appreciate unix but work for Microsoft.

Re:So what?

[cpghost]

Unix and Microsoft can co-exist

Xenix?.

Of course they can coexist -- in a technical sense. But can they coexist, when they compete for the same market?

Re:So what?

[ClearlyPennsylvania]

First of all, there are lots of products that coexist within the exact same market with little differentiation (pain killers, mattresses, etc). So even if Microsoft and Unix do directly compete, that doesn't mean they can't coexist. Second, Unix and Microsoft don't compete for the same market. Yeah, they're both OS's but that's like saying that a BMW convertible and a ford pick up trucks are in the same market: both cars, but people who would consider buying one would not consider buying the other. Likewise, unix, windows - and even OS X - each have different primary markets. Unix is great for servers, but you would never recommend it to your grandparents. Mac OS X on the other hand is ideal for the vast majority of people who just want to check their email, surf the internet and write word docs. Windows is ideal for businesses or any one else who might have apps they need to run that may not run on OS X. Unix and Windows are no more competitors than BWM and Ford Pickups are - both in the same larger market, but the customer bases do not significantly overlap.

Re:Should we assume that VISTA is actually ...

[Anonymous Coward]

actually it's the dumbest idea ever.
You seem to be forgetting that it's unix based enviorments that have a problem hitting mainstream not windows.So they are really free to do and code what ever they want.Even if in your eyes it's not as cool and stable as a (useless) unix based desktop OS.
Perhaps unix should copy some of the windows logic instead.Like emmmmmmmmm a centralized configuration database for starters.
bash on

Re:Should we assume that VISTA is actually ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps unix should copy some of the windows logic instead.Like emmmmmmmmm a centralized configuration database for starters.
What are you fucking retarded ? How is that logical? Put *all* the critical system related information into one easily corruptable format that needs to be read to or written from every fucking little stupid program virtually ensuring that it will get corrupted and your fucking system wont boot, of course some where down the line we should create software for system restore points right ? so when we install three applications which suceed, but the fourth totally hoses the system you restore to before the first three which breaks them in interesting ways which breaks the system again and your still totally fucked. Wait ... wait should we also adopt stupid motherboard drivers and assinine copy protection schemes so that if your hardware dies you cant just move the drive to another system and continue on your merry way? Maybe we should take that windows logic a bit further and use a fucking swap file on servers ? thats a great idea no process ever runs away ... Perhaps we should let any two-bit company from taiwan send a blob of binary data that executes in kernel space as the default model for driver distribution ... or wait what about that system notification area perhaps we should encourage asshat 3rd partys to abuse this and then provide tools to "manage" the problem mean while quicktime quick launcher and realplayer and whatever the fuck else consumes half the systems memory? Perhpas we should use genetic algorithms to create totally inefficient and retarted swapping algorithms ...
Do you have anymore suggestions on how we can improve UNIX and Linux, we are all dying to here its what 2005 and you have the equilvalent of IRIX or Solaris from 1995 glad to see your catching up.

MS' own docs

[Anonymous Coward]

Physically ill ?
When my boss (a coder, thankfully) told me MS did support POSIX, I was pleasantly (kind of) surprised, then he told me it did have some bad restruictions, and directed me to a page. I couldn't help but reply to him with some not very flattering words directed at MS.
The page ?
Brace yourself.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;149902
Still makes me want to find an MS manager and puke on him/her.
Bastards.

Way to prove if Matt's talk is bullshit or not

[Nailer]

There's a pretty good chance he will discuss using Services for Unix to get name service from to Active Directory.

Great. But what about authentication? He has two options:

* Use LDAP authentication. This is not what Windows does, as it loses all the single sign on benefits of Kerberos (with LDAP, your initial login will not give you a credential you can use to check your mail, authenticate and map to an NFS export, pull stuff out of SVN, etc, with Kerberos it will). If Matt uses LDAP he's showing you how to do a half assed job of being an Active Directory client.

* Use Kerberos authentication. This involves using MIT Kerberos 1.3 (or backports to older versions like Red Hat offer for their older RHEL releases), that's been created after 5 years of engineering following Microsoft's implementation of proposed (ie, non) standard Kerberos extensions like Kerberos over TCP, and Microsoft specific encryption types. If Matt uses Kerberos for authentication, using MIT Kerberos, he's showing you how to be a proper AD client, and get single sign on, despite Microsoft.

* If he uses it as a sales pitch to push some other AD client, he's proving that Microsoft clearly care more about money (licensing documentation for proprietary protocols) than interoperability.

Why not ask a Unix vendor to give this talk? Red Hat, or Novell, or Sun can all provide ways to interoperate with Windows, in most cases using Open Source tools, without the Microsoft agenda.

Matt, if you're reading this, my email is mmaccanaATredhat.com. I am not speaking for my employer in this post.

RE: Microsoft Rep To Keynote Unix Conference

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK MICROSOFT and the horse they rode in on!

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[Anonymous Coward]

What's even more interesting is that Mono's user group or something were not allowed to participate in Microsoft's .NET conference thingy majigar a couple of months back or so...

3:59am, no coffee...

why

[suezz]

Microsoft lies through their teeth whenever they talk about adhering to any standard. When will the world wake and realize they are sham and just want their crap software everywhere - no matter who it hurts.

I hope no one attends and maybe then they will quit getting these microsoft employees spilling their lines at these unix events.

A Mark Of The Beast

[Maljin Jolt]

'Don't be put off by Chris' Microsoft badge -- he is actually a long time Unix hacker,'

May we consider he became a traitor, please?

What its all about

[MagicMerlin]

Microsoft is finally going to be POSIX compliant. This means it will be eaiser to port unix apps to the MS platform. This is a good thing guys, and heres why:

When you are considering deploying Linux in your business, you first need to make sure your entire toolchain is platform independent. You move all your stuff to open source apps which historically have spotty support on windows, and then just swap out the o/s. Better POSIX support means this proces is eaiser (it also means more options for win32 admins as well, so it's good all around).

Merlin

Re:Yeah it's odd

[HaydnH]

Don't be put off by the 666 tattooed on his forehead and the left leg

Yeah, it just means his is readable and writable by himself, his group, and others :).

Its a good thing he's not executable, or this joke would be killing him.

That's not a tattoo on his left leg... it's the sticky bit

Transparency Rulez

[4of12]

Free software is inherently better than proprietary software because...

it is transparent. You forgot to say transparency.

When you look at free software you can see all the way through it and not just some shiny surface. That way you're better able to judge whether the software will serve your needs both now and in the future. Closed-source, proprietary software is buying a pig in a poke.

BTW, transparency is also a really great idea in scientific publishing, accounting (especially in publicly traded companies like Enron) and in government (+FOIA;-a lot of recent action).

Re:Transparency Rulez

[Americano]

You're right in one regard -- transparency is a great idea. But honestly... have you read through the source code of every piece of "free" software you've ever used, just to make the judgement of whether or not it'll serve your needs now & in the future? Who has the time for it? Yes, you can do it... but no, most people aren't likely to do it.

I don't want to have to be an expert in video codecs & dvd formats to decide whether I want to use Totem, MPlayer, Helix, or something else on my Fedora system. The average user (and the average *technical* user as well) is just as likely, if not more likely, to decide what software to use based on word of mouth, or by throwing all three packages at their system and seeing what works. When I found that Totem wouldn't play some formats of video properly on my system, I tried the same videos in MPlayer, and found they worked perfectly... so now MPlayer is my choice. Do I know if it'll continue to suit my needs in the future? Hell no. But it works now, and I see what I want to see, when I want to see it... yes, it's a trivial example... but do you think that anybody (aside from the person whose full time job it is) really has time to read every single line of the Linux kernel to see what they're getting?

Theories are great... but if those theories are never (or almost never) put into practice, how has the status quo changed? You still have a vast set of users choosing software based on marketing and word of mouth...

Irony of ironies

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anybody notice that Microsoft's main nemesis Eolas is one of the sponsors of this conference? I wonder if the Microsoft guy even knows that.

Ha! I knew it

[shigami]

Windoze Vista will be running a linux kernel, no wonder why window's is so operable with unix

BTW

[Anonymous Coward]

When Services For UNIX first came out it was not free and for many years was a $120.00 addon. It wasn't but a few years ago that it became free. Up until version 3.0 SFU was broken and full of holes. Even now it does have its problems with files permissions and authincation. If you take a good look at the code you will see that it is built from BSD parts.

Yes NT has always had POSIX compliance in a very small and broken way. The orginal poster is right it was just there to meet goverment standards and was just a "on paper" service.

Re: Microsoft Rep To Keynote Unix Conference

[chawly]

You didn't notice ?! It was a llama (and they were sitting on it backwards). As for fucking them - well I, for one, welcome our new "fucking" overlords - and I'm ready to let them get on with it. Anyone that needs it can have my turn.

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[Locutus]

Not sure if Krusty would be so willing to even let THEM drive a dumptruck near him if he'd been shot at BY THEM, pulled under water a few times BY THEM, had is house burned and family taken hostage, BY THEM. But I suppose if one were standing next to Krusty during all these attacks, one might consider accepting that dumptruck full of cash...

Now Scratchy seems to be THAT stupid, but Krusty?

So this might explain why a person( Chris Green ) would sell out, but organizers of a *nix conference? Are they secretly hoping to become another MS Windows conference? Or I guess they could have the "Miguel de Icaza complex".

LoB

Re:doesn't matter what he DID before, he works for

[Tuross]

It's a mindset thing. Most people (yes, I recognise that's a generalisation) coming from that camp are adverse to change. You can't run any software in production that hasn't already been running in production for 15 years, that sort of thing. Having lost marketshare first to Linux and then to Windows, they are defeatist, and basically go to these conferences out of a sense of "meetings, the practical alternative to work" rather than in the hope of learning something, getting new contacts, an opportunity to think about things in a different way, etc.
That's not a very good explanation, but it's all you're going to get :-P