Every Vista Computer Gets Its Own Domain Name

c_forq writes, "According to APC magazine, every new Windows Vista computer will be given its own domain name to access files remotely. There is a catch though: to use it one must be using IPv6. Is the push for Vista also going to be the push finally to switch everything from IPv4 to IPv6?" Microsoft, meanwhile, is trying to convince businesses to adopt both Vista and Office 2007 at once. An analyst is quoted: 'In all likelihood, enterprises will tie deployment of both Vista and Office 2007 with a hardware upgrade cycle.' His reasoning is that it will be easier for companies to handle one disruption to IT systems than two. Or three.

Comments

IPv6 adoption.

[caluml]

Anything that gets IPv6 in use.
When is Slashdot going to drag itself into the 21st century, out of interest? It's not that hard. And you can use a tunnel broker if your ISP don't supply native v6.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[garcia]

When is Slashdot going to drag itself into the 21st century, out of interest? It's not that hard. And you can use a tunnel broker if your ISP don't supply native v6.

Mmm, using IPv6 via a broker to read Slashdot which will be linking to hosts on IPv4 anyway. Nothing like waiting even longer than normal (300+ ms ping times) to realize that a page is Slashdotted.

I used IPv6 years ago to do the only thing it was useful for: make vanity hostnames on IRC. Other than that there was absolutely no reason to use IPv6.

Currently, I still don't see any reason to switch either. Like Slashdot will make a huge difference?

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[caluml]

"Name one practical, real world use, that isnt solved by natting."

I suppose your definition of "practical, real world use" is quite limited. But it's late, and I can't be bothered to explain.

You really want to start having to remember 8 groups of four hexidecimal digits just because "it da futar!"?
No. There's this new fangled thing recently been making itself known on the internet called DNS. Check it out sometime. Plus, once you're used to your network prefix (2001:141:3*), it's up to you how you manage the addressing within it. E.g. 2001:141:3::1 for your router, 2001:141:3::254 for your switch, or whatever you like. At work, I just map the 192.168.x.y to 2001:414:3:x::y, and it's easy to remember. IPv6 addresses **can**be shorter than the IPv4 equivalents too. 127.0.0.1 > ::1.

*This isn't my prefix.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[welsh git]

NAT is shit, IPv6 means we can get rid of it once and for all

Whilst I agree about the problems NAT has caused, that's a rather glib statement. It has helped get people out of a hole, and the many home-routers these days with natd have helped insulate PCs from the net for newbies, which can only be a good thing.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[welsh git]

With a NAT box in the standard 'home' configuration, where the local network uses private-ip address space, NATed to the single, common IP address, there *is* effective packet filtering (incoming, at least) - whether it's by design or consequence is not relevent!

Also, unlike a firewall, some viruses and things which may need to determine their 'public' IP address will find the situation harder behind a nat.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the sentiments here, and personally have been using IPv6 on all my servers, and all my home machines for many years, and have been involved in big networking projects for many more.. Yes, NAT can be a pain in the butt, but it HAS helped keep Joe Public a little bit more secure!

Cheers

Upgrade cycles

[fohat]

I don't think it is all that wise to upgrade both an OS and a full Office suite at the same time. It's really best to roll out one thing at a time, and make sure it all works. The UI changes alone are going to freak users out. I know of places that are just now rolling out XP, and they are doing it one section at a time. The more testing you do, the safer you are.

Who knew?

[zptao]

Vista will actually be useful... 1) Fueling hardware upgrades 2) Encouraging, on a huge scale, migration to IPv6 3) Fixing a great deal of the holes in WinXP 4) Allowing hardware changes without requiring new installations of Vista 5) etc...

We're not ready for IPv6 yet.

[khasim]

Most of the spam blocking systems depend upon IP addresses.

With IPv6, there are (effectively) an unlimited number of IP addresses available for spammers. "Effectively" because no one is going to run a database big enough to track them as fast as the spammers change them. Every message could come from its own IP address on a cracked system.

And the other article ... no way is it easier to upgrade the hardware, the OS and the apps at the same time. You'll waste too much time trying to find out if the problem is a bad motherboard or driver or ... anything.

Re:We're not ready for IPv6 yet.

[Midnight Thunder]

Most of the spam blocking systems depend upon IP addresses.

Sounds like a good a time as any to update their systems. Quite honestly I would these system get updated before IPv6 starts to get widely used, rather than after.

Why upgrade?

[Carrot007]

Please try to convince my company to upgrade!

Every day I use such great microsoft products as NT 4, Office 97 (with outlook upgraded with the free 98 (about a year ago, OL 97 before that), IE 5.5, or is it 5.0? I forget.

Simple truth is most companies have no reason to upgrade. It aint gonna make them more money.

Sales guy's wet dream

[chill]

Vista and Office at the same time? Someone in the sales dept. is smoking crack and dreaming of an annual bonus. Hell, why not upgrade all the servers to 2003, Exchange, etc.!

How about changing one thing at a time and seeing how it works, first?

Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista

[jonadab]

> Yeah, I heard those Linux media players suck, too.

Yeah, they suck, because all they do mostly is just play your music and stuff. They don't have all those totally cool features the popular commerical media players have, like connecting the web to look for plugins and updates, nagging you every time you play anything that you need to buy another related product (*cough* Real *cough*), and filling up your screen with stupid "visualizations" of your music. (Okay, so xmms does have the stupid visualizations, although by default it's just an oscilloscope-like thing, nowhere near so annoying as that nonsense Windows Media Player shows you. I'm sure there must be a way to turn the visualizations off altogether. Maybe someday I'll find it.) I mean, if you don't use Windows, then you're really missing out on all those *extra* features that a media player could have, besides just playing media.

But we're getting pretty far off track. The reason businesses don't care about DRM in the operating system is because they have other things to worry about than philosophical issues about user rights. Frankly they're more interested in whether they can lock down the user's desktop to have only the shortcuts they want than they are in whether the user can shift music from one computer to another. What they really want to know is more along the lines of, "Can we buy this product from our regular vendor, does it come with a support contract, and what has my boss read about it in his management magazines?"

Added Value

[The Raven]

Honestly, this seems like a perfectly valid move to me. The proper way to combat piracy is to add value for legitimate purchasers via services... services are a dozen times harder to 'steal' than just bits. A MS operated DNS (even if it is ipv6 only) is a perfectly reasonable service to convince the medium-skill techies (who can format a machine, but not setup a DNS service) to buy rather than copy. These mid-level windows users are the most common casual copiers of the MS OS... they know enough to copy Windows and install a machine, but not enough to delve into Linux.

So, all in all, I think this is a move in the right direction. Added value to the legit buyers, rather than bullshit like 'Genuine Advantage' that only benefits MS.