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

I have been waiting this...

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes my botnet administration much easier.

Re:I have been waiting this...

[Barryke]

I've heard this being said in a movie once .. Hmmm director or title anyone?

Both at the same time, eh?

[DaveM753]

> "it will be easier for companies to handle one disruption to its IT systems than two. Or three."

I couldn't agree more: switch to BOTH Linux and OpenOffice.org 2.0 at the same time.

Re:Both at the same time, eh?

[DragonWriter]

Except then, when they decide they don't like OOo (just because it is unfamiliar), they'll decide that it is Linux's fault. So, they should switch to Linux but keep using MS office.

From the screenshots I've seen of Office 2007, OOo 2.0 will probably be more immediately familiar to most Office 2003 (and previous) users than Office 2007.

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.

[cortana]

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

This should really be a Frequently Answered Question, it comes up every time a story about IPv6 is posted. :)

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.

[93 Escort Wagon]

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

Sounds like you couldn't think of anything...

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[binford2k]

Don't spout about something you know nothing of. NAT is a terrible (although very clever) hack that completely breaks the idea of a layered network stack. It doesn't "solve" anything.

Go read the RFCs.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[Arthur B.]

- Using peer to peer communication (audio, video) without actually having to try and get around the NAT with clever tricks
- Running a server
- Faster and easier file transfers between you and your friends
- Easier to play games
- You can run a shell or a VNC and access it easily from outside
- IPsec included in the protocol, easy secure communications over any medium (wifi... )

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.

[dissy]

Sorry, whats wrong with IPv4 and what problems that I have will be fixed with IPv6? You really want to start having to remember 8 groups of four hexidecimal digits just because "it da futar!"?
Name one practical, real world use, that isnt solved by natting.

The thing wrong with IPv4 is that it is expensive if not impossible to get a large block of IP addresses, one for each machine you desire you connect to the internet.

Now, maybe you only have one machine yourself, but that in itself proves your lack of qualification to give input on this subject. It is also not the target crowd for slashdot.

If you have 50 systems and want them all on the internet, NAT does not allow you to do that. It really only allows 1. The point is sometimes 1 isnt enough, and you need more systems on the net at the same time. So NAT has to be ruled out.

Even if you want to attempt to claim port forwarding works with NAT to fake it, you fortunatly provided my argument that it doesnt.
If you have 200 web servers, port forwarded from one IP, you yourself say you would hate to remember all those ports and which machine they go to, by your complaint at remembering IP addresses in IPv6.

Fortunatly the rest of us use DNS, which lets us not have to remember IPs. DNS doesn't much help with port mappings like you prefer to use.

The point is, your usage of the internet is very very limited, and atypical of the people here on slashdot.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[jandrese]

How about anything that requires two boxes to directly connect to each other over randomly chosen ports? Like, say, Netmeeting?

It's also a pain in the rear for FTP and a shed load of other protocols, especially games. In recent years people have designed their applications to work around NAT, but that's not to say they couldn't be more efficient and work better without having to deal with it.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[cortana]

BTW, Internet users in asian and third-world countries already have to suffer through 4-5 layers of NAT. But I guess end-to-end connectivity isn't important for non-first-worlders?

I'll also take this opportunity to plug The Digital Imprimatur again:

Over time, this equality among Internet users has eroded, in large part due to technical workarounds to cope with the limited 32-bit address space of the present day Internet... With the advent of broadband DSL and cable television Internet connections, a segmentation of the Internet community is coming into being...

The typical home user never notices NAT; it just works. But that user is no longer a peer of all other Internet users as the original architecture of the network intended. In particular, the home user behind a NAT box has been relegated to the role of a consumer of Internet services. Such a user cannot create a Web site on their broadband connection, since the NAT box will not permit inbound connections from external sites. Nor can the user set up true peer to peer connections with other users behind NAT boxes, as there's an insuperable chicken and egg problem creating a bidirectional connection between them.

Sites with persistent, unrestricted Internet connections now constitute a privileged class, able to use the Internet in ways a consumer site cannot. They can set up servers, create new kinds of Internet services, establish peer to peer connections with other sites--employ the Internet in all of the ways it was originally intended to be used. We might term these sites "publishers" or "broadcasters", with the NATted/firewalled home users their consumers or audience.

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

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[Ambush Commander]

But then none of the other machines would get any ports!

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[TCM]

In SUSE (and perhaps other distro's as well) surfing is extremely slow, untill you turn off IPv6.

I suppose "surfing is extremely slow" is really meaning "DNS lookups take very long" or something like that. Or is your throughput really lower?

Strange that the BSDs doesn't have those ridiculous problems. If you aren't connected via IPv6, there should be no default route for IPv6 and applications ought to fall back to IPv4 immediately.

Check with netstat -rn whether that's the case or not. If there is no default route for IPv6 and you still get delays, there's something else amiss. But it's not the fault of IPv6. Go blame Linux amateurs maybe.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[rcw-home]

But if you NEED to cook your food, and elephant shit is all you've got to do it, then maybe you won't mind it so much.

"Here. Here's electricity and an electric range."

"I can't switch to that! Elephant shit COOKS MY FOOD!"

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[Lehk228]

being able to drop certain packets is not the same as being totally unable to deliver certain packets without specific instructions from the user how to do so. the difference between tricking a router into thinking your malicious packet is actually good and doing the same thing, plus sending that packet to a machine that isn't routable from the internet is quite a large difference.

in particular one pretty much requires that you be able to execute malicious code on the router while the other only requires that you make bad packets look legit.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[welsh git]

That's a flawed argument. Getting rid of NAT changes absolutely nothing security-wise for Joe Public, while making many other things easier or even possible in the first place.

Those 2 comments contradict themselves. How can it make things SOO much harder for legitimate things, but not make it any harder for illicit things?

What are you arguing here? There's no gain or loss in security, whether viruses know the public address or not.

Off the top of my head, if something installs a trojan, the hacker needs to know what IP to connect to - that information could be slotted into an innocent looking email, sent via the isp. With Nat, the trojan has no choice but to open a direct connection to somewhere so the ip can be logged - far more likely to be spotted by local firewall security on the pc.

There should be some law where anyone defending NAT in a discussion loses by default. It's sickening to read this crap over and over again.

NAT is a PITA with no gain in security. That perceived security comes from packet filters which don't need NAT or have anything to do with it.

I'm not a NAT lover, I dislike NAT, but I do stand by my original statements, that in the broader scheme of things, it has helped secure joe public more than if he didn't have it.

You seem so blind in your anti-nat passion, you can't see the wood for the trees. - I guess that is why you also deliberately misread my 'defending' of nat in the first place...

There should be some law where anyone blindly holding some view like a religious zealot loses by default, but I guess that would ruin Slashdot, no ?

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[Bert64]

It's probably defaulting to IPv6 and therefore trying to do AAAA (ipv6 address) DNS lookups first (which fail) and then doing normal A (ipv4 address) lookups afterwards. Depending on the dns servers in use, and how they respond to AAAA requests (return an error quickly, ignore the request so it has to time out etc) this could make browsing a LOT slower.

Re:IPv6 adoption.

[jotok]

Can you be a bit more explicit? In my limited experience I don't understand how IPv6 is going to make things less complicated for me.

For example, I just set up a small business network for a friend. His 12 or so hosts get private IPs from the DHCP server, but we only leased one public IP from Comcast. In an IPv6 scheme, would I just end up getting several IPs from the ISP? And are they going to charge me more? In the end, it just seems easier to manage non-publicly-routable address space, but like I said I'm not too experienced. Shed some light please?

Office2007

[ElephanTS]

I've heard you can type much faster in Word2007. If that's not a reason to upgrade I don't know what is.

Re:Office2007

[Eberlin]

Liu kang ripe vedder width thee boys re-cog nation soft where ink clue dead width Vista!!!

Re:Office2007

[Larry Lightbulb]

But the reader needs to upgrade as well, otherwise there won't be any speed gained.

Re:Office2007

[PCM2]

I've heard you can type much faster in Word2007. If that's not a reason to upgrade I don't know what is.

Heh! From time to time I relate this story, and someday I hope somebody can produce an original copy of the ad, but...

In a very early issue of PC Magazine -- or PC World, or one of the others -- circa 1984, I saw an ad for this amazing new word processing program, called WordPerfect. The selling point of the program was that it, unlike other word processors of the time, was able to keep up with a 90wpm typist. Apparently the other word processors of the day couldn't keep pace with that speed. As people who've been around a while know, WordPerfect gained a strong foothold in law offices that persists to some degree to this day. I don't doubt that the emphasis on touch typing had something to do with that.

Naysayers, post here

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Anyone who wants to post comments claiming that IPv6 is never going to be deployed, please do so in this thread.

domain names

[daeg]

Future domain names attached to Microsoft's name

microsoft-eats-children.share.live.com
nochildpornhere.share.live.com
microsoftupdate.com.share.live.com
update.paypal.com.share.live.com
freexxxdonkiesandmidgetsgonewild.share.live.com

Re:domain names

[ShaunC]

I say we just have ICANN create a new TLD, .bot, for all Windows machines...

Re:domain names

[sharkey]

Why, is .POS taken?

Re:domain names

[ettlz]

You forgot sonnyand.share.live.com, wiveswholiketo.share.live.com and, of course, goat.cx.share.live.com.

Re:domain names

[DA-MAN]

Why, is .POS taken?

Yep, that belongs to the Gnome group . . .

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.

[zptao]

The benefits outweigh the risks. In every great change, there will always be downsides and dissenters. It's an inevitable outcome of progress.

Re:We're not ready for IPv6 yet.

[kensai]

Most of the spam blocking systems depend upon IP addresses.

They'll just have to come up with a better way to block spam (anything is better than that braindead scheme) or fall by the wayside.

Re:We're not ready for IPv6 yet.

[complete loony]

IP4 blacklisting is often done at a subnet level, preventing many home DSL accounts from running their own mail servers if the ISP doesn't deal with spammers effectively.
IP6 wont change that, since the ISP will still be assigning one subnet per user, and probably have one subnet for all their DSL accounts.

I'd even go as far as saying the migration to IP6 would make it *easier* to block spammers and botnets because of the far more structured approach used to allocate addresses.

Re:We're not ready for IPv6 yet.

[Ant P.]

With IPv4 there's also a virtually unlimited number. The difference is that with IPv4 you tend to block an entire /16 subnet in which maybe only 1% of the users are causing problems, because the IPs are dynamic.

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.

Re:We're not ready for IPv6 yet.

[jandrese]

How about making it effectively impossible for Worms to spread by IP scanning? Without botnets deployed by worms the spammers will have a much more difficult time getting up and running.

Re:We're not ready for IPv6 yet.

[zptao]

LoverOfJoy: an address available for possibly every machine currently in existence. Whether it be this decade, the next, or in another generation, IPv4's pool of addresses will dry up. IPv6 fixes that.

Re:We're not ready for IPv6 yet.

[asuffield]

With IPv6, there are (effectively) an unlimited number of IP addresses available for spammers.

Nonsense. You cannot just make up an IP address to use on the internet, if you expect it to work. You have to use the addresses allocated to you by your provider. No provider is going to assign you an effectively unlimited number of addresses to work with. Most of the IPv6 addresses are going to remain unallocated for a long time.

There will be approximately as many (same order of magnitude) allocated IPv6 addresses prefixes as there are IPv4 addresses, when the conversion is complete, because the number of users of both with be about the same. Ignoring for a moment the stupidity of maintaining a database of IP addresses used by spammers, such a scheme would be precisely as practical with IPv6 as it is with IPv4, because the mechanism by which they are allocated will be unchanged. The only appreciable difference with IPv6 is that you get allocated a block containing many addresses with a common prefix, instead of a single address. It is trivial to match based on the prefix instead of the entire address.

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.

Re:Why upgrade?

[Threni]

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

Large companies can afford it, no problem. Staff don't usually like having out of date skills; there are security issues with older software. You'll get no support, and when things go wrong and time/money IS lost, you'll have a hard job justifying it to those above you.

1) Good 2) understandable

[joe 155]

Firstly the idea of each user having their own remote space is good in theory. This is actually something useful which comes with Vista... although there could be serious problems with it; how safe is it? I wouldn't be at all amazed if this was hacked about 3 seconds after the first user puts any files on this because people will refuse to use good passwords. But in principle its good. The T&Cs might change that. Everyone will have to move to IPv6 anyway at some time I think so we shouldn't be too worried about that

As for them pushing the update to Office 2007 - well, that's what they're in business for... I'm not amazed and I'm not disapointed.

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?

Admit it...

[Otter]

If Linux were introducing something like this, you'd be saying it's the bestestest thing ever...

Re:Admit it...

[Ash-Fox]

If Linux were introducing something like this, you'd be saying it's the bestestest thing ever...

I don't I would be. It's also not a domain as they claim, it looks like it's some evolved Wins/Netbios system. I'll stick to DNS (dyndns services are easy to setup and no chance of name collisions). IPv6 has also been supported in the Linux kernel for many years, nothing new.

the push finally to switch

[frovingslosh]

...going to be the push finally to switch everything from IPv4 to IPv6..

Yea, right. My ISP and may others are out there port blocking so that I can't share any files on my Windows boxes across the Internet with normal Windows file sharing techniques, and somehow we are expected to believe that with Vista will come a drastic change in mindset, rather than going out of their way to block ports to stop us from doing something, ISPs will suddenly expend effort to make connectivity better? Yea, sure, I believe that as much as I believe anything Microsoft says.

Misleading Headline

[jonadab]

The headline doesn't actually say DNS, but it implies it. But the article makes it clear that it's not actually an internet domain that is being offered, but a "Windows Internet Computing Name", which is resolved using a protocol other than DNS (specifically, PNRP, whatever that is).

Re:Misleading Headline

[nateb]

PNRP =

Proprietary Network Resolution Protocol

IPv6 or IPv6[TM}?

[jc42]

One obvious question: Will Vista really use IPv6, or an "extended" IPv6-like protocol with patented MS extensions? Anyone know? Is there any chance that we could end up in court if we interoperate with it?

Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista

[kfg]

Believe it or not they would rather that their employees *not* spend all day listening to music or watching movies. And they are usually somewhat opposed to employees running P2P on their networks as well.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's perfectly easy to accomplish all of that in *nix and has been for decades.

No, the reason the vast majority of businesses are not opposed to their software infrastructure being "DRM infested" is the management of purely internal documents. The shit they don't want the SEC to see.

KFG

Re:Slashdot tags

[HairyCanary]

That's kinda the point.

Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista

[kfg]

So, your argument for Linux is . . .

. . .completely unstated in this thread, so far.

Sir, . . . what makes you . . . zealots so ridiculous . . ."

. . .is canned resposes to arguments that have not been made.

KFG

Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista

[Tim Browse]

Believe it or not they would rather that their employees *not* spend all day listening to music or watching movies

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's perfectly easy to accomplish all of that in *nix and has been for decades.

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

PNRP vs. zeroconf?

[*SECADM]

I am curious as to how PNRP works with Zeroconf. Does it 1)implement zeroconf, 2)interoperate with zeroconf, or 3)is completely incompatible with zeroconf? AFAIK zeroconf already does p2p name resolution and is an open standard. Is PNRP gonna be a standard?

.

Re:PNRP vs. zeroconf?

[symbolset]

PNRP is Microsoft's attempt to replace DNS with their own P2P naming system under IPV6. It's patented, so of course making stuff compatible with it outside of the Microsoft domain will be illegal, hazardous to your IP, or require a small percentage of your immortal soul.

Shortly after it's common, people are going to discover a number of things:

• A node can publish as many names as it wants. Billions of semi-randomly generated names per bot node could be fun.
• Frist psot: It sure makes it easier to manage a botnet.
• Millions of bots competetively and cooperatively poisoning the namespace will not be helpful.
• The implementation will have bugs that cause failures of the service or the whole computer.
• The implementation will have vulnerabilities. Some of the vulnerabilities will have exploits. Some of the exploits will have patches. Some of the patches will cause failures of the service or the whole computer. Some of the exploits will never be published or patched, so there will be more bots. It's the One Microsoft Way.
• Names are not unique -- so the label Natalie-Portman-hot-grits, "My Printer" and "office secret pr0n share" shall occur millions of times.

The whole replacing-DNS thing seems unlikely to work out. Yet another toxic service to turn off, it should set back IPv6 adoption three years or more.

Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista

[drinkypoo]

So, your argument for Linux is "it does what Windows does, only soooo much betterer".

It's an operating system. Operating systems broker between computing resources and computer software.

As such, the argument for any superior operating system is "It does what (inferior system) does, only so much better."

Regardless, is the fact that it does the same thing better and cheaper not a reasonable argument for using it? Did we get transported into some parallel dimension where those are not desirable qualities? IS THIS THE EVIL UNIVERSE? *checks* No, I still have my goatee. Wait, I have a goatee! Maybe this IS the evil universe!

No wait, I'm still right-handed. *whew*

This is *exactly* why ISPs are dragging.

[zooblethorpe]

Your quote completely sums up about 50% of the business reasons behind why ISPs are dragging their feet about implementing IPv6. Obviously, there's some overhead, which I count as the other 50%, but this particular 50% has to do with these two choice bits:

...the home user behind a NAT box has been relegated to the role of a consumer of Internet services.

and:

Sites with persistent, unrestricted Internet connections now constitute a privileged class, able to use the Internet in ways a consumer site cannot. They can set up servers, create new kinds of Internet services, establish peer to peer connections with other sites--employ the Internet in all of the ways it was originally intended to be used. We might term these sites "publishers" or "broadcasters", with the NATted/firewalled home users their consumers or audience.

Practically *everything* we've seen about the major media companies (which are increasingly also ISPs) is that they're struggling to force the internet into the TV paradigm. Unwittingly perhaps, but it seems that the NAT workaround has helped them do that. I'm not in the least surprised that these companies would do all they could to keep their audiences captive, and putting off IPv6 sure seems like part of that effort.

Re:MAKE THE MADNESS STOP!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

For those new to Slashdot who are wondering what's wrong:

Slashdot is a tough place. We all do our best, but every now and again, someone mentally cracks and posts a long and desperate rant. And to support them, other Slashdotters mod them -1 Flamebait.

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?"

*shakes head*

[scdeimos]

It's always nice to see that Technical Writers for IT magazines are savy enough to know the difference between a Domain Name and a Host Name.

hey

[tonycheese]

"According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, Microsoft recently placed an order for 500,000 CD labels, CD sleeves, and packaging boxes labeled "Windows Server 2007", but has also ordered an equal number of small "8" stickers, "just in case.""

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.

Re:Thats Linux (TM) not GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is a kernel, not an OS.

Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista

[JonJ]

You wouldn't be interested in sharing what KDE applications you left in your typical workstation setup? I'm guessing Firefox, open office stuff, evolution (or similar) and possibly GAIM or some other IM client.

None of these are KDE applications. It'd probably be konqueror, koffice, kmail/kontact and kopete. If you're running pure KDE, like I do.

privacy

[drac0n1z]

wont having a unique identification be the end of anonymity and allow microsoft to force legal copies of windows and other software utilising the unique id?

Re:XMMS is dead. BMPx is the successor.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The only format I really need it to support is WAV. (I don't like lossy compression. It sounds bad. I guess I'm picky.)

Why not use FLAC, then? It's lossless, and files are almost halved in size compared to WAV.

Microsoft DNS ..

[rs232]

It isn't IPV6 exactly but a combination of PNRP (Peer Name Resolution Protocol) and FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name). See here where PNRP v2 is already incompatible with PNRP. According to this it's a combination of IPv4 and IPv6 called the Next Generation TCP/IP Stack and overcomes shortcomings in the DNS system. I find that article quite difficult to follow. Who would have thought name resolution would have been so complex. Is this one of those propriatry protocols that any third party has to pay MS royaltes to access. One of the protocols MS is being fined by the EU for not publicising. Some source code and API calls not being acceptable.

Re:Migrate to GNU/Linux, not Vista

[MysteriousPreacher]

Looking on the brightside, he didn't say m$. That has to count for something.

Way to invalidate IPv6's advantage.

[Poromenos1]

So far, I supported IPv6 mainly because it will provide so vast an address space that it will be impractical for worms to bruteforce (nowadays you can ping an IP address and it will probably reply). Now, Microsoft invalidates this advantage by adding hostnames for every machine. A 5 letter word is easier to brute force than an IPv4 address, and you KNOW there's someone running something vulnerable there. At least I hope to God it's not by default, using your network name or something (which is, thankfully, unlikely).

So what exactly is this useful for?

[biglig2]

You know, in the real world. I mean, getting a permanent internet name for your machine without you having to do anything sounds good until you think about it.

But, first off, that name is going to be biglig-p.p4562b4628ac54782dda52789038476237e7c7263 .pnrp.net so you're not going to tell your granny about it over the phone so she can browse to your holiday photos.

Secondly, if someone is connecting to your machine, that means you've got to have a service listening to it, right? So you have to configure the service, and your firewall. So why not spend another 5 minutes registering a DDNS name that doesn't look like you spilt coke on your numeric keypad?

Thirdly, what sort of service do you need to run on your PC? Web page to host your photos? Er.. Flickr. Web page of your diary? Er... Blogger. Video? Er... YourTube. Share your documents? Er... Writely. etc. etc. Only one I can think of is remote control so your granny can connect to your PC and fix it.