Slashdot Mirror
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 remember it was withdrawn from Vista, but was supposed to be packaged with SQL Server instead?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....
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.
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"
Read carefully. 3600 units of SBS went out. None went to end users. They were still in the process of building systems around it.
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.
Yeah, as he already said, it basically said that in the part you left out:
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
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
sounds like no end user organizations are using it yet' - dreamchaser
i ndows.server.active_directory/msg/f797472b226c029d ?dmode=source&hl=en
No it doesn't actually say *no* end users it says *most* and most does not equate to all. You should realize that most PR statements don't actually mean what the words mean.
"it basically said that in the part you left out:" - kjart
"None went to end users" - dreamchaser
The actual words are:
"Most of Microsoft's voluminous partner base did not have copies of SBS 2003 R2 in hand yet"
In other words some of Microsoft's voluminous partner base did have it. And seeing its a PR statement out of Redmond we can assume the reality is a lot more than a few got copies got out.
This fella seems to think he bought a new server that has the R2 edition on it.
http://snipurl.com/v9i1
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.w
No one has still replied to my request for an explanation of what non-final core components mean. Is this the same as bugs?
davecb5620@gmail.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?
It's the year of our Lord 2006... Not 2003.
Deleted
> No one has still replied to my request for an explanation of >what non-final core components mean. Is this the same as bugs? Just a guess, but I would suspect that somewhere in the process of going from RC candidate to RTM somebody screwed up so that the final version passed by QA and the version that went to manufacturing were not the same. So probably means that it's a few builds short of what should have gone to manufacturing and reflects the product at a very late stage in the release process.
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 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
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.