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Microsoft Charging Businesses $4K for DST Fix
eldavojohn writes "Microsoft has slashed the price it's going to charge users on the daylight saving time fixes. As you know, the federal law that moves the date for DST goes into effect this month. Although the price of $4000 is 1/10 of the original estimate Microsoft made, it seems a bit pricey for a patch to a product you've already paid for. From the article: 'Among the titles in that extended support category are Windows 2000, Exchange Server 2000 and Outlook 2000, the e-mail and calendar client included with Office 2000. For users running that software, Microsoft charges $4,000 per product for DST fixes. For that amount, customers can apply the patches to all systems in their organizations, including branch offices and affiliate.' The only thing they can't do, said a Microsoft rep, is redistribute them."
Manually adjust the clock. Just write a small script to take care of it for logins or as a scheduled task for servers.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It's hard to say this without sounding like a zealot, but these kinds of things are nothing but good for Free Software. This patch should be nothing more than an edit to a single configuration file (and if it's not, then that's another problem), but you can't download that change freely or give it to your friends? I can understand - even if I disagree - with not giving away your applications. I cannot be made to understand, though, not giving away trivial bugfixes.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
No, the real, real question is: why are you so desperate to drag political bullshit into every story? Love him or hate him, GWB has absolutely nothing to do with how much Microsoft charges for a patch.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I know in Soviet Russia that work was done for free for the betterment of ones comrades, but this isn't Soviet Russia quite yet. Companies charge you when they provide a service for you.
If you read the article you'll see the $4K is for unsupported (obsolete) software.
It's a little different. You're comparing a fix for a defective product to a patch to change behavior to fit an unforseeable change in timekeeping logic. And, please note that these products aren't even officially being supported anymore (thus, the service charge).
I'm not trying to defend MS, but there's no need to make dodgy comparisons... One can surmise that open-source users will likely have an easier time making this change, seeing as they don't have to rely on a corporation to update their binaries.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I understand that they're charging $4000 for all of the patches, and on all of an enterprise's machines. I also understand that they're choosing to not offer the patch to private users for a nominal fee, nor are they offering the option to buy just this one patch for a lesser price. My response is that this is what you get when you have a monopoly: they can offer whatever they wish -- or, to not put too fine a point on it, choose to NOT offer whatever they wish -- and charge however many limbs they want for it. It's disgusting, and to me particularly offensive. I'm sure there will be rants about the evils of capitalism and such here -- this IS Slashdot, after all -- and I can't really disagree here. I'm about as far to the right as they come and as rabid a capitalist as you'll ever see but this just makes us look bad. Capitalism REQUIRES adequate levels of competition to function properly and what you're seeing here is what happens when that competition is absent.
That congress-Microsoft DST conspiracy theory seems a tad... overboard, to me at least. They do plenty of corrupt things we know about, theorizing about something as odd as this is unnecessary.
As for the summary saying "it seems a bit pricey for a patch to a product you've already paid for." - well, no, that isn't true. Customers paid for a product and for support for it; the support for Windows 2000 is over, as per the original agreements. They got what they paid for. This is the same issue with any proprietary, closed-source software - the client is left to depend on a single vendor for patches once the official support is over, and can effectively be taken hostage (I wouldn't trust patches from anyone who doesn't have access to all the source code). Microsoft isn't doing anything 'special' here beyond typical closed-source tactics. But those are enough to show the importance of using FOSS.
This is for OS that are out of support.
If you bought an extended support contract, at the time of expiration, you get this for free.
If you thought "I won't have any W2K in 6 months, so why bother" and 24 months later, the DST issue caught you - well, pay up.
Or what value did those who paid for extended support get?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
This fee is all inclusive. That means any product in extended support, and any DST related patch.
So that includes:
Windows 2000 Server straight DST patch
Windows 2000 CRT DST patch (Never heard of that one? See here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932955/en-us/ and here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932590/en-us/
Exchange running on W2K
Visual Studio 6.0 patches (I believe...)
So $4000 to cover *all* unsupported systems, and to have a human to call and say "Your patch screwed up my server" and have them fix it, is to be cliche, Priceless
www.christopherlewis.com
all Linux had to do was update its zone info stuff. Why is Windows so much harder? Didnt they do it properly?
As an end user, it was even easier. All I did was apt-get update/upgrade.
The difference between the free and non free worlds is never more glaring than when you "upgrade". Because non free companies don't trust each other or their users, they can't really co-operate. When they have to co-operate, things get sticky. Mechanisms, like the Windows registry, are so bad that it's easier to wipe and reload than it is to actually update software. What's a pain for individual users is multiplied by thousands for businesses and then compounded by the number of applications updated. A whole industry exists to help banks and other businesses do trivial things like change out versions of text editors and mail clients on ordinary workstations. It's a process that's excruciatingly manual, bandwith intensive and slow, with each person able to do less than ten machines a night. Add some smoke an mirrors timing "security"* into the mix and you have something even worse.
*-there is no security on a platform with a one in four botnet ownership. The pain and expense are all for nothing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Where is the free patch for Apple's OLDER OSes?
:(
MS has free patches for all current OSes as well.
MS wins this round.
And "System Clock"? You mean the thing on the motherboard that ususally knows knows NOTHING about times zones or DST? And if it does then ALSO requires a patch to work right now? How will that help in any way?
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Old troll Bungi doubts me:
"It's a process that's excruciatingly manual ... with each person able to do less than ten machines a night "
Bullshit. Do you even *believe* this crap you write? You've never had a job in a real company with more than 100 machines, so do us all a favor and just don't share your opinion on things like these. OK? Thanks.
Yes, Bungi, I've actually been on a Windoze upgrade slave gang for a fortune 100 bank and what I describe is how I remember it. They had some of the automated upgrade tools you mentioned, but they did not work. Instead, they wiped and reloaded with boot floppies that grabbed images from a server running linux. Most of the programs had to be installed anyway so that the registry would be consistent.
Did you really? You're so leet. By any chance would you happen to be running an eight-year old version of Linux?
Ha ha, I'm a normal desktop user and no, I don't have to run eight year old versions of software that have been continually upgraded and improved. The longest chain of upgrading I can remember is potato to woody to sarge. It got tricky once but everything usually worked. Mostly, it's easier to install binaries fresh. Leet is a concept that only applies in the non free world of secrets and bullshit.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.