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Microsoft looking at mail client for UNIX
Eater writes "Here's an article from Federal Computer Week. Seems they're afraid of losing Army dollars. " The Army is using Lotus Notes, because of "security concerns" with Exchange. Looks like military intelligence may not be such a misnomer.
Ummm... urr... Microsoft DID ship Internet Explorer 4 AND 5 for Solaris and HP yucks. Those would, IMHO, qualify as "non-MS operating systems"...
I work in the IT department of a miltary installation, and we are in the process of converting our email system from VAX-based mail (with PC software clients) to Microsoft Exchange. (Going from one mistake to another.) One of the reasons Exchange was chosen over Lotus Notes, in our situation, was that Microsoft Exchange is compliant with the Defense Message System (DMS) guidelines. ("DMS provides a fully integrated, supportable, secure, and accountable messaging system for individual and organizational users within the DOD." -- This includes IMAP compliance and LDAP.) Of course, roughly half of our users -- who tend to be engineers and scientists -- were already receiving their mail through various Linux servers and they were not happy to hear they were being "upgraded" to an NT-based email server and client. Due to the funky schedule imposed on us from on high (think PHBs with stars on their shoulders), the migration is not considered complete until 100% of the users are using the Outlook 98 client. Those of our customers without PCs are in the lurch; we acquired several dozen hand-me-down Pentium 100 systems for the express purpose of being able to say they have Outlook. So, despite the occasional glimmer of intelligence suggested in the article, I don't recommend rescinding the oxymoronic status of "military intelligence".
Also, not that they have obviously never heard about FastCGI, which in many respects are way superior to NSAPI and ISAPI.
Test's I've done have shown that for some types of dynamic applications we've seen between 2 and 5 times the performance of ordinary CGI's with FastCGI's... That would have placed Linux on par with Solaris and IIS on most of those tests.
Also, I'm curious about the TCP/IP issues they whine about that made them choose 2.0.35 over 2.2...
At best they screwed up again. At worst it's intentional FUD.
OK, so basically they're porting the Exchange client to Unix (like they did with IE). Doesn't look like it will be much different than the Win32 version, I guess. Also, it's scary that the Army would reconsider using MS products, after proving they don't meet their needs.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Can i easily drop in my choice of editors in Outlook? I can in pine. Or mutt. Or elm. Can i change pager behavior? I'd like to be able to use spacebar to page, rather than having to move from touch-typing to pagedown. For that matter, i'd like to not have to use a mouse at all, and easily access all commands, menus, and headers with a few keystrokes. I'd like to be able to filter which headers i do and do not see. I'd like to set my Reply-to: address. I'd like to easily access multiple POP mailboxes, and have replies appear to come from the address in the To: header. Mutt and fetchmail do that one just fine.
Can Outlook do ANY of these things? NO!! So don't give me crap about how "powerful" Outlook is.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
For example, the company I work for is currently a contractor for the US Navy, and we're using Lotus Notes internally (at the Navy). It seems like all of the Navy uses Notes, BTW. The Marines use some Vines-like thing, and maybe Notes as well (the Marines are *technically* related to or part of the Navy).
Just wanted to point out that just because the Army is developing or forcing Unix-based systems, doesn't mean the Navy (who had the smart ship program) is doing the same thing. In fact, our NT based Domino servers have been flaky all week, further increasing everyone's ire with MSFT here
Sujal
politics, food, music, life: FatMixx
-LJ
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
True - I said "user level functionality", which means mouse-wielding WIMP users (Windows/CDE/Linux DE). For the record, I currently use telnet+Pine, Outlook, Netscape, and Lotus Notes on both Windows and Unix platforms. Different tools for different circumstances.
Unix mail certainly has more "functionality" - it's just not as accessible on the user level. But apparently "user" is a four letter word around here so give 'em ssh and mutt.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
1. Roaming support is provided via Windows roaming user profiles. A bit sucky, esp on Win9x. Intellimirror improves this on paper.
2. I've been able to set up mutiple mail sources in Outlook, but never never tried multiple IMAP servers. The UI makes it look possible, though.
3. LDAP is supported.
4. If you are using LDAP, there's no reason you can't use PINE or something in addition to Outlook.
5. Windows and a substandard Mac client only. I would guess that a Unix port would have poor "public folder" support just as the Mac client does.
6. Internet client-side mail filters work fine in Outlook 98 without an Exchange server.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I meant
4. If you are using IMAP, there's no reason you can't use PINE or something in addition to Outlook.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
The "North American" version of Notes/Domino does not have this supposed back door.
Note that the "back door" is so Lotus can export a 64 bit encryption version, only that the US government knows 24 of the bits, effectively making it 40-bit when the USG is trying crack you.
Lotus has documented this. Go to http://orionweb.lotus.com and search for technote 162546.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
There is about 50 posts here guffawing at Microsoft's crappy software and poor unix ports. Har Har.
But is there even one Unix mail program (commercial or otherwise) that comes even close to the user-level functionality of MS Outlook? And before anyone nominates KMail or Netscape Messenger, try using both side-by-side!
(Admittedly Outlook is a 30 MB install, but where I come from, mail is the #1 application by far. Of course, the PST format can go hairy, but again, so can Netscape's mail database.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
One of the nice things about mbox format is that it's incorruptible.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Mail Clients were designed to read mail.There's not a heck of a lot of "functionality" needed. Sure its nice to have a group calendar, but you can easily use one of several solutions for that (some of which are web based, so everyone, no matter what their OS can acess it easily). A calander is not part of a mail client.
Address Books are fine, but I get that in pretty much every mail client I use... many of which can use LDAP, so that multiple clients can work well together.
A mail client should first and foremost do its job... and do it well. After it gets that right, then perhaps it might look at some extra functionality. Otherwise, the functionality is a waste, designed only to overwhelm the user into beliving that they have something good.
Its amazing what can be done when people use things for what their intended to do, not fifty extra things that they were never intended to do.
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
I have yet to see an argument for NT that can't be answered with the domain name hotmail.com.
It's owned by Microsoft, but according to Netcraft:
hotmail.com is running Apache/1.2.1 on FreeBSD
Hmm, I thought they were running Solaris, but this is even better! They've tried to switch to NT more than once, and it just couldn't keep up. What more do you need?
He said that the secure, DMS version of Lotus Notes running on Solaris "provides us with better security" than a Microsoft solution. He added that "Lotus Notes is a far more technically superior product."
;-)
Boy I bet that stung M$ like a bi*&$.
M$ developing unix apps? Does that mean we will see more M$ ip's running linux/unix for development reasons? Hmm, mabey an internal revolution within M$ company culture will occur after employees get to use a real os!
Probably not
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
75% of message arriving? Notes mailing is much more reliable than standard internet mail, thanks to it's powerful DSN capabilities, to which smtp cannot yet compare to, even if one was garanteed to have them.
.forward? You have never ever SEEN it, have you? Notes mail is database-based, it's routing done through highly programmable database merging, and all system is programmable. Notes mail system is actually a Notes application, in fact.
No biff? No
I prefer SMTP, but don't spread FUD. You know nothing about Notes.
(8-DCS)
Here's my favorite:
:-)
the company provides highly reliable security "out of the box.... Policywise, you have to make sure you configure it correctly."
A group I work with for setting up some secure systems recently invited micros~1 to send some experts to set up a system with proper security. There was a rather large contract riding on this bid, and as near as we can tell micros~1 DID send their most knowledgable engineers. But after three days of configuration and re-configuration, we could break the box with any of a dozen script-kiddie exploits, and with several custom made attacks.
The micros~1 experts finally went away muttering a few feeble excuses. Only one seemed genuinely embarassed, the others 'just didnt get it'.
So the bid going to the customer will be almost entirely unix based, and only a handful of M$ machines to cover a specific need in the contract. The account team from micros~1 are crying themselves blue right now, since it was going to be their quota for the year. Either way, I get paid
The AntiCypher
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on