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Microsoft Recalls Small Business Server
dasButcher writes to tell us VarBusiness is reporting that hot on the heels of many other delays, Microsoft has recalled their Small Business Server 2003 R2. The operating system started shipping to OEMs, distributors, and systems builders in July but was immediately recalled after a recent audit.
I mean, it's only software, how dangerous could it have been?
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
The article cites 'non-final code' that was found in the audit. At least they found the error before it went out to the public. It's a bit slim on details but it sounds like no end user organizations are using it yet. So, in a way kudos to MS for finding the problem and addressing it rather than just sitting on their hands and making users download even more patches to replace the 'non-final' code.
For those of us who can't be bothered to RTFA:
"This routine check of the initial software on the manufacturing line found that it contained portions of code deemed "non-final," according to Microsoft... Microsoft plans to swap in the 'final' code, then reissue Small Business Server 2003 R2 to its manufacturing partners,"
Argh.
Non-final, they say? Was it working properly, then?
Looks like WinFS got released as part of Small Biz Server... remember it was withdrawn from Vista, but was supposed to be packaged with SQL Server instead? My guess is that Small Biz Server will not have WinFS... customers will have to buy the separate SQL Servr most probably...
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
They apparently just forgot to update bits of code with the 'final' bits. They aren't removing any features and I highly doubt WinFS was included in the build.
New way of shipping on time?
1. Ship your non-ready product on the stipulated date.
2. Tell your customers your product has not met your enormously high quality standards *giggles violently*.
3. Use the time gained to make the product ready for shipping.
4. If its not ready in time see # 1.
HTTP/1.1 400
Slightly off-topic, but SBS is the reason I changed my job. I leave this place at the end of the month, thank god. I support several companies, 10 of which are using SBS. It has to be the best way of putting all of a company's eggs in one basket. It goes against everything that makes good sense about creating an available, stable network with some redundancy. If you go for the Premium edition and install everything, you'll find yourself running: - Exchange - SQL Server - ISA Server - IIS - File/Print services - DNS - DHCP - WINS All on the same box which is ALSO a domain controller for your network. If that box fails (some of our clients are cheap enough to have declined a RAID solution, against better advice), then that's it... the whole place is down the toilet until the box is rebuilt, and you'd better pray that the backups are good. It's a horrible, horrible way of running things, IMHO. I'll be glad to not have to support these boxes any more.
Are 'non-final core components' the same thing as buggy software?
rs232's Recent Submissions - Title - Datestamp
non-final core components - Thursday August 17, @07:45PM Rejected
davecb5620@gmail.com
'At least they found the error before it went out to the public .. sounds like no end user organizations are using it yet'
.. in July .. the estimated 3,600 units that had gone out the door so far"
"The operating system actually had begun shipping to manufacturing partners
was: Re:At least they caught it
davecb5620@gmail.com
I've recently been butting heads with SBS. Put in a samba server and a terminal server for a client to expand their business and bring some sanity to their IT setup. Their existing database app is hosted on a machine running Windows 2000 SBS, and I'm not allowed to move it. The server can't join their new domain - it's not even allowed to be part of a domain trust. The whole situation is hideous. I want to meet the person who recommended it and smack them round the face with the installation media.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
See, another reason to move to open-source solutions because you never get... oh, wait...
To hell with your case fans. Software can kill, ask anyone who lost a loved one to Therac-25.
Is this another recall, or is Slashdot about three weeks behind in the news?
D efective-Windows-Small-Business-Server-2003-R2-Pro duct-31365.shtml
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Recalls-
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
no wonder why the server never worked. it was still in beta. i wonder what will happen to vista now?
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
My GPL violation sensor is twitching. If anyone can get a hold of it, check the symbol tables and strings in those binaries! Now THAT would be a story.
All code is ALWAYS non-final, or there would be no such thing as a release candidate, patch, service pack, or bug.
I know it wasn't sent to any actual customers, but...
One can imagine, if given any serious fault or bug, Microsoft would be obligated to recall copies of their OS. Given that nowdays the OS is a crucial component for several business, can the justice force Microsoft to do it?
After all, if they sell a defective product, that can cause severe harm to its consumers... I guess it's Microsof responsability to fix the damage. I don't know about the USA, but here at Brazil the EULA means nothing, since it can't deny any rights given to the consumer by the constitution or by federal laws.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
You've misread this. It's not that they are recalling business server 2003 from the market, rather, they are recalling the good old days of Business Server 2003 and other products they use to finish. Those were the days, weren't they? Back when Microsoft didn't care about security and thus were able to complete products and put them on the market, even if they usually resulted in security breaches, data loss, privacy invasion, etc, for anyone who installed them. Now that they are security focused they are unable to finish and release anything at all. They can't help but look back with misty eyes at what was a simpler time for Microsoft.
--- What?
Really, what kind of bullshit is this? If it was a routine check, this would have have been trapped before delivery, no?
Pure bullshit and spindoctoring.
ilovegeorgebush
TigerPaw: 5. Profit!
Don't be silly - Microsoft always put profit first!
Boom-boom! Thank-you, I'll be here all week, please try the fish...
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
MS is big, *slow* and competing against people who can give their products away for free. My question is where are all the sharks taking advantage of this?
Deleted
Does anyone else remember when Sinclair advertised their 4MHz Z-80 A5-sized ZX81 as "Powerful enough to run a nuclear power station"...? I wonder if anyone took them up on that?
Whew! Good thing slashdot is working hard to remove head counts and labour costs in IT departments everywere.
"DOS isn't done until Lotus 1-2-3 won't run!"
You mean to tell me that what I just downloaded on Usenet Friday is broken? It appears to be working fine enough for testing purposes...
Spending Resources on Defense leaves Less to defend.
It's the year of our Lord 2006... Not 2003.
Deleted
i Said N/T dammit!
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. The domain to which I refer is the new samba controlled domain that I put in for them, to move core components critical to the integrity of their network off the machine running their slightly flakey, Progress based, vendor app, which has one PIII processor and no RAID, to a newer, dual core machine with RAID. The SBS machine hosting the progress DB (and some associated file shares) cannot be a member, or have a trust with, this new domain.
One of my primary problems with SBS is that most businesses end up running extra services off that machine, for example Invu (a document management system) or a vendor provided DB, which by rights should never be put on a domain controller.
The number companies that can actually live within the tight restrictions on the use of SBS are small, and getting ever smaller the more that businesses learn to rely on IT, and the systems required by these businesses get ever more complex.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Copy-pastingkarma-whoring troll.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft's profitability has little to do with its monopoly and more to do with the fact that Microsoft, virtually alone of all software vendors has created the means to insure that they get reliably paid for their software. Microsoft's trick is to make large institutions purchase their software and to aggressively make sure that the institutions pay. CPU manufactures pay for the OS and companies, schools and the government pay for Office. Suing millions of consumers for "piracy" is a major task but suing a CPU manufacture is easy. Microsoft gets a far higher rate of return for every dollar it spends on its products than does any other software vendor. It is this ability to get paid at far higher rates than others that lets Microsoft maintain it monopoly in the first place.
Those Exxon/BP/Shell/Total guys have not released a new product in 50 years but still haul in record profits.
Lets not forget farmers. How long has it been since they came up with a truly new food crop? There is nothing wrong or even undesirable about companies reliably and efficiently providing needed products year after year like clockwork and making a good return doing so. Everyone bitches when oil companies get a boom time but no one feels any sympathy when they go through a bust.
A lot of software, Microsoft, BSD, GPL, are all sold and used "as is". That is if it malfunctions, corrupts data, destroys the machine, causes cancer, or whatever, it isn't the author's fault. The author is not under any obligation to recoop costs of the damage or even fix the software. It is a pretty standard thing even for those that offer "high reliability/recovery".
This has been something I've tried to point out quite a bit: If Microsoft claims the same level of "It is not my problem" then why is their closed solution so much better? It isn't like you are going to get your money back from anyone if your machine dies from installed software.
...I recall SBS as having been bloated and a total POS. Is that what the article is referring to?
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Occams razor and all that.
awsome
"non-final" code? When has Microsoft (or any software vendor, for that matter) ever released "final" code. Sounds like some meaningless measurement dreamed up by an auditor who wouln't know C++ from Chaucer. Those poor MS programmers are probably forced to click some web link that ties into their source code control system that marks code as "final", and they probably all do it and it's pretty useless except to waste everyone's time. Why don't they just issue a patch like they do for everything else?
That is precisely the point, commercially.
If I had the points you'd get them.
Rather than playing catch-up in the desktop space, the real money to be made is in the support of (fl)oss server systems. The customers who are the market don't know what's in the box anyway, they just want something that works. Nascent support companies are springing up all over the place to deliver this, and it's just going to accelerate. Go Team!!!
WinFS was never supposed to ship with SQL Server. What they said was that the experience and parts of the innovations developed as part of WinFS would be used to add certain features to SQL Server. What it boiled down to is the old "sure we spent 15 years on this, but even if there won't be a product, at least we learnt something from it."
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
They recalled it on July 28... For /. I am surprised we took this long to find an oportunity to slam Microsnot.
I don't need or want points. It's enough to know that I'm not completely surrounded by 14 year olds and perpetual students with zero real world experience.
they probably forgot to put the bugs in
And $200 per user after that...
w tobuy/pricing.mspx
See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/ho
And on the prevelance of MS Access - that prevelance is from home-grown database applications, not so much 3rd party vendors who can include MSDE with their products at almost no cost (with a Dev software license). If you're going to hack together your own Access database, it doesn't really matter what you use for a file server. With a little practice, any decent Access db programmer could build the same thing in MySQL (and get a free db server in the deal, if you want) or OpenOffice Base.
The first issue went out with the defect documented in KB835734, for which a critical fix should have went out immediately!
But nothing was done except providing a nearly nonvisible update, and this issue has caused nearly untamable mailstorms damaging customer reputation, ringing up traffic bills, and causing lots of grief. At least they demonstrated that not everyone can write a fetchmail clone.
The typical customer for this package has no means at all to point out what was happening, and the system integrators usually only come by to look maybe the next day or so.
(when they tried remote access over the same internet connection, it would be stuffed with traffic)
At least now they recall it before it is too late.
I try too hard.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
They forgot to install SP1 before installing additional software.
"Then lick my balls."
Yeah right. They're probably not even your balls.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
It would be interesting to see what changes in the new version by binary-comparing all the files. Having a recall instead of a day-one patch sounds like it's something interesting. =)
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
2. NEVER expose your AD to the outside world. If it is all on one box then your doing this.
3. NEVER directly expose your DB server to the outside world. Again if it is a all on one wonder you are doing this.
There really is a good reason for layered security and SBS breaks all those rules.
Come on and tell the truth. You expect me to believe that you maintain 30 - 35 server all running Exchange and you don't have problems? Dude I've maintained TOO many exchange servers to believe that one.
A good approach if they are that small and that broke is a good GPL firewall like a Smoothie on an old PC for a firewall. A Windows 2003 server (if you really got to have it) and hosting your mail with you IPS provider or some other outsourced mail provider. Like a lot of folks have pointed out when the SBS server dies your whole business stops! email, file sharing EVERYTHING! So number four is:
4. GrandPa said don't put all your eggs in one basket.
So if you are into do things right or don't do them at all. Then the above it the right thing and the SBS approach is totally wrong ask anyone that knows anything about network security. It looks good on paper especially with some glossy marketing material but you are setting yourself up for a fall.