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Microsoft Announces W2K Pricing
sterno writes "Microsoft has just announced the price for licensing of Windows 2000. The price tag isn't obscene by Microsoft standards, but they have now added a clause that forces licensing of every user who accesses a web server via the web (assuming that security is turned on). Check out the details at News.com. " So, are they going to price themselves out of business or make billions of dollars?
nope.
If you buy Win2k server in the store, and don't have to sign a license agreement to do so, you can do whatever you want with it.
You can specifically twiddle with registry setting to remove annoying and arbitrary limits.
The EULA that is supposed to prevent this has *no* force because it's not a legal contract. You can answer 'I agree' without commiting to anything.
Why? Because if you say 'No', the software you own a license to use won't work. So you have to say 'I Agree'. But they don't offer you anything beyond the right to use the software you already paid, so you're not agreeing to a contract.
They're coercing you into accepting, and not offering any consideration.
It's not valid.
They're just doing what all the lame little companies using illegitimate patents to blackmail people are doing... Hoping you don't care to fight it in court.
Yes, that does mean that Samba is now illegal according to Microsoft licensing. But that's it. You don't need a CAL for every person who connects to your website. Just the 95/98/NT/2k users in your domain.
However, this presents a pretty stealthy move by Microsoft. Basically, this licensing scheme says that you need to have a Windows 2000 license for a Samba box. I don't want Win2k - that's why I have a Samba box. But if I want to connect to a Win2k box with my Samba box, I need a license. Bah. Stealthy little bastards, those legal folks at Microsoft. Ah well - they can take me to court for it for all I care; not like I'm going to be using Win2k as a server *ever*.
Please clarify why Samba is illegal. If you've got a Samba box, using an NT Domain Controller for authentication, you've always needed a CAL (you said it yourself with the trusted connections bit). If I've got a Samba based domain, using Samba as a DC and a file/print server, I need exactly 0 MS Client Access Licenses. Of course, I need as many MS OS Licenses to use the services as I have machines, but that part is pretty clear anyway. If you've wanted to use your Samba box to access NT/2K files, you've always needed a CAL for that.
Samba is not illegal, and nothing MS can do (well, almost anything; they could change the license to allow for only MS clients to access services) can change that
and a new microsoft network costs: $95,792
while a new linux network only costs: 15,120
Once again the idea of total cost of ownership comes up. You have to include the cost of upgrading all software to Linux (including anything specifically designed for the company). Plus the cost of retrianing everyone on Linux (because most people have never even heard of Linux, much less seen or used it). Usually it's almost always cheaper to stay with your current software than to change to something else, that's why so many places are still running software written 20 years ago in COBOL.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
It's much easier to replace a Unix with a Unix, but to replace a Windows with a Unix can be more complicated. Another example: At the company I work for, I've built a web-based service for our customers to receive software updates. Because all of their software runs through a Win32 interpereter program (and they all run Windows anyway) our server has to run on an NT system. I would love to rewrite the software as a Unix daemon, but it's just not a possibility.
I'm willing to bet that there are a lot more sob-stories like mine out there. So yes, Linux/xBSD is making inroads, but Windows isn't necessarily losing too much of it's ground. I guess time will tell though.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Oh you're right, this was the only article on Slashdot today, no other articles were posted. And i don't like MS b/c of how they conduct themselves and allow buggy software.
"THE MS PRICE NAZIS ARE BURNING BABIES AND EATING HOUSES!"
:-)
Don't you mean burning houses and eating babies?
W2K will be as revolutionary to NT4/95 what NT4/95 was to Windows for Workgroups.
Maybe evolutionary but certainly NOT revolutionary. Evolutionary means that each iteration is an improvement over the previous incarnation, while revolutionary implies a whole new paradigm. By that standard it is Linux and the various BSDs that are revolutionary, not W2K...
--
A man who wants nothing is invincible
First, you don't have to pay somebody to download it. You order it from Cheapbytes. With shipping, you're still under $10.
Second, you don't have to burn multiple copies of the CDs to install to multiple machines simultaneously. You install to one machine, set up a proper NFS server (one option), FTP server (another option), or HTTP server (third option), and you can now install to as many client machines as you want via network (very easy to do, by the way, from my experience).
Third, you don't have to pay somebody to stay at your site constantly. Linux machines, once set up correctly, need much less babying than Windows machines. And you won't ever have to reinstall Linux, unless you have a hard drive crash. All in all, you pay somebody to set up your network (most businesses could be done in under a month, some in under a week), and then pay him to check up on things every so often.
Fourth, your retraining cost is going WAY down, since you've got Star Office, Gnome, KDE, and other Office suites on the way. People will have no problem figuring them out.
TCO is a major thing to consider. But don't cook the numbers. They're quite yummy raw, and lose much of their value once cooked.
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
I work at a fairly small buisness ~ 20 people. We recently got a server and it's running Linux. It's used as a fileserver mostly, and nobody needs to know it's Linux. The user has W95/98 on their desk and it runs everything just fine. We saved quite a bit of money by going Linux.
One word: Student. I could scrounge $1800CDN from all my university money to scrape a computer together. While OEM Win98 is 'only' $~100, that's a hundred dollars that could have been another few gigs on the harddrive or a few MHz on the processor.
:P Tho I DID pay for my games. (straying offtopic) But Games are a different thing in my opinion.
And while Students aren't a majority as far as people with buying power, pretty much every student needs a computer. So pander to us, dammit!
And yes, I DID install Win98 on this box. I'll be damned if I bought a copy for it though
Sorry, Mike. You summarized things a bit too well:
"If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at one time," Nash predicted.
Probably, eh? And what if I do? What if, say, Slashdot links to the T-Shirt site I'm going to open up someday and--amazingly enough--I have some T-Shirt that's surprisingly popular. Far more than its been. Are you telling me that, while Apache-SSL would be more than happy to accept as many credit card orders as the server could possibly handle, Windows 2000 would tell my customers to go away because I didn't give Microsoft enough money?
Are you kidding me?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
on its software. Once people are trapped using it,
all they can expect is more price increases.
Once upon a time there was only Windows NT.
WindowsNT, beget Windows NT workstaton and windows NT Server.
and they prospered and soon after WindowsNT Prof was born. To be followed by Windows NT Server, Windows NT Advanced Server, and Windows NT DataCenter.
NT -> $150
NT Wkt -> $150
NT Server -> $500
W2k Prof -> $300
W2k Server -> $1000
w2k Adv Server -> $4000
w2k data center -> ? ($16000 ? )
Do you notice a trend here?
Yes the cost has risen from the original cost, it's been a few years since then. I also notice th price of candy bars rising since I was a kid, but no one complains about Hersey's gouging the market price. The price for W2K is the same price as for NT4 (plus at max $2000 if your dumb enough to use your OS to authenticate outside web users, and then only if this is real, since no one has been able to find a mention of this licensing anywhere else).
What it comes down to is that NT Workstation has doubled in price over the years, and probably doubled in function, while server has come up 6X over the years and added probably 10X the functions (and this isn't counting inflation at all). It's great to compare the price of the original WinNT and W2K, but don't do it without comparing what you actually get from the two...
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
But for Amazon-scale operations, this won't really be a problem - Microsoft is selling a license for $2000 that allows unlimited concurrent accesses over the 'Net. That's pretty high for what you're getting (especially considering a Linux server running Apache can serve an unlimited number of users (from a licensing, not technical, standpoint) for zero dollars), but it's a drop in the bucket for any organization that's actually going to need it.
It would sort of suck for your customers to see "Sorry, we can't process your order right now, because there are five other people ordering right now, and despite the fact that our system could easily handle a hundred more, we didn't shell out enough to Microsoft..."
You should probably use quotes around the word "final". Windows 95 was supposed to be the "final" DOS-based Windows product, then MS came out with 98, which was then relabelled as the "final" DOS-based Windows product.
Will Millennium be the final final DOS-based Windows product? Maybe. Maybe not. We shall see.
-B>I recently had a proposal turned down to make an
>Intranet server Linux based instead of NT. The
>company did not feel comfortable with an OS that
>only a few people on staff new how to handle.
Yeah.. just a few million people know linux/unix.
An intranet server is a capitol expendature. Sure.
But their E-Commerce/extranet site that serves their top 10 customers might be a bit different. Especially when the server craters.
Why are these people interrested in Linux anyhow? *grin*
Pan.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Install Debian, do it once, and do it right. Build an image of the hard drive (using tar, to prevent problems with different sized hard drives), and a quick script later, and you've got multiple, automatic installs without any effort. And they work at least as well (if not better) than any automated install script from M$.
Next, install a local mirror of the Debian distributions. Every night, at say 9pm, it goes and downloads the latest and greatest packages (using apt-get), and gets them installed correctly on itself.
Next, each of the client machines connects to the local mirror (at say, 3am), and does the same thing. You could even throw a reboot in at the end, if you really wanted to. And now the machines are automatically updated (as much as they need to be) on a daily basis. With no human intervention whatsoever.
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
Now do the same with the number of people actually buying this stuff. How many licences of w2k data center do you think that MS will sell? probably a lot less than w2k workstation. Yet w2k datacenter contains a lot more functionality. Probably there's a lot of profit for MS (otherwise they wouldn't bother with the datacenter version) but still you have to consider the number of people buying the product (probably drops exponentially).
Jilles
[rant]
It really doesn't matter to me the specific details of how this new section of the licensing will affect ecommerce sites. What pisses me off to no end is the fact that Microsoft will stick its users with more and more semi-hidden costs at whatever junction they can.
To everyone who says "Don't just flame Microsoft, everyone does it," I say this: I don't care if this is a common business practice. I don't care if Microsoft isn't the only company screwing it's users in a very uncomfortable place while stealing their wallets. As a user and admin in a corporate environment, I am currently forced to deal with Microsoft products. So Microsoft's business practices are slapping me in the face every day. And I hate it. Microsoft, hell, corporations in general, nickel-and-dime people to death so often it makes me want to vomit.
I could try to see things from the corporate point of view, but I don't think I can fit my head that far up my ass.
[/rant]
Okay, so every web hit counts as a user that you need to buy a license for or what? That's how I'm reading this crap... If it's only your secure connections, as in those for commerce... it's still crap. Think about the ramifications for business... If /. ran W2K, they'd have to pay license for every user they had, wouldn't they...
Couldn't you get around this by using a third party webserver (Apache for W2K... ewww...)?
http://www.mumia.org
Have you been to a site with 100 workstations connected to a file server, where the IS people, in their brilliant thinking, have replaced their Netware 3.11 server running on a 486, with a NT 4.0 server running on a Pentium III? If you have, then you will have noticed one thing: all the users are grumbling about how slow the new system is.
When it comes to file servers, NT is simply not performance competitive with Netware, regardless of price issues. I don't see any survival problems for Novell, as long as business people stay in communication with one another about how well their systems are running. In businesses where a few thousand dollars is chickenfeed, word of mouth and your peers' horror stories can drown out marketing campaigns.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
How about that?
And your point IS? Exponential growth is easy when you're dealing with a newly accepted technology. Of course Novell isn't growing fast -- it already OWNS 40-55% of the server market, depending on whose numbers you want to use!
I'll take the 9 documented reasons to reboot in Win2k over the 217 documented reasons in NT 4 and the 10^x for 95 for starters. I've been running the betas (1, 2 & 3) for almost 2 years now, and I reboot it and my Red Hat machine about as often...
Another is Kerberos security, which is a big deal, given how 95 had no security and NT4 was only rated C2 by the feds without a net card.
There is actually quite a bit, but I'll cut it for brevity. Hit for more info:
Not sure about what you're trying to say here. Have you TRIED W2K yet so you can compare them and say you see nothing that dramatic?
Sir, please do not question my integrity. I'm not a MS zealot. I'm not a Linux zealot. I use Windows/Novell/Red Hat both at work and at home, and I see no reason to say X is better than Y. They all have good and bad points.
Yes, it is overdue. But remember that NT is at best half the age of Unix. And from but one company, not a broad range of entities. Change in a single state is slow. Change in a group of states is much faster.
No question about Terminal Server, you hit the nail on the head.
How about plug and play on an NT backend? Higher level NTFS security? (or, as above, the reboot & Kerberos) ?
Yes, it was originally called NT5. To say they failed to consolidate may be a bit of a stretch. For example, GE has several hundred thousand 95 machines, as that is their standard. I actually know more 95 shops than NT ones.
Also, why patch NT 4? We all know service packs often break as much as they fix. A 100%, total rewrite is a good thing, why bash it?
And, it's, what, 2 years late? What a laugh that MS is saying "On time and in stores Feb. 17".
2 years? No. It *is* about a year late, by MS's own estimate. They're just trying to get it right the first time, and go on a "One service pack a year" schedule. Getting it right is what it's all about. Most folks were HAPPY when Motorola chose to delay shipping a falty chip for this reason.
Again, a personal jibe when you know nothing about me. You're just being rude.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
This will be a big boost to the alternatives. This is very steep for the consumer market. Perhaps they imagine that folks just buy a new PC when the OS is running a little behind the curve.
Anyone I know who is still running Windows on a home PC are using pirated copies. This is just one more good reason not to upgrade but to switch.
Hell, I might even be able to persuade my wife to run Linux. She do not like to spend money, that one.
illegitimii non ingravare
Some people will pay for it, some wont. Simple as that. Home users will almost inevitably buy it OEM - which means there will always be a market. Corporations will buy it in the hope that it is more stable and secure than NT4 server.
Price is 90% meaningless IMHO.
On the other hand the security issues surrounding the must buy to browse issue scares me!
They can't charge too much for their consumer-oriented products (such as Win98 or the low-end versions of MS Office). If they did, it would just increase the attractiveness of (a) not upgrading a Win95 or Win98 system at all; (b) getting an email-and-web-only box instead of a PC.
By the same token, there are so many serious competitors for WinCE that Microsoft has to offer it cheap to OEMs.
That leaves the WinNT world. There are plenty of medium-sized and large businesses out there whose employees are running Microsoft Office on Microsoft NT workstations connected to Microsoft NT servers, with their email served by Microsoft Exchange, and their tech support staff populated by Microsoft Certified System Engineers. For those companies, the total cost of owning Linux/*BSD might make those systems competitive with Microsoft, but the total cost of switching away from Microsoft would outweigh the cost of W2K.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
The article talks about all secure authentication, but this isn't the case. Almost all e-commerce sites use a DB for their user authentication.
However, my previous company (name left out) used secure logins requiring a user/domain to allow client companies to access their information. We had a good 50 companies as our clients.
The article is interesting as it does not denote the pricing of CALs and, as I was not the purchaser, I don't remember the cost of them. And, admittedly, 50 users at, say, 200 a pop while expensive is not, well, unmanageable. ($10000) Considering the servers we ran are easily on the magnitude of 100 grand, a 10% raise in price can be handled.
If the license turns out to be 1000 like NS's web server licenses, then we start having problems.
My current company, however, only uses a database backend for non-company logins (ie, people who don't already have a user account).
In a way, MS is almost trying to convince people to use SQL server or, unfortunate for them, Oracle.
But the step that M$ seems to be taking is, imho, the wrong direction. A lot of complaints at MS that aren't about buggy sw or fanatical raving are that the MS licensing scheme is far too expensive and complex. Obviously, they aren't listening to us.
I say we let them know how we feel.
Jobe
So many things couldn't happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams coming out of the blue
ls:
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?
Which is my point, really. Those running NT will probably stick to it, but the new companies will be better off considering alternate OSes.
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
Beginning with Windows 2000 a CAL is necessary for each individual requiring authentication, such as would be necessary for a secure online transaction.
That sounds as if any user accessing IIS as an authenticated NT user requires a CAL. No big deal, this isn't going to affect e-commerce sites or any large website that authenticates. Almost all use their own user database, not NT's user database.
This is just CNET blowing more smoke up everyone's ass.
-witz
Hee! My _god_ that's funny. And, seemingly, true. So I have a proposed slogan for us all to use...
;)
Linux: For When You Don't Want Your E-Commerce Site Telling Your Customers To Go Away
"or if they are accessing a Microsoft driven database."
Does that mean if you use MS SQL Server for your web app, you have to pay, but if you are using Oracle, you don't? This would seem to push people away from SQL Server.
Let's see....Linux is free, W2K costs an arm and a leg? Could it be? Could it finally have happened? MicroSoft is so drunk with it's own success it doesn't realize that regular consumers aren't millonaires too? Comeon, those prices are RIDICULOUS...good thing i have a CD burner ;) W2K will cost me just as much as Linux *LMFAO* But really how do they expect to charge consumers like that?
In three years you'll be giving it away.
In five years you won't even be able to give away a closed-source OS, except for niche/grandfathered hardware like mainframes (where you'll probably still be able to actually charge for it).
The crystal ball isn't so clear with respect to Win9x (presumably because it won't be Win9x at that time). My first guess is that you'll be giving it away in two years, perhaps in 18 months, in hopes of stemming mass desertions from the All-MS market. But that would make it hard to convince people to upgrade to NT (by that or any other name), wouldn't it? So maybe you'll have to phase out the 9x line (for real this time) just to get that third year's income out of NT.
After that, it's all over for Windows. Make those acquisitions wisely -- it'll be hard to go back to sacking groceries after being the world's richest man for so long.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
According to the article, it's one license per authenticated user accessing your site simulatenously - and not one license per user who has ether bothered to authenticate themselves on your site.
It's not clear to me what they mean by authenticating, but they use the example of accepting online orders as requiring authentication... Anyway, for $2000 you can buy an "Internet Connector" which allows you to have unlimited simultaneous authenticated users.
$2k is chicken feed to most organisations, and considering only suckers pay RRP, you can be sure most places will get this at a substantial discount.
Pricing sounds pretty reasonably - certainly not enough to cause any concern to the large majority of businesses (ie, I don't expect anyone to jump to something other than a Microsoft product based on this pricing).
Ho hum.
One reason that this cannot work is that people by nature will move from one job to another, retire and enter the labor market. The only way to be safe is to buy an excess of licenses and be done with it. Small companies are not as able to do this as much as they are more frugle.
What was convenient for all was the per seat site license. You could buy single user, 5-10 user or 100 use licenses. They weren't as complicated as before. Companies tend not to resize in denominations that would greatly exceed this licensing scheme. Even if they did, buying an extra 100 user license is easier than guestimating how many overpriced licenes to buy. Btw -- did they mention a discount on multiple license purchases?
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
According to the article, it's one license per authenticated user accessing your site simulatenously - and not one license per user who has ether bothered to authenticate themselves on your site.
It's not clear to me what they mean by authenticating, but they use the example of accepting online orders as requiring authentication... Anyway, for $2000 you can buy an "Internet Connector" which allows you to have unlimited simultaneous authenticated users.
$2k is chicken feed to most organisations, and considering only suckers pay RRP, you can be sure most places will get this at a substantial discount.
Pricing sounds pretty reasonable - certainly not enough to cause any concern to the large majority of businesses (ie, I don't expect anyone to jump to something other than a Microsoft product based on this pricing).
Ho hum.
I don't think the Prices for NT Server variants are going to be the cause for many companies switching to something else. The price is still pretty small compared to the administration costs of any server.
The price of Win2K Professional is to high IMO. If MS isn't going to target Win2K to consumers, does that mean that they won't bother keeping DirectX up to date on it and supporting game developers. What I really want at home is an easy to use system that I can play games on and browse the web. I think Win2K could offer a large improvement in reliability over Win98 in this capacity.
If Microsoft starts charging corporations a certain fee according to the number of Internet connections they get, how long do you think these same corporations will finally realize the potential of Linux/*BSD Operating Systems and associated Open Source software (for instance: Apache)?
After all, most corporate Linux users have been attracted by these solutions because of an unbeatable price/performance/reliability ratio.
Expect a mass migration to Open Source soon. And a quick change in the pricing structure of W2K.
Fun slogans of the day:
-- W2K: the other Y2K problem!
-- W2K: Just when you think your computer was safe again...
-- W2K: Just like Y2K. Only worse.
Just my US$ 0.02...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I think this hefty pricing scheme could scare many businesses away from NT. Why pay for Internet clients when they are free with Linux/FreeBSD?
Maybe this could be good for Linux. But I bet most big corporations (who already trust Microsoft way too much) will just pay the bill (or is that Pay Bill?), and Microsoft will end up making Billions and Billions.
As that recent rant on Microsoft showed most IT companies that issue options packages instead of hard wages are dependent on a constant increase in stock value. Should that increase fail the options will be excercised and the company will feel an incredible cash drain further driving down the stock value. Thus IT stocks with a large amount of employee stock options are destined for a boom and bust life cycle. The only question is when the boom occurs.
There have been numerous reports of MS head honchos cashing out and a few leaks about possibly shady MS accounting practices to make sure the profit keeps rolling in. These prices look like a cash grab but with Linux and other options some of it is destined to slip through MS's fingers. It may not payout like MS expects.
MS, and many other option oriented IP stocks certainly look like pyramid schemes. The only question is how long until the pyramid realises it does not have a foundation and collapses. MS is feeling pressure on many fronts, DOJ, Linux, basic need for a constant cash flow, how long until the public stands up, points the finger and says Microsoft "has no clothes"?
Corel head Copeland is facing insider trading investigation for his actions around selling before bad earnings results. Could the MS boys face a similar investigtion for years of accounting slights to show profit while cashing out on their options?
at least that's what I got from this...
"If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at one time," Nash predicted.
He is a general manager at M$ so this seems solid. I'd like to get a look at the license since the Office2K EULA is so nasty. After 50 times starting the program and you HAVE to register.
I wonder if there will be more than 2 registry differences (other than price) between the workstation and server flavors this time. Regardless NT4 is working fine for us, I don't see an upgrade here for at least 2 years (and 3 service packs), and hopefully by then Linux will be ready to take over.
+&x
Actually, *you* are the one who is not comparing apples to apples. Certainly NetWare is more stable and faster than NT, but it also does a hell of alot less, and 99% of NetWare installs are File+Print+NDS only.
NT Enterprise is only needed if you are using their clustering technology or have greater than 4 CPUs. (Novell, AFAIK is stuck at 1 CPU for most things.) Does Novell's custer software come included in the standard NetWare box?
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This is ridiculous.
/back/ licenses when your load is lower (for whatever reason...maybe you have streamlined your site or something)? Or can't you?
First of all, even IF they were correct in charging people for using built in services over the net, e.g. authentication, how would this work? Would one just guess the maximum load and buy that many licenses? How could you buy
As somebody else mentioned, this is really insidious because it cuts off all open-source/free/non-MS integration products. I want to say that again - This move cuts off third-party integration. That is very dangerous. MS has both the client AND server...once they cut out third party integration, they have an entire monopoly.
Also, why wouldn't one just choose NOT to use the built-in services. For instance, here at Cornell U., we use Kerberos pervasively. W2K, I believe, supports PAM (Pluggable Authentication (Module?)). Now, we COULD use the build in PAM functionality, but if we have to buy 30000 extra licenses for it why should we? That's just a feature we'll have to disregard and throw away, and come up with our own kludge or keep using our infrastructure as it is (which is pretty good anyway). This is so dumb. Everything is authenticated in our environment, so there isn't a distinction between "intranet" services and "internet" services. The services are services, and inside and outside use go through pretty much the same authentication and authorization process. I'm not sure how many of the other "features" we'd be using.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Nah, no particular reason. Most people are using Apache, some people have a Windows machine, and they just run what came in the box.
"MS provides solutions" ?
You must be thinking of some other company. Microsoft is one the VERY FEW software companies which has a significant role in the computer industry.
All the other major players are working with hardware, people or true solutions. IBM, Compaq, Sun, etc. don't give a damn how much an OS costs -- the only people trying to jack up the price are MS.
"MS provides value" ?
This one is definitely wrong, they're providing COST, not value, there's no question that what was decided here was the COST of W2K to the end-user.
If you look at MS prices over the past 5 years, you'll see that they are IN NOW WAY linked to the value of the software, the cost is decided purely on maximising profit while preserving clear leadership in sales.
That, to me at least, indicates that TCO for Windows is lower, at least sometimes.
...for a Windows shop, it may actually be more expensive... should give you a pretty good indication of my opinion of the TCO on the average.
If you've already got a trained staff of windows programs, you bet it is lower, at least in the short term, given the difficulty of hiring good people these days.
I was talking about a very particular sort of situation. The word "actually" in the phrase
The cake is a pie
I think the 1st posts should be moderated to something less than -1 (maybe ~0). Some posts are more off topic than others. In fact, I've seen some pretty interesting ideas which have a score of -1, which I would have missed if I set my filter at -1.
I am a Linux newbie and have alrady rented a steam shovel. Unfortuantly, it will take a quantum N-space mine to plug the black hole that is in Redmond, Washington. That or hell of a lot of anti-gravitons.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
So Microsoft is going more insane with their outrageous pricing, and you think the answer is to pirate a copy of Win2k?
If you use even a pirated copy of Win2k you are still supporting it, even if not financially.
But Bill Gates doesn't need your money to survive. He would have to live 234 years past the normal human lifespan (84 years? That is assuming that with his money he can afford the best goat and monkey gland treatments in Switzerland to prolong his life) to spend the $100 billion he has today at $1,000,000 a day, and even after exhausting the original $100 billion base, he would have to live another human lifespan to dispose of the all the interest it would have earned by then. Bill Gates is going to find nearly impossible to GIVE AWAY all the money he now has in his lifetime. Of course, most of his wealth is in Microsoft stock-- i.e., all on paper-- which could be, and very likely will be devalued to practically zero over the next few years-- especially if Microsoft continues to lurch along on their wildly clueless path toward overpriced oblivion, as this latest pricing scheme for Win2k seems to suggest they are doing with wild abandon.
So, to reiterate, if you pirate Win2k, it will not affect Bill Gates fortunes in the least. But it WILL promote the life of Win2k, and ultimately Microsoft, a little longer.
You would be far wiser to completely abandon the use of any and all products from Microsoft if you want to see them cease to exist. Find the NON-Microsoft alternative programs that are available to run. You can do all of your word processing, personal account management, graphics manipulation, web browsing, web and software development, database management, and even play games using non-Microsoft dependent software. The list of non-Microsoft programs that run on a PC that will do most anything you want to do is huge, and it is growing larger every day. Of course, the extortionists in Redmond don't want you to know this.
You just have to find the alternatives to Microsoft and Microsoft dependent software-- and plenty of alternatives ARE available. But you can't expect to run Word, Excel, etc.
We once used Microsoft software, but we stopped at Windows 3.11. We still run it on one machine so that my six children (the youngest is 2, the oldest 17) can continue to use the large collection of Windows-dependent games that the family has purchased over the years. We NO LONGER buy any Microsoft products of any kind or Windows dependent software, including games, and have not for about two years. If the package says "Microsoft" or requires Windows 3.1/95/98/NT to run we do not buy it. And we are surviving very well, thank you, with two PCs in the house that do everything we require-- both of them are in use virtually all day long every day. One machine runs Windows 3.11 only when the kids want to play their Win-based games. Otherwise, that machine is booted into another operating system.
We run S.u.S.E. Linux 6.0 and OS/2 Warp 4.0 (with FixPack 9 installed-- it was free by the way, as all of OS/2's FixPacks are). S.u.S.E. 6.2 has just arrived in the mail, with 6 CDs of software for less than $60, and we will now be upgrading to it. Warp is still viable because we have an entire filing cabinet filled with hundreds of WordPerfect 4.2, 5.0, 5.2 and 6.0 documents and also DeScribe 5.0 documents, on floppies dating back to 1986, and we just don't want to take the time to convert them over to another format.
We use Quicken for DOS 7.0 for our personal accounts, and it runs under OS/2, with all of its functions available. We are glad to see that Quicken is going to come out with a version that will run under Linux, or so we have heard.
Eventually, we intend for all of our home computers to run everything under Linux alone-- And we are well on our way to doing that. Linux works very well for us. Each member of the family has his/her own user account, and only Dad has the superuser password.
Erchie
Of course people will pirate it. But so what? I would imagine that MS doesn't get most of its web server money from private individuals, it gets its money from corporations. I have yet to see a corporation, however small, that is willing to use pirated or hacked software. (Maybe I just haven't been around enough. :)
My
What is an authenticated conection ?
We don't know what this is, and even the Mike Nash example doesn't make it clear. There's nothing visible on the M$oft site that clears this up, and I don't trust CNET's degree of technical literacy to understand the pedantic implications of it.
A logon to the NT Domain is clearly an authenticated connection and requires a CAL.
Intranet users of NT servers - get your chequebooks out.
What about a client-side certificate ?
What about SSL ?
eCommerce is not going to be using NT Domain logons as an authentication mechanism. It was impossible to offer that to the public before and it was even most unlikely that it would be offered to a closed user community (my current project is doing this on an NT server, and we're using client side certificates).
As soon as anyone knows what the real position is with SSL and W2K, please post it. We don't care about charging for the Domain (that's fair) and only if M$oft are charging for SSL could this be reasonably regarded as a major foot-shoting.
If they've actually phrased it to include any 3rd party product that could be said to "authenticate" users on an open NT server, then it really is time to nuke Redmond from orbit.
RP
Good point - reading some of the posts during meta-moderation makes me realise that all too frequently a good idea gets marked as being off-topic because it, say, takes a light hearted view, or looks at things a different way...
/. engine grep for first post? :) hmmmm, the idea about making a special moderation selection for first-posts is a good one, it's just a pity that it takes a moderation point to do so.
:)
Couldn't the
btw, how is ~0 less than -1 ?!
True this is a trademarked bad idea. However this is from a company that the default for their database(SQL). (And I think for IIS too...)
For SQL it's called either "Use NT Security" or "Use Trusted Connection."
Not only that the default administrator account for SQL is blank. (If you choose not to use a "trusted" connection.) WITH NO WARNING TO CHANGE IT!!!!! That's right out of the box login = 'sa', password = '' and your in. (Although, I think at least some people have caught on about this.)
[At a former company I was critized for changing the sa password and using SQL's security instead of MS-ACCESS's..... My reasoning, the large number of Office password cracking progs out there.]
Myddrin
--
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Der groesste Schuft im ganzen Land, das ist und bleibt der Denunziant.
And please do not fall over each other e-mailing my boss that I told you off, you little snitches. I hope some day somebody like you screws you like you do. How many notches have you got in your keyboard?
Thomas
I used revolutionary because Win 2K is a *total* rewrite. It doesn't include ANY code from the old days. 95/NT4 was revolutionary as it isn't really a fancy dos shell, ala WFW. New paradigm, in a way.
W2K is not a total rewrite. NT is still the skeleton around which W2K is based. Yes, there have been architectural changes to the underlying structure, but it's still recognizably Windows NT. Even Microsoft admits it, as one of the marketing gimmicks for W2K is the slogan of, "Based On NT Technology!" There are going to be stickers on the W2K boxes hyping that fact.
W2K may be a great evolutionary step, but it is indeed only evolutionary. Added features and/or new code don't make something evolutionary; evolution, by definition, incorporates new features and ideas.
Let's take a hypothetical situation. Two E-commerce websites exactly the same, selling widgits.
Site A runs Linux, SSL, Apache, Whatever...
Site B Runs Win2k.
Since good old billy charges a tarif to sell the items, Site B's widgets are more expensive than Site A. So slowly Site A makes a better profit.
Then a new nano widget comes out on both sites and Hemos is overjoyed. Both sites get the slashdot effect.
Site A survives the assult with a few minor tweaks, accepting 99.9% of the resultant orders. (.1% lost during the tweaks and the party of massive geeks getting rich)
Site B's servers are still running but saying "out of client licences." The result is 10% of the orders are accepted even at the higher price. Site B goes bankrupt after over ordering the new nano widgets. The excess invintory is bought by site A. Site A changes it's slogan to "Beware of the penguin"
Yet another case of a good use for the slashdot effect and Hemos
Personally, I'm used to being able to install a free *IX and have it serve as many clients as I have CPU time and bandwidth to handle. I was shocked the first time I found out that NT Server required you to buy a license for each client accessing it. People actually put up with this?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
MicroS~1 DOS - $29.95
MicroSoft Windows 95 - $95
MicroSoft Windows NT - $219
MicroSoft 2000 - > $2,000
Forsight to use Linux instead....
So, you just fiddle with a few registry keys.
It's as legal as using a highlighter in a book you bought.
If they're stupid enough to sell exactly the same product for five different roles, they shouldn't be suprised if people buy the cheap package.
They're just blackmailing jerks, hoping companies will decide it's not worth the risk of a frivolous lawsuit from MS costing them millions.
Can you imagine if a book company sold two versions of some required textbook, one hideously expensive one for students, and a cheaper one that everyone, except students was allowed to use...
Let's not forget that Win2K includes some new public key crypto pieces, such as certificate management infrastructure. I'm betting that every cert required by IIS will be found in the system database, meaning that every connection using such a cert is going to need a license.
Now this doesn't mean that all e-commerce sites will need to pay through the nose. Most don't require client authentication - when you go to Amazon, you have a username and password, not a certificate. Which means you probably won't need a license for each order being processed concurrently.
However, there are plenty of other applications which could be hit by this. Most controlled access today is done through passwords, but it won't be long before it's all done with certificates, and it seems Microsoft is ready. What's worse is that Win2K pricing will be reasonable now, but in a few years when companies start taking the next step it'll sharply increase...
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
I've seen an article in Information Week that basically said that even other Unix OS's such as Solaris or AIX can be cheaper given the cost of maintaining the server, downtime, and client licenses for NT. I know someone that got a new laptop for work and the cost of all the client licenses needed for it exceeded the cost of the hardware. IMHO, that's insane.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
You're right. The first computer I bought had Win 3.11 on it. The last two I bought came with No OS as per my request. I am not about to pay someone to install Windows or whatever else I want on my system. I didn't have to pay the licensing because I didn't have any Microsoft stuff on there from the get go except for the first one which I guess I did buy in '94. I do use Win 98 but I didn't buy it.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
Over the last few years, Microsoft has been playing up the idea of "Total Cost of Ownership" and playing down the actual cost of the product. And you know what? They are right. It is the TCO that is important. You can say that Linux cost $0 all you want, but you still have to pay the salary of the guy who downloads it. You still have to pay to burn CDROMs to install multiple machines. You still need to pay your support staff. Start adding up those costs for any OS, and $200 per seat quickly becomes a drop in the bucket.
Presumably they feel that they've made this argument successfully, and that the price of the OS itself is no longer that important.
Of course, their statistical analysis of how Windows compares to other OSes in TCO is complete crap, but the basic idea, that it is the total cost of ownership that is important, is correct.
Linux may be cheap, but it ain't free (as in beer) in the sense that you still need a bartender. And the truth is, for a Windows shop, it may actually be more expensive, given retraining costs and the tightness of the labor market in technical areas.
The cake is a pie
You try to tell that to a guy in the marketing department who consideres Linux/Unix "That hacker OS". :-(
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
They're going to need all of that money to pay for all the crack they must be smoking if they think I'll EVER license their stinkin' OS.
Once upon a time, Microsoft released an OS so revolutionary (Relative to its predecessor) and so much more user friendly (Again, only compared to its predecessor) that consumers flooded stores everywhere trying to get their hands on a copy. That was Windows95. Then along came Windows98, and it was much less impressive. Microsoft even stated that Windows98 wasn't a big deal.
Now we have Windows 2000, a relatively major change from Windows98, but not as major from WindowsNT. Will we see any sort of strong pull from the consumer sector to buy Windows 2000? Not bloody likely, not for $220. In fact I'm curious how long it will take hardware vendors to decide consumers want to see Win2k preinstalled on computers. With the way hardware prices are falling, we're now looking at an OS that costs almost as much as the base hardware (CPU, motherboard, memory, HD).
What if the windows boxes were connected to the net through a masquerading firewall? -- would the need to licence be detected by the server or the client ... if it were the client then surely an abstract of removal such as a masquerading firewall would prevent this?
... need more coffee
just my rambling thoughts
Chilisoft's interpreter is written to work with big commercial server packages. Hopefully by "for Linux" you mean the Apache web server.
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
I think part of it has to do because a lot of the vocal portion of Slashdot use Linux (or other alternative oS's), and they feel threatened by MS's dominance. The reason I say vocal because I remember reading somewhere that a lot of the readers who just read use Windows. And from the hit logs on my site, I agree with that. Secondly, people like the underdog and hate the "big evil corporation" (tm). Now, this article per se does not have any real anti-MS message, but of course the discussion does. Others have shallow minds who think everything proprietry has to be bad (and MS is the essence of proprietry), and everything made by MS has to be bad. Hence, they have to attack it every chance they get. Of course, this helps NOTHING because it just makes the Linux users seem like a bunch of idiotic zealots and makes the casual viewer think of Linux as a stupid OS, exactly the opposite intended effect. I think it also has to do a little with jealousy, but I know no one will admit it, and if you really dont, I know I'll hear it. But MS is a very successful company, and Linux does want "Total World Domination". But have hope, not all of use are mindless Linux zombies. I for one have little problem with most of MS's products, and while their business tactics aren't really good ethicly, they do get results. I use Linux, and love it, but that does not make me automatically anti-MS.
Posting as AC to avoid Linux zealots from lambasting me and some biased moderator from hurting my karma because I actually had a minority opinion on Slashdot that was not pro-Linux.
How about a poll asking if you own and run a legit copy of a m$ os. I could take a guess what most would answer :)
Hrunting wisely observed: Some people are saying that this only counts authenticated NT users, but this statement would contradict that. They are squarely saying that if you're going to have multiple people connecting to your system, you're going to pay for it. This is similar to news outsourcing where a company pays for a number of concurrent connections. They don't pay for all their customers, just the ones they'll expect to be connected at once. Now come the interesting questions. What if you use Apache as your web server and someone tries to connect. Do you have to pay for it? Can you charge for connections to an operating system? This doesn't sound like a feasible pricing scheme to me unless Microsoft is going to implement some sort of connection limiting scheme in its software (highly unlikely, although, like I said, they have a twisted sense of humor).
Since IIS is a kernel service (!) connection limiting would be easy. OTOH, since the issue is license enforcement there's no reason that they couldn't set up a bot to interrogate sites now and then about their peak connection load. If it's over the wire, an invoice arrives. Don't pay the invoice, and thanks to some effective lobbying MICROS~1 now has the legal right to remotely shut the server down -- anyone want to bet that they didn't add the hooks to do it? They fought HARD for that clause, after all.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Oops. Hey, what IS a portable way to get the largest negative integer?
It already does. Anything connecting to services provided by the Server service requires a CAL. Authentication. File/Print sharing, etc, regardless of whether it comes from a Samba server, a Mac, or a PC running FreeDOS. The only difference is that previously each machine counted as a seat, while now, each connection from a different user is a "seat". I still see this is a non-issue for the typical enterprise customer, most of whom use per-seat licensing anyway. I stated in a previous post, that technically, authenticated logins already require a CAL, and here's the relevant portion of the (NT WKS 4.0 OEM) EULA to show it:
"Network Services. Except as otherwise provided below, if the SOFTWARE PRODUCT documentation indicates that the SOFTWARE PRODUCT includes functionality that enables the COMPUTER to share resources over a network with other computers or workstations, any number of computers or workstations may access or otherwise utilize the basic network services of SOFTWARE PRODUCT on the COMPUTER. The basic network services are more fully described in the printed materials accompanying the SOFTWARE PRODUCT and include file and print services and peer Web services.
"Windows NT Workstation Network Services. If the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is Windows NT Workstation, a maximum of ten (10) inbound peer connections may simultaneously access or otherwise utilize the basic network services of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on the COMPUTER. The ten-connection maximum includes any indirect connections made through software or hardware that pools or aggregates connections."
The key thing here is the clause about indirect connectiions in the WKS specific part, and the PWS connections in the general section. Not that anyone uses the PWS that comes with WKS anyway.
I don't have a copy of the server EULA in front of me right now, but when I get home in 3 hours, I can post the relevant portions of it. I think that the Network services portion of it say something similar. The basic idea is that nothing can access the Server service without a license. That includes any NTCR or Basic Authentication requests.
On an off-topic to this thread, but relevant to the article, I think that Mr. Nash could have chosen a better example than selling t-shirts from his secure web site. Then again, he may give out NT accounts explicitly for the purpose of that; he'd be a fool to do so, but who ever said that people at MS have brains.
Talk about someone who doesn't 'get it'. HELLO!?! Novell is not the competitor here. Novell is not growing exponentially. Linux IS.
Well, that's the Microsoft line. But really, what, exactly, is it that we'll get from W2K that NT4 doesn't already have? Oh yeah, one operating system for the home user and business user! Nope, that fell out months ago. Clustering support? Nope, they dropped that out. Oh, I know, more stability! That's not what the beta testers are saying (when they can slip some news around the NDA they've signed).
The change from WfW - good comparison point there, a product so unsuccessful that Microsoft people internally were calling it Windows for Warehouses - to NT4/95 was a complete new user interface. Sure, THAT was a big change. I see nothing in W2K that's as dramatic as that.
You'll probably reply with a dizzying array of Microsoft specific acronyms that really don't mean anything in the real world.
I've heard that W2K has better management tools. It's about time. MS has been promising for years to have good remote administration, something that every version of UNIX had with X forever. X is also the 15 year old solution that Microsoft reinvented with their Windows Terminal Server stuff too. Not that MS wanted to do Terminal Server, the success of Citrix forced them to do it...
Other than this, what's the big deal with W2K? Directory Services? LDAP and NDS are there already.
W2K will SOMEDAY have 64-bit and scaleability, and SOMEDAY will have better multi-media support.
All in all, the W2K release is a big yawn. They failed to consolidate their OS offerings between home and business, the whole raison d'etret of NT 5 (remember when it was called that?). With the exception of better remote administration, a problem that everybody else solved years ago, there's nothing in W2K that couldn't be covered as an add-on to 95/NT4.
And, it's, what, 2 years late? What a laugh that MS is saying "On time and in stores Feb. 17".
Who's saying that? What I'm seeing people say is that it's armageddon for MS.
Oh, I get it, people like you actually believe that MS and "web-life" are one and the same. The mantra is "There would be no Web without Bill. Everything that's good about the Web is due to MicroSoft. Microsoft has legitimized The Web, Perl, HTML, XML, SQL and made them available to the masses. All praise to the innovators in Redmond."
I know micro$oft is pretty dumb...but honestly? Would they do that? Because i can think of plenty of organizations that would LEARN linux, BSD, what have you to save thier paychecks. Because that is the only place the money for that (if they decide to use it) is going to come out of, at least thats what i reccomend.
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
Burning babies and eating houses makes for a much more interesting picture. ("Those ARE bad men!")
...
I used revolutionary because Win 2K is a *total* rewrite. It doesn't include ANY code from the old days. 95/NT4 was revolutionary as it isn't really a fancy dos shell, ala WFW. New paradigm, in a way. (Yes, we could debate 95 really sitting on top of DOS...)
Linux is indeed revolutionary. But not (say) Red Hat 5.1 to 5.2 or Windows 3.1 to 3.11
Basically I consider MAJOR revisions to be revolutionary, just because they tend to have new feature sets and/or new code.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
I don't see whay Debian has an advantage over RedHat here. I have been using autorpm to perform automatic updates in exactly the fashion you describe on RedHat systems that I administer.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the article say that the owner of the Win2k box, instead of the owner of the client, needs a license when you try to access it with your Samba box?
0x or or snor perron?!
I'm not so sure about FTP access though as the IIS FTP server requires a Windows username/password to provide services even to an anonymous FTP connection. This might be a CAL situation, it might not, I'm not a licensing expert so I'm not 100% sure. Speaking of which, how many real experts are reading this at the moment and can provide some much needed insight into the nature of the license, not just the typical knee-jerk anti-microsoft reaction?
You just have to love /. where the motto is, "Our free Open Source FUD campaigns are far superior to any centralized marketing department FUD." Every time microsoft does something, we open our mouths and start to babble chaotically about the evil empire. It really is a discredit to the supposed level of intellect possesed by the average /. reader.
[ no I'm not a Microsoftie afraid of losing the coveted sheen of their newly minted MCSE or some other such nonsense. I could care less about MS, but I want the real deal about the W2K license, not some half-baked reactionary blathering. ]
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
Samba is not illegal, and nothing MS can do (well, almost anything; they could change the license to allow for only MS clients to access services) can change that...
Interesting comment here...
I'd be tempted to call this commercial suicide if they did.... But they are free to do whatever they want.
On a broader scope, getting a CAL would also apply to any other OS trying to connect to W2K. This in itself may discourage people from switching.
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
As anyone who has read my previous posts knows, I'm not a huge fan of Unix in general (on a personal level, my employers mission ctitical system is a Unix box) butI only have one thing to say about MicroSofts' new pricing stratagy:
Linux will rule the e-commerce world.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Just because my dad's 1934 antique Ford works doesn't mean he has no need for a more modern car. It works. When he can find leaded gasoline. When he chooses to cruise short distances without a shoulder seatbelt. Etc.
Any new version of Windows or any other OS will have some new features, and some new quirks that will have to be worked around or accepted; if you can't accept the quirks, you can't have the new features. Nothing surprising here. But the solution of "making do" with the status quo... that doesn't sound like the slashdotter nerd's approach to the world.
[
We all know that businesses are going to buy Windows 2000, simply because no one ever gets fired for buying Microsoft software. However, the Web user access fee of $2000 for 50 users will make many small to medium sized business balk. I think that a jump in Linux or FreeBSD will come as a result of many companies rethinking their remote user and web server strategies. Why pay two grand on top of the Operating system and Hardware when you can purchase a faster server of a couple of good workstations for the same amount? Open Source software is going to become more popular.
I won't predict bad things for Microsoft though. It has enough large corporate customer who will deploy it out of some deranged sense of innovation. It will make money but it'll lose ISP's and web companies.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
No, it's not $40 per authorization.
.57 cents per authorization.
Let's say that they use the system for two years, and in that two years they average 20 authorizations per hour (which is a very low number -- a more realisitc number would be 1000 per hour, but I'll use 20), so that means there were 350,400 authorizations in that 2 years, which is equal to a cost of
I think that is quite ok.
I feel sorry for all the companies that base their business futures on using software from a monopoly, NOT!
Sooo... Apache can handle 20 concurrent (authenticated) users for free... and according to MS you'll need to pay for the "Internet Connector" to get the same thing, except that it'll cost you about $2,000 to do it, NOT INCLUDING the cost of the server(s)!
I have the distinct impression small businesses and web-design shops are going to take the brunt of this new pricing scheme.
--
A customer subscribing to Microsofts volume Open Level B license, for example, deploying 10 Windows 2000 servers with 100 PCs would pay an upgrade price of $22,800; $17,500 for the desktops, $3,700 for the servers, and $1,600 for the client access licenses.
...umm, first off, 1 server for every 10 clients?! The TCO equation goes out the the window on this... Not included are the extra licenses for the internet package (whatever), exchange...
But, $230 for each employee isn't too bad; but, wait, there is also Office... It seems like it is starting to hit that magic 2% of salary if you include EVERYTHING... and that is just your microsoft tax!!!
Wow. Be afraid!
(or not)
You are correct about the IUSR_MACHINE account. However, unless explicitly done by using a DOMAIN user, IUSR_MACHINE is a local account on the IIS server. However, that account is for anonymous access, and from the article, I don't see that MS is concerned about anonymous access (yet). The other interesting thing to note about the basic NT services is that (at the moment) multiple connections from the same user are considered to be using one CAL (i.e., if JoeUser is logged in to 4 workstations, and has his home drive mapped on all 4 machines, he's only using 1 CAL. If JaneUser telnets to a machine, and gets her home drive mapped (whoa, that could get hairy), JoeUser still takes one CAL, while Jane takes another). What I and apparently several others believe here is that Nash picked a bad example, and that only NT-authenticated web connections will be "taxed"; in other words connections using HTTP or NTCR authentication. CGI authentication and the like will remain "anonymous" for the purposed of CALs.
No flames, please, but this is coming from someone who is in the process of preparing for the IIS exam, and over the course of the past couple of weeks, I've shoved this into my brain any way I could. Hey, as long as PHB's are still willing to "not get fired for buying Microsoft", I'll gladly take their money in my left hand and shove sh!t up their a$$ with my right.
ms
--
I post this as anon, since the login doesn't work today... someone knows why?
Now just to kick back and watch the stock price go up up up!
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
You still have to pay the salary of the NT admin too.
You still have to pay to burn CDROMs to install multiple machines.
FTP, NFS, WWW installs of Red Hat, along with the software RH is working on to automate multiple installs == non-issue here too.
You still need to pay your support staff.
For any OS at all.
Start adding up those costs for any OS, and $200 per seat quickly becomes a drop in the bucket.
But it's still $200 per seat MORE. And over enough users the cost adds up.
You are right, however, that the costs for a Win shop to move to Linux could potentially be on the high side -- but then again, so is the cost of being on the upgrade treadmill from MS.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
I'm confused. I read the article, and they want you to PAY to allow people to get at your MS-hosted web server?
I presume "authorised access" means some sort of authentication. Like you'd do if you had e-commerce data (shipping addresses, orders, card details etc) stored there.
Are MS really trying to give up the e-commerce server market? What incentive is there now to use a Win2K Web Server, instead of a Freeware/payware UNIX based server? What about if you use a non-Win2K authenticating web server on your Win2K box (e.g. Apache)? Do I have to pay MS under those circumstances?
I don't understand. I must have misread the article.
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Again, a personal jibe when you know nothing about me. You're just being rude.
I only know you from the things you say. I know you read too much MS bull, in this case about release dates, and believe it.
Check out this article from June of 1998. It contains this paragraph:
Let's see, a timetable used in 1996 showed NT5 being out in late 1997. You're right, it's not 2 years late, it's more than 2 years late.
Microsoft is trying to squeese every monopolistic dollar they can. even with security, how can you charge for every web visitor?!? the size of the web makes it hard to control, what ever happened to flat fee unlimited user servers? (commercial) I know we have Linux and Apach which I use, bit let's face it, much of corprate america does nto trust a free operating system a free server, with the source out to the open so that "Any cracker can look at the source and find holes" man still prefer a closed source (ie. M$) WAKE UP DOJ! at work we use Novell and the licensing is the same, we're stuck with a a so many user license and have to bump people off to logon at times... why, because they want to charge per user connected! whay does it matter to them if 1 or 1,000 people connect to their software, they don't have to work any harder so why should they get paid more. but that's the way the suits want to do it. If people will pay for a per-user license, they will charge it, BUT if companies started looking at lower costs alternatives/Open source, then I would bet that Microsoft, Novell, etc. would start charging flat fees in an effort to compete!(BS)
If you pay, they'll charge!
Chris
Why do people bother wasting moderation points on First Posts? We all know that a post saying "yey I'm first" is pointless, so surely it would be more use to emphasise the good posts than class something as being Offtopic, which is blatant anyway?
Just my thoughts....
I was just thinking about how computers are falling and falling in price. With windows staying a static price (and now *growing* in price) and it becoming a larger percentage of the total price of a PC.
How will this affect the price of a computer with w2k? Will it really cost more than an identical machine with win98?
--
rJames.org - illustration
'Cuz doing that would remove the single biggest (IMO) reason for NT server users to not use Unix for web serving...
MS's pricing scheme was weird and expensive in the past, nothing new there -- now if the wind in their sails (ASP) could be stolen, that would be a different matter. I don't think this minor change in pricing will have much of a negative impact on NT server market penetration, it's the Other Stuff (tm) that could yank the carpet away from under their feet. (damn, I am just overflowing with metaphors today...)
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
"NT5 ... when it finally ships in the middle of 1998"
Computing, 6 November 1997
"I really think we're going to hit the beginning part of next year"
Steve Ballmer, quoted ZDNet, 8 June 1998
That's right, two years ago the press were telling readers that they'd see NT5 LAST YEAR
Last year, Steve Ballmer told ZDNet he expected Windows 2000 on shelves early in 2000.
It's all vapour until you get the CD in your sticky fingers.
That's OK. The marketing guy who doesn't understand the value proposition with Linux/Unix won't be around much longer. Or, you can set a reliable Apache server up for the marketing guy at the next company when this one goes under because they have marketing guys with their heads in the sand.
Sounds like competition to me!
Do you NT guys don't think at all? Oh, sorry. You've got Mocrosoft to do that for you. Getting worried about your job yet?
Marvin the martian? You know that the Internet is a global network and cultural references don't travel real well?
My "circle" is at a conservative estimate, an exponentially increasing 10 million users.
P.S. I don't huff and puff. I just get the job done.
You sound more angry to me. Is that because you're going to get ripped off and you know that you're going to get ripped off and your boss knows that you're going to be ripped off too?
Deleted
You don't like this? Go find a "C colon backslash" web site.
We don't feel threatened by MS, they are an irrelevance.
Deleted
So you just go to Control Panel and increase the number of connections allowed. Or you hack the registry. The point is, is this legal?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I don't know if it is. IANAL, but if you change the registry keys you are modifying the software, which might not be allowed under copyright law (even if you don't copy or distribute the resulting derived work). Using a highlighter in a book is more like adding extra information to the book; if you wanted to, you could write on a separate sheet of paper 'highlight the first paragraph of page 44'. If instead of using a separate sheet you actually write on the book's paper, that's just 'mere aggregation', as the GPL would say. The same would probably apply to making changes or corrections. But changing the Registry, you totally overwrite what was there before.
Maybe there is a legal difference between adding keys to the Registry (aggregation), and changing the value of keys which are part of the copyrighted Windows software (modification).
If I were a huge multinational using Microsoft software, I would certainly ask my legal department to check whether you could get away with this, and if they said yes, I'd be fairly sure that my company could withstand a lawsuit, frivolous or otherwise. But Microsoft could probably refuse to license software at a discounted price (have to buy it retail) or stop offering support contracts, so you wouldn't want to annoy them.
I don't know. Any copyright lawyers reading Slashdot?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
No, I meant legally enforceable.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
If the suggested price for the home user is $219, what is the OEM price going to be, maybe $100+ for good customers (Gateway, Dell, Compaq)?
And how are these companies going to make money in the sub $1000 market when over 10 % of the wholesale cost is the OS?
I think MS might be pricing themselves a little high here, they're creating a real market opportunity for a cheaper home OS, be it Linux, FreeBSD or even BeOS.
George
...and as the gun slowly drops to the floor, and triggers shakes, and a bullet is shot into the foot...
Yes, there goes M$ shooting itself again. And while this is a puny cost to large corporations, a lot of local isp's and small web hosting companies won't go for this. In fact, apache in linux and/or freebsd is already the largest used server by small hosting companies. This will just make more look at it. Believe me, even though it's a small amount of money, realize that companies are constantly looking for ways to cut back costs, if NT5..errr...W2k is going to raise costs, they will look at alternatives, whether they switch or not, they'll look. It's exposure, it's the same thing Pepsi and Coke pay for on large billboards - and it's good for us. With this, M$ just nailed another nail into it's server-os coffin.
...and as a pool of blood slowly gathers on the floor, and falling down to the knees in agony...
Couldn't have said it better my self. As the price of maintaing the status quo goes up, the up-front cost of switching to an alternative goes down. :)
I love it. I just hope we see a whole lot more switching taking place. And I, for one, will do what I can to help that along. :)
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
(Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 06:57 PM November 2nd, 1999 EST
lesse, assuming a candy bar cost $0.40 when NT was released...
4000/150 = 26
0.40 * 26 = $10.40
Wow... Even tolberone chocolate doesn't cost that much...
Chocolate bar price increase (real):
0.8 / 0.4 = approx. 1 times increase...
That's great, except your still getting the same chocolate bar you could have bought for $.40 back then. Comparing the original WinNt and W2K Advancaed Server is like comparing the very first Linux kernal with the current one....there is no comparison (yes, we all know Linux is free, but this is just a comparison so chill). Anyone who thinks W2k Advnaced Server doesn't have at least 20X the functionality of WinNT is fooling themselves.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
You are, of course, free to not trust CNET (with good reason).
Of course not, but don't go jumping to the conclusion that the only authentication mechanism that Microsoft is talking about is NT Domain logons. They most likely chose their vague wording for a reason.Again, the fact that Mike Nash himself used e-commerce as an example where this licensing would apply should tell you that it will encompass more than just Domain logons. As much as you might not trust CNET's reporting, I don't think they would have made up the quote from Nash.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Since most of the stuff I have seen about Windows 2000 implies most sys-admins aren't exactly thrilled with it Microsoft has decided to take the brillant strategy of increasing the price. This will doubtlessly decrease anyone's fears about the stability or usefullness of the OS since obviously since it costs say 4 or 5 times as much as Mac OS 9 or an official copy of Red Hat it must be 4 or 5 times better right? I mean that is how our competitive ecoonomy works...you pay more for a better product. So why if Windows 2000 is 4 to 5 times better then the competition are so many people unwilling to use it? Maybe it says something about how competitive the OS market is.
The best thing that could be done is if every person did their own independant CBA (Cost Benifit Analysis). Show the costs of upgrading or using Win2K where your company currently uses NT,95,98 etc.. Then show the cost of going to Linux. Include the cost of the OS, the licensing, costs for applications etc..
In the case of going to Win2K you have to look at the cost of re-purchasing just about if not ALL the applications (this probably will include re-purchasing the licenses for them) currently being used. As current version won't work with Win2K. Then you will need to put in the "new" licensing for Win2K. Oh don't forget the time and effort to do the upgrade for all serves and desktops within the company. Then the time to train people how to use it (if needed).
For Linux you won't have it so bad. The cost of the OS. No cost for licensing. The cost of some applications. (Star Office, ApplixWare or WP or some such thing). The time and effort to convert. and you will have to include the time and effort to train users though.
These are just some of the things to consider. But there would be more involved. But if enough people that work for companies that are heavily entrenched in M$ products did up some GOOD CBA's on Win2K and say Linux and submitted them to the upper suits I think that more awareness would be brought out on this. To the suits and the ban counters cost is everything. It all comes down to the bottom line $$$$$$$$ and profit.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
i could *build* my own computer for that much, and it would still run linux faster than W2k.
When WinNT4 was going into Release Candidate stages, there was the same sort of situation. The Wksta version would limit itself to 10 concurrent tcp sockets, while the Server version would allow any number of sockets.
There was a huge stink about such an arbitrary differentiation, and MSFT dropped that distinction before they shipped WinNT4.
Do recall that Windows 2000 is Windows NT 5.0, not Windows 98 +2. They assume you're in a deep pocket corporation with 30+ employees, a computer room for your T3, and an additional ~$1 or $2k per overpriced Compaq is just a drop in the MIS budget.
Being a tiny shop myself, I am not happy to hear that MSFT is announcing this plan again. Linux and AMD may make for a nice cheap server box, but I don't have the cash to afford a dedicated second box for that, and my business is in Win32 app development. If I can't serve a little HTML from the same box on which I write code, it'll be a problem.
[
For some reason the link given in the article doesn't work for me. Even if I go to www.news.com and search for the article, I get a link to the article, but a broken one.
Did Microsoft make them pull the article, because they don't want the news to get out yet?
Worked for other schools like MIT.
I have to return some videotapes...
Looks like lots of people are getting logged in. It did take a bit of time, but when doesn't /. take a bit of time these days?
Microsoft has always had issues with their pricing. They kept changing the difference between per seat and per server licensing in the past. I've been administering NT 4 systems for years and I still don't understand their existing pricing.
The key here is that the cost is per SIMULTANEOUS user, end of story (if I read the article correctly and believe it). Microsoft will change this due to pressure in the next six months, but that will only cause much less understanding and many more headaches.
Note also that the article says a different license is needed for each AUTHENTICATION, which, if you use any Web Server but Microsoft's, doesn't have to be integrated to Windows security... so Windows 2000 won't be doing authentication.
It's not the price for Windows that went up because of web users, it's the price of IIS with Windows authentication. It's easy to switch to Netscape's internal authentication, and Microsoft can't charge you for that... it's also easy to switch to a Linux-based web server which is what I'm going to go recommend right now.
Just remember everyone: Moore's law holds for software and hardware EVERYWHERE except Microsoft... 10 years, more expensive, and just as slow as Windows 3.1.
How is this a blatent anti-MS topic? Licensing concerns, especially when related to internet sites and potentially affecting everybody, is a pretty fair topic. I see not one negative comment about MS in the summary. So my question is: what's with all the obvious anti-non-MS trolls who are posting these days? The past few days have seen the most unbiased comments I've seen in a long time (relating to MS).
To keep this on topic: the question is wether or not MS will price themselves out of the server market. I certainly feel as if this methodology will only promote free alternatives, or more lenient licenses.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Personally i find Microsofts pricing relatively attrocious, bur lets face it, they can get away with it!
Now, undoubtedly this will cause some companies to move to Linux, but not many. Microsoft may realise that Linux, still not usable as a server in all circumstances, is still not a major threat. As such they will not attempt to utilise a "competitive" pricing plan until Linux is able to do *everything* and more the Windows can. At this point they will do one of two things, lower prices, or start churning out an even better product (im betting on the lower prices myself), but until then they see Linux as the threat it isn't (which may be stupidity on their behalf).
Still, they must realise that charging so much will encourage piracy.
Only time will tell.
According to the barely rewritten press release article from Reuters, Nash said Microsoft still undercuts prices of rival systems from Novell Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc by more than 50 percent in some cases, he said..
I think at this stage in the game, Microsoft can't get away with pretending Linux doesn't exist.
Everyone here is getting really excited over the expense a shop would incur to start an e-commerce venture with MS's new licensing scheme and plotting MS's downfall because of it.
While I agree MS is neglecting the really small Mom and Pop ecommerce site, I don't think it's doing as bad a job with its pricing as everyone would like to believe.
Everyone is freaking out about cost, but remember, a company shopping for a developer often only understands its true bottom line price once it's too late to change it. If a company receives 2 bids, one from an MS Solution provider and one from an Apache based shop, it's easy enough for the MS Solution Provider to tweak hardware and software costs to conceal the difference until after they've won the bid. Then when the site takes off, BOOM "Excuse me, but we need to spend another couple of thousand on licenses". Of course the site is a success, so no complaints come of it.
Anyhow, nonMS shops can certainly educate their customers, but no MS solution provider is going to do people that sort of favor -- and they *will* get away with it.
Scrappy
I'm not too familiar with American law, so I went browsing and I found a few references. I'll post them here so people can see what I'm refering to.
Contract Law & Cornell U.
"Contracts arise when a duty does or may come into existence, because of a promise made by one of the parties. To be legally binding as a contract a promise must be exchanged for adequate consideration. Adequate consideration is a benefit or detriment which a party receives which reasonably and fairly induces them to make the promise/contract."
The EULA can't offer you anything because you've already got the software. To make the EULA valid, they'd have to do two things.
1) Offer you something (free support, discounts, etc) and
2) make it voluntary, so that you could use the software even if you disagreed.
I don't feel like searching for all the references, but some contracts can be implied. That is, you go into a store, walk around, pick up an item, take it to a cashier, hold out money, get change back, and leave the store. Even if no words are spoken, you have entered into a contract. The idea is that it's plainly obvious what you are doing, you're paying for ownership of that product. They make an implied offer by leaving something lying on a shelf with a price on it. You make the implied acceptance when you offer money for it.
If the store was going to impose any conditions on your use of that product, they'd have to tell you beforehand. This is similar to how you can't just add clauses to a contract after it's been signed and expect them to be binding.
I've never been in a store where I've been told about the EULA, let alone as anything I'm going to be bound by. And they don't open the box to let you see the shrinkwrap license, or run the software to read the EULA, so you can't be said to have consented to the contract because you didn't know it existed. You can't be bound to a contract you don't know about. In some circumstances, you can be bound by ones you didn't sign, such as for purchase of an item, but you can't be bound by one you didn't know about.
The whole practice of having EULAs in software is borderline illegal. It would be fraud to try to convince gullible people that they've entered into a contract without knowing it and thus owe you money, it's borderline to offer someone a non-binding contract and try to make them think it is binding.
Using EULAs like this is just as underhanded and dirty as patenting y2k fixes that have been in the books for years, then suing companies that can't afford to protect themselves.
But perhaps the biggest reason MS will fail is because MS doesn't have the balls to compete like video games companies do. You underestimate Microsoft, it is a serious threat. Ruthless competition is the one thing that Microsoft has mastered. I seriously doubt that Sony, Nintendo, and Sega are as confident as you. If you haven't noticed, Microsoft's products don't necessarily have to be better than the competition to beat it.
Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
try
/* or some large number */
#include
int i = INT_MIN;
or perhaps
#include
int i = MININT;
or even
int i = 0;
while (i i+1) i++;
i++;
of course, that's getting pretty ugly.
--
bje
s where needed. :)
How big a hole will it take to bury Microsoft, anyway?
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Not only is it not obscene, it's actually a good deal in some respects. Check out http://www.msnbc.com/news/330293.asp
(Yes, it's an MS partner, but it's not like you can have non-biased news anywhere, including here...)
It's actually half the price to upgrade from older Novell (say, 3.12) to W2K than to Novell 5!
Also, I don't see the CAL as an issue -- just how many web clients are going to USE NT authentication? I think MS is gunning for the PPTP crowd here. That "EVERY USER" statement is a great blanket that folks who don't read the article will respond "THE MS PRICE NAZIS ARE BURNING BABIES AND EATING HOUSES!"
Sheesh. More smoke and mirrors, as usual from both the MS and the ABM (anything-but-Microsoft) sides of the house.
W2K will be as revolutionary to NT4/95 what NT4/95 was to Windows for Workgroups. To say that it wasn't revolutionary is just plain denial.
To say it's armageddon for web-life as we know it is just silly.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Basically, two things happen:
It's like clockwork, really. Cause and effect/drivel.
Never underestimate the amount of time that people are willing to dedicate to pirating software. I have faith that no matter what microsoft does, there will be *somebody*, *somewhere*, who will figure out how to pirate it so that all the w4r3z d00d2 can put it up on their FTP servers.
It seems like corporations have been fighting a losing battle against piracy ever since the days of the original King's Quest games. I understand why they do it, but I don't know what makes them think they'll actually get ahead this time.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Its 5 times as big as NT 4 so it MUST be 5 times as good! And i hear it only crashes/hangs/BSOD's once every 6 hours. You shouldnt be using your PC for more then an hour or so any ways. IF you do then you must be addicted.
I have to return some videotapes...
Just out of curiosity, is the per-seat licensing model enforceable? I keep hearing people say that because copyright law covers copying, not use, you can do whatever you like with software you have purchased. OTOH there was a law passed in the US giving legal authority to 'licence manager' programs.
So if you bought a 5-seat licence for Win2k and used it with 6 simultaneous authenticated users, could Microsoft sue you, and what for? Is the situation different inside and outside the US?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I can't say that I've ever paid for an MS product accept for Win 3.11 -- Which was better than 95 IMO. I really don't see alot of users forking out 219 bucks for an operating system. So when you buy a computer that has W2k on it are they going to hike the price accordingingly. Maybe Microsoft has ties to some bigger computer makers trying to keep the prices of computer falling below $1000. I for one will not be buying this new release. Even if I was I would wait til SP4 or something to come out. I'm glad there is Star Office. I might have to make this total switch sooner than later. All for the best I guess. Go LINUX!!
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
This got changed a few months back. Win 2000 is really now an NT replacement. There is supposed to be a 98 replacement next year.
Microsoft could sell boxed shit, if they wanted to. They'd still find a way to make money....
Wait a minute...
They do want to. Never mind.
Who said that abusive pricing schemes were signs of monopoly?
:-)
I'm sure people will appreciate it greatly as the end of the DOJ case is coming...
Go on Microsoft and we may love y2k
I neither own nor run ANY M$ Bloatware. I have several computers running MacOS, Linux, and BSD.
;-)
I have neither the need nor the desire to run any of M$'s OS's, but if I did I would certainly Not feel any need to pay for them.
M$ has consistently stolen every good idea they have implemented. Since the companies who created these ideas won't see any of my money, noone will.
Also, they have a monopoly. If I somehow needed to run any of their software, it would be because their illegal practices have created a situation where I am forced against my will to use it. Since they are so eager to make everyone have to run their software exclusively, they can damn well pay for it.
Fortunately I haven't run into such a situation. If someone sends me a document in their proprietary format I tell them to resend it in an open format.
Of course I feel a moral obligation to prevent someone from paying anything to M$, so if they felt they needed anything I do knoew where to refer them to get it free
---CONFLICT!!---
There has also been talk about MS maybe not required licenses by developers to create games making it more attractive to developers. But I don't think that will sway anyone. SEGA, Sony, and Nintendo have already made a name for themselves. They ARE the big three. Sony IMHO got really lucky when they entered the market successfully and they are a hardware company. I am a video gamer and I can tell you that new companies entering the field don't do to well. Look at all the failures, there are quite a few systems that never went anywere. There is a fan loyalty, I remember very heated discussions of SNES vs. Genesis. Neither side was likely to switch to a third competitor. Now there is the Sony vs Nintendo debate, and soon to be SEGA vs Sony vs Nintendo.
But perhaps the biggest reason MS will fail is because MS doesn't have the balls to compete like video games companies do. When the german Linux site posted the phrase "Where do you want to go tommorow?" MS threatened to sue. How are they going to react when Crash Bandicoot is standing outside their Redmond offices saying "Hey Billy boy! Get your little geeky butt out here and fight like a man!" or what are they going to do when Sonic the Hedgehog starts showing up at there golf games? The bottom line is MS wins by stabbing people silently in the back. Video game company go at each other tooth and nail and their not likely to stop just because the cowards at MS don't like it when people call them names.
If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at time," Nash predicted.
:)
Some people are saying that this only counts authenticated NT users, but this statement would that.
Well, Nash's keyword here is buying. Not browsing. Microsoft is charging for each secure (authenticated) connection. LIke when people hit the "purchase" button.
Microsoft is going to scare off customers.
I agree. There will be a lot of confusion regarding the licensing terms, especially if Microsoft's PR department doesn't play their cards right. There will be a lot of people who will mistakenly say that Microsoft is charging for everyone connected via a Web browser, when this is simply not the case. Hopefully it will scare enough people to seek an alternative (Linux and FreeBSD come to mind
My journal has hot
So, it's $40 per authorization? How many pron sites, ecommerce sites, etc are going to pay that much for each of their subscribers/consumers? Or will they add a $40 overhead charge? How many customers will that drive away? Looks like they're making linux+apache a more viable alternative for a lot of people simply based on cost.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Microsoft used to be playing it sly. Now that the antitrust is essentially (almost?) over, they must already know they won, and therefore just went back to their typical monopolistic practices.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
"There is no question they can price themselves out of that market, which would easily look to alternative [operating systems], like Linux and Unix,"
I find it rather ironic that Unix is now considered by some to be an 'alternative operating system'. NT used to position itself as the alternative to Unix, didn't it?[1]
[1] Apologies for the antropromorphism. No reason really, I just felt like saying 'antropromorphism'.
M$ product (first release, so it has an ant farm worth of bugs in it), costing more than a decent home computer just so you can have unlimited remote users...
--or--
A Linux distro costing less than the hard drive you put it on which has been refined over years of hacking AND costs nothing to host an unlimited number of users on an unlimited number of machines...
Which would you choose?
--
Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
TIME FOR AN INTERNET (BOSTON) TEA PARTY! mark FEBRUARY 17, 2000 as "internet tea party day" the day microsoft comes out with y2k, millions of people the globe over will protest the upgrade, and demonstrate their actions by deleting windows from their hard drives, and installing another operating system of their choice. the day we dump our microsoft OS's into the digital harbour, and refuse the microsoft tax! huge international installfests! web site coming soon. someone respond to: johnrpenner@earthlink-NOSPAM-.net if interested in forming something more of this, and getting some server space up.
Of course, realistically, Microsoft has spent thousands of programmer hours developing these proprietary products and making them all work together nicely.
What sad, is that often these products don't even really work together nicely at all. I know it well.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
This is important to figure out, because a dollar to a penny, Microsoft knows what they mean, and aren't just making up verbiage for the fun of it.
Another thought - maybe this is a Microsoft marketing trick. By ensuring that people NEVER run their computer up to maximum load, it'll never be possible to expose weaknesses in the design, or stress-test the system.
(Yes, this is still true for large companies with large numbers of customers. They'd have a proportionately more powerful server, which would STILL be rate-capped well below it's maximum load.)
No, it won't "affect" big business, and yes, they will have a "more stable" server, simply because they'll manipulated into setting it up that way. This won't help Linux or *BSD, unless companies insist on quality control. With QC, you can be sure that Linux and *BSD will come out better than W2K on enough platforms to seriously make a dent in Microsoft's sales. But, as I said, that depends on companies bothering with QC. No QC, no Linux.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think they mean it in a Intranetish setting.
Web User -> Web Server -> Database
is (in MS'es eyes) equal to
User -> Database
so they would like to charge for the "client" access to the database like a normaly licenced user.
I think i'll email the guy that did the presentation and ask him, and get back to you.
-Mike
symetrix. We are building a religion, a limited edition.
How does murder, rape, and the high seas have anything to do with software?
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
I expect Microsoft to still claim that their total cost of ownership is still lower for a business to use Windows rather than Linux.
It's puzzling how many pricy items they consider to be a negligible part of the total cost calculation.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
I just wonder, what will the big corporations like Compaq, Dell or IBM will pay for this thing to be preinstalled on computers?
$20 US ?
What i think in the end is anyone who will be buying the upgrade version will be subsidising the new computer-preinstall versions of Win2k. Anyone else have the same opinion as me?
hey, whats that tingly sensation coming from behind me? oh its microsoft trying to anally rape me! (I guess bill is practicing for when he gets thrown in prison) who do they think is going to pay even half that for an operating system? ok, maybe corporations that want a more "professional" OS, fine. But what about us home users huh? win2k is _the_ windows now. why the hell would i throw down $219 to upgrade something that cost me $85? microsoft is killing itself slowly and should lay off the hardcore drugs
W2K: Why $2K? Why not!
--
Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
People will use what is right for their environment... Win2K will be used by those who have a significant MS investment... Solaris (on Sun HW) will be used by those needing a stable robust enterprise environment, and Linux will be used by those who have PC's that can't run Solaris X86 or are too short-sighted to realize not everything MS has done is a Bad Thing (TM)....
When Slashdot started, it was pretty much a given that everyone had no use for Microsoft's rubbish, apart from playing games (I don't even use it for that). So, there were no real flamewars. For some reason, even Linux, BSD and Solaris users were able to get along all right at that time (for the most part).
Now, astroturfers and Bill Gates fanboys routinely whine about anti-MS bias. Get over it! You wanna read pro-MS stuff? Go to ZDNet.
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
NT is notorious for acquiring mysterious problems that invoke downtime and long, tedious sessions of trying to figure out what the proper chant is that will make the problem go away.
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Honestly? Charging for CAL's for web based traffic is just insane. If i read the article right that is. One company I worked for in the past hated per connection licenses on HPUX. Especially when a certain UNIDATA product would create a new tty for each process it ran. We had plenty of licenses for the users we had but the app was taking up the connections. People dont want to pay for connection fees for thier server products. Maybe I'm spoiled after running bsd/linux for so long ;)
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I for one highly doubt that SEGA, Sony or Nintendo are so much as breaking a sweat. This so called X-box doesn't seem to be getting that much attention in the video game circles and I know people dieing to get their hands on games like Grand Turismo 2000. In fact everyone I know is anxiously awaited the arrival of the PS2.
And lest you think this is MS's first attempt at the video game market I was just looking at an issue of "gamepro" from 1997. Apparently MS wanted to "innovate" the arcade industry by created a Win95 based arcade that would allow arcade owners to switch games easily and cheaply. I guess somebody must have told them that NeoGeo had been doing that for quite some time (a console system in an arcade box for easy and cheap switching) I also presume that arcade owners didn't take to the idea after repeated "This program has caused a general protection fault in module 340342:3428. Please reboot"'s had customers demanding their money back.
Why someone would want to pay 23K$ for things he'd get for free in other places is far beyond me.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
Customers confused about the previous pricing plan precipitated the change, said Mike Nash, a general manager for Windows 2000. "We found many customers were buying CALs when they didn't need them and still others weren't buying them when they did need them."
I think we can all see why this statement shows that Microsoft at least has a twisted sense of humor. Now, on to more serious things.
"If I decide to put up mikenash.com and I want to sell T-Shirts with my picture on them, for something uninteresting like me five CALs is all I need since I probably won't have more than five people buying at one time," Nash predicted.
Some people are saying that this only counts authenticated NT users, but this statement would contradict that. They are squarely saying that if you're going to have multiple people connecting to your system, you're going to pay for it. This is similar to news outsourcing where a company pays for a number of concurrent connections. They don't pay for all their customers, just the ones they'll expect to be connected at once. Now come the interesting questions. What if you use Apache as your web server and someone tries to connect. Do you have to pay for it? Can you charge for connections to an operating system? This doesn't sound like a feasible pricing scheme to me unless Microsoft is going to implement some sort of connection limiting scheme in its software (highly unlikely, although, like I said, they have a twisted sense of humor).
Microsoft is going to scare off customers. Either people are going to switch away from MS altogether or they're simply not going to upgrade (more likely). If MS's pricing scheme was iffy before, this one is even more so because it's not based on any real concrete numbers. HTTP connections fluctuate and who's to say that at any given moment you're not going to exceed that limit. Customers are not, under any circumstances, going to pay for connections that, theoretically, they will probably never use. Buying NT for a number of in-house stations is one thing. Buying it for people to buy stuff from is yet another.
The operating system should be scalable, not the pricing scheme.
From ZDNet: On the server side of the house, Microsoft is claiming it will charge half of the estimated street price that Novell Inc. charges for 10-user configurations. For Windows 2000 Server, a 10-user version will cost $1,199 and a 25-user SKU will run $1,799. Upgrading from older versions of NT or from Novell NetWare will cost $599 or $899, for 10- and 25-user versions, respectively.
Makes me wonder how Novell is going to survive this. They're selling a file+print system for twice the price of a full application server. Is NDS worth twice the price of AD? Perhaps -- but if AD works and is 'good enough', it's going to be compelling for shops that haven't implemented a global directory scheme.
The other point is that Microsoft obviously sees no real threat that Linux is going to steal their bread and butter file&print market. If they did, they would be more aggressive with 'unlimited connections' pricing schemes
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Let me clarify that a bit: Who in their right mind would use NT?
I mean, you're trying to apply rational decisions to people who are using something (NT) that they would not be using if they were thinking rationally.
So, yes, it seems quite possible that the kind of people who would use NT as a web server platform may well be using NT authentication. IIS/MS-SQL kind of steers you that way, too. The real question is whether this licensing applies anyhow, even if you're not using NT authentication (i.e., if you're using another auth scheme), which is not entirely clear. Or what if you're authenticating from another Microsoft-based source (i.e., from a table in SQL Server)?
Oh, and FYI, NT can take 24 hours or more to CHKDSK a large NTFS drive, under certain circumstances (I personally saw a 1.5 hour CHKDSK on a 4 MB partition).
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
A customer subscribing to Microsofts volume Open Level B license, for example, deploying 10 Windows 2000 servers with 100 PCs would pay an upgrade price of $22,800; $17,500 for the desktops, $3,700 for the servers, and $1,600 for the client access licenses.
And with Linux you can do all that for the cost of the hardware.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Remember, lots of people aren't ready to change. Microsoft's higher pricing will probably just balance out to the same in sales as say, 2 years ago. A lot of people are migrating to alternate platforms (alternate meaning the kind that work), but there are still a lot of IT managers out there who are going to reason, "We've been running Windows for x number of years, we can't migrate now.... Maybe in a few years."
:)
The more people Microsoft rapes, the more people will make the switch so to compensate, it looks like MS is just raising prices because they know most people will remain faithful. Remember that the biggest advantage to developing on Windows is that 90% of all computers run Windows. (To fully qualify this, that doesn't necessarily mean Windows+Windows will work. For instance, the company I work for runs an Exchange server that cannot be accessed by MS IE, but can be accessed by Netscape
I know they don't have my vote, but I don't think most IT shops will want to switch over this amount of money. Of course, the MS trend is to raise prices ever so slightly every year - more people will eventually catch on, but for the time being, MS is not going to be hurt by this strategy. They will probably even turn a profit. Some people will switch, but most will stay... or it least, such would be my guess.
That's what I read, yeah.
They license what you can use the machine for in a traditional server sense. They simply want you to fork out the $$$ if you want a server instead of a workstation.
They don't want to prevent you from connecting to stuff.
I am running Win2K RC3 and it seems stable!!! Yes Stable!! On a P2 350 I succsefully played Q3 while Maya was rendering.
Gotta go now and change the underware I just shit in.
I may be reading this wrong, but what does this do for unix-based Windows interoperability software like Samba? Will a Windows 2000 server reject my smbclient because it doesn't have a Client-Access License?
Or is this a "soft" limitation which isn't enforced by the server?
--
Didn't think I'd ever see something so patently false and just outright wrong on slashdot, but I guess I've been proven wrong. I think the Anti-Microsoft sentiment's gotten a bit overstrong.
FYI - no. You don't need a license to connect to an M$ webserver (yet). However, if you are using ANY Microsoft service on Windows 2000 in a LAN/WAN environment from a Windows machine, you MUST have a Windows 2000 CAL (Client Access License) for each and every machine that will connect to it.
Microsoft *does* have a valid and clear definition of it's services. These include Windows Filesharing, trusted connections (ie; PDC/BDC-style), application services (ie; common network install of Office2000 (which are part of filesharing)), and any 'networked' MS application, ie; MS SQL. This does NOT include Internet connections to IIS in any form.
Yes, that does mean that Samba is now illegal according to Microsoft licensing. But that's it. You don't need a CAL for every person who connects to your website. Just the 95/98/NT/2k users in your domain.
However, this presents a pretty stealthy move by Microsoft. Basically, this licensing scheme says that you need to have a Windows 2000 license for a Samba box. I don't want Win2k - that's why I have a Samba box. But if I want to connect to a Win2k box with my Samba box, I need a license. Bah. Stealthy little bastards, those legal folks at Microsoft. Ah well - they can take me to court for it for all I care; not like I'm going to be using Win2k as a server *ever*.
Of course, standard disclaimer applies, including IANAL. Doesn't change my views, and nothing will. So nyah.
-RISCy Business | Rabid unix guy, networking guru
your company here.
shelby != ford
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Someone made a comment in a previous topic about reading Slashdot and feeling like They are reading Segfault. Personally, i see what they mean. The inherent "Dig-Your-Own-Grave" actions of this is just plain stupid, albiet painfully real.
Here's a Question for ya:
If Microsoft is "more evil then satan"
Then would Linux Be "Holier then Christ"?
Don't you think MS v. Linux flamewars here are pretty much a chicken and egg problem? When you post 30 stories on the Mindcraft Benchmark Scandal, you're going to attract a crowd. When the crowd is there, you're going to have keep feeding them to keep them happy.
Blaming the Windows advocates is a little silly, although I've seen some rather direct AC astroturfing here. Any and almost every thread on slashdot can and does turn into a NTSuxfest. Even this one - there is some rational discussion of the impact of MS's pricing on IT organizations, but by-in-large it's "$666?! Linux is free!!!", as if that fact wasn't known by every reader here. Boooring.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Once again, Microsoft is getting out of control with it's money hungry attitude. And worse yet, they are charging for outside connections. I think I'll be using Apache. It's free, and it works better anyway...
"So, are they going to price themselves out of business or make billions of dollars?"
Well, they've already done the latter (many times over), so maybe they're going for the former this time.
I'll tell you one thing, if I had Gates' money, I would find it hilarious to see how much I could screw people before they came to their senses.
Essentially, they are just charging $2000 for their webserver when you get down to it.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Okay, I think that the article made a little bit more out of the whole CAL thing that is really there. The pricing scheme still sucks, but it's not quite as bad as the article makes it out to be.
One thing, though: $219 for an upgrade from Win9x to Win2K? I get the feeling that this is a bit too much for even Microsoft to be getting away with. And Microsoft knows it.
I figure it this way: By making it look like Windows 2000 is meant only for serious, high-end computing, Microsoft fosters the image that only the technological "in-crowd" will have it (ha!). People will consider Win2K to be a status symbol. Then, blammo, within a couple of months, the price drops from $220 back down to good ol' $89.99. Well, for $89.99, who *wouldn't* want the latest software?
I guess it would be sort of akin to the people who put the latest kernel on their machine, just for the bragging rights-- not because it offers them anything new that they need or want. Except Linux is free anyway, so it doesn't matter too much.
Look out for the bait-and-switch... Microsoft has used it effectively before!
Microsoft cannot enforce this pricing model unless they move the entire web server market off of UNIX and onto Win2K. The only way they'll succeed in this strategy is to now leverage their superior IE browser market share to force a new proprietary XML based web standard down everyone's throat which would slough off HTTP/DHTTP and SSL for Office 2000/Frontpage content generation, IIS data transport, and SQL-Server for data warehousing along with the dependancy on IE for content presentation. If all these are tied into a single product line in interlocking dependencies, and this is used to present a web based front-end only available to Windows users, we will see if Microsoft can wrench Internet standards away from the standards bodies to force their monopoly from clients up to servers.
Otherwise, forget it. These prices represent a huge capital outlay for any organization, forget the whole "Total Cost of Ownership" argument, anyone in their right mind can see how expensive this will get for even a small 25 workstation office, never mind a 5000 client enterprise. At the lowest end of the "Open Level B license", for example, that represents about one quarter to one fifth the cost of an Admin... and Microsoft wants that money upfront as a capital outlay, employees take their money across the year in salery. In the face of Linux and FreeBSD competition, this just doesn't fly.
So, just how do they plan to actually make money with this pricing model, given that they're going to have to wrench the HTTP protocol out of the hands of the standards bodies, while at the same time the DOJ is breathing down their neck, and the rest of the world (see Korea and Japan) seem to be walking away from a Microsoft centric PC world?
This seems almost a desperate price raising strategy to maintain share value... yet it's ludicrus given obviously cheaper alternatives from even Sun. Let's face it, Sun charges excessive prices for hardware, not software. And they actually deliver reliability in the process... what does Microsoft have to offer in contrast?
I have a friend that is a /big/ beta tester for Microsoft. He was showing me what is actually going on. MS will not be able to get W2k out in time so they are releasing another DOS based version, Windows Millenium...which essentially is about as different from win98 as win98 was from win95. Once w2k is released, it will be non-DOS based and there will be a consumer version to replace Millenium
Now we we be able to add, "50x Too Many Users / Not Enough Licenses." To the wonderful, "404 Not Found," messages. Yeah Microsoft!
At least people could still install Apache!
-AP
Naturally they'll not only want to charge what the market will bear, but also continue to drive competitors out of business. Predatory: If there is competition, the products will be agressivly priced, 'dumped', untill competitors file for chapter 11. Once this occurs, consumers become dependant upon a single, lone monopoly vendor - they can charge whatever is necessary to satisfy Microsoft employees, stockholders and other dependants and interests. A steep demand curve is like gasoline or drug addiction - the price can go up sharply but demand remains strong because you 'gotta have it' to survive and thus will pay high prices untill you find an alternative, which takes time.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Under the Windows NT 4 licensing program, Microsoft required a CAL for every user accessing a Windows NT server for filing and printing services, but not for Web surfers inside the corporate network or those coming in from the outside. Beginning with Windows 2000 a CAL is necessary for each individual requiring authentication, such as would be necessary for a secure online transaction.
Everyone switch to Samba!
I've always thought the NT licensing scheme was
a mere scam. Just imagine Hotmail or some other
large site would have to buy a license for each user - Just the cost of license would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, versus a couple of bucks for Linux CDs.
If people believe MS, the "added quality" of Windows truely makes for a lower "TOC" than Linux+KDE/Gnome, then they deserve what they get - and the rest of us with more sense will be using your-favorite-alternative-platform and laugh our butts off.
My prediction: This new pricing idea will go down in flame - Microsoft's going to realize that it's not going to increase market share by increasing prices.
Microsoft never ceases to amaze me, with their larger than life solutions that deflate at the first sign of competition. $319 US for W2K, you've got to be kidding me. Everyone knows that Sun Enterprise, FreeBSD and linux are the most secure and stable server implementations.
I can only come up with a few reasons why anyone would buy W2K for home use.
1. The misconception some may have that if it says Windows 2000 its Y2K compliant as opposed to other versions.
2. The overt need to have more bells and whistles.
3. The dire need to run a Windows OS that will crash your system worse than an NT dword dump or Internet Explorer.
Linux and FreeBSD forever.
I mean really, as a web developer dealing with InterDev and Personalization and Membership, plus this new ADSI/CDO crap, what exactly defines "authentication?"
/. that I'm using to post this message. Would /. actually have to (I'm sorry for birtying /. like this, but it's necessary for the analogy) have licenses for every registered user?
We've got a couple of thousand users using MS's P&M authentication for custoization and session objects, much like this here system on
Let's see, mySQL, php and apache would cost me....
When you buy NT/2000 server you get all sorts of built in "free" software. You get a webserver, DHCP server, transaction server, and all sorts of other wonderful "free" things. Of course, realistically, Microsoft has spent thousands of programmer hours developing these proprietary products and making them all work together nicely.
At some point, all of those hours have to be made up somewhere, and the cost of the O/S and client licenses is it.
This new Internet connector license is really a funny way of saying that IIS costs $2000. I mean, if you are any sort of real business, you will be using some sort of authentication and have to shell out the money for the connector license. They just phrase it differently so they can still say that IIS comes free with their software.
Personally I like the average linux distribution where all the software is actually free in every sense of the word. You can even go out and download even more truely free software as much as you want. And how much is this costing you... Oh, about $50 if you don't download it yourself.
Now granted, you still have to pay to support the system on top of that, but let's be honest, you end up paying the same thing with MS's software if not more (and I bet it is much more). So it still ends up being a better deal.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
This does not mean people will take to linux in droves.
Business sticks with what it knows,
sheeple who want to work use what they use at work,
or they live at work.
W2K will sell to sheeple who either don't know any better,
can't get any better, refuse to get any better.
That and it'll probably be used to get more laws passed on pirating and such.
yes pirating is wrong, and software companies already have
admitted that they EXPECT their software to be pirated,
and so increase the cost to that of 3 to 5 liscences...
hmm... wonder if that's what their plan is.
All windows OS are evil, here's my comparison:
win95 OSR2: driving 75 in a 55 zone.
win98 1st ed: killing kids just for the "*splorch*" sound they make.
win98 SE: killing kids for no reason, just screamin "it's all about the benjamins!!!"
winNT: raping tree sloths.
W2K: serial killing, kleptomaniacal, fire-starting, bed-wetting, street sign vandalizing, tree sloth rapist.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't men they're not greedy
or out to get you,
or out to make you use a cusioned toilet seat.
For Microsoft. The way it seems works is, if you're a standard NT user then you have to be licensed; the special consideration is that they're making the same stuff you had available before from another NT box available through the web, or at least they're licensing it like that will be the result.
:)
If you're using NT in the environment Microsoft wants you to use it, this is chickenfeed and pretty typical -- like requiring licenses for people that either telnet or ssh in, rather than not limiting ssh logins. Of course, if you're using NT in the environment Microsoft wants you to use it, you might need that extra money for more support staff and backup machines
--Matthew
"This seems almost a desperate price raising strategy to maintain share value... "
Indeed...I speak out against our economic system all the time (and thus the stock market), but it is great for getting rid of companies that are unwilling to change. If you're unwilling to take a cut in profits for the short term, in order to improve your company in the face of changing technology, you won't be around long term.
Why do they call it that? Because they're completely surprised that MS-DOS made it to the Millennium? :)
:)
Seriously though... Win98SE is a completely bogus product. One huge bowl of unpredictable spaghetti code. Pull one strand to fix a bug, and some other strands completely unexpectedly twist and turn, creating five new bugs. That's how they made Win98SE. They tried to fix a few Win98 bugs, but instead created more new bugs. Especially USB in Win98SE is completely unpredictable; installing any USB device is like playing Russian Roulette. I work for the company that made the infamous USB device that crashed Win98 during that demo session with Bill Gates present, and I can tell you, our devices are doing that same thing on a much more regular basis with Win98SE
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
yeah... hehe... then people will think they are getting a discount
I had this explained to me by a MicroSerf at a recent con.
Web users only really count if your using the Win2k authentication scheme to verify your users, or if they are accessing a Microsoft driven database. (In there reasoning, the webserver is just a "proxy" between the client and the database)
IMHO, its not really as bad as it sounds. Im a linux lover and all but im hooked on win2k. With the use of profiles you can reinstall applications that are trashed by users on login *grin*.
symetrix. We are building a religion, a limited edition.
is that Microsoft's licensing model is insanely complicated now.
t m
c ing/DetailPriceList.asp
Go to this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/order/license.h
and tell me WTF is going on there. I really don't understand who MS is trying to serve (besides themselves, that is) by having a licensing model that DEC would have been proud of 15 years ago.
And $319 for a single user full license for NT Workstation? Are they taking the piss?
http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/eval/Pri
Home users are going to do one of two things:
1. Look elsewhere (BeOS, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD (right))
2. Pirate it. W2K retail sales are going to be so, so sad.
I think MS have started believing their own bullshit.
--
Peter
Why do they call it that? Because they're completely surprised that MS-DOS made it to the Millennium? :)
:)
Seriously though... Win98SE is a completely bogus product. One huge bowl of unpredictable spaghetti code. Pull one strand to fix a bug, and some other strands completely unexpectedly twist and turn, creating five new bugs. That's how they made Win98SE. They tried to fix a few Win98 bugs, but instead created more new bugs. Especially USB in Win98SE is completely unpredictable; installing any USB device is like playing Russian Roulette. I work for the company that made the infamous USB device that crashed Win98 during that demo session with Bill Gates present, and I can tell you, our devices are doing that same thing on a much more regular basis with Win98SE
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Raise prices and push W2K as an enterprise-specific solution; focus on getting fewer but bigger clients (that is, in a marketing POV);
Lower prices and fight Linux and OSS on their own turf, by making W2K an affordable personal solution.
But, well, MS has done none of these things. The prices are not atrocious; they're basically the same thing.
Now, solutions like BeOS, FreeBSD and Linux have long ago proven their reliability. It's beginning to dawn on everyone that they're viable solutions for small businesses and personal use, Web hosting, etc.
So the real concern becomes price of switching to OSS vs. price of upgrading. At least for companies already using NT it is. These companies will seriously consider whether they trust W2K, whether the price of the upgrade is worth it, and there's a good chance they'll stick with it out of force of habit.
But... It's the new companies that will provide the bigger switch of camps. They'll simply see the various options, and the price tags attached. And, well, you can't beat the 0$ Linux price tag.
MS had a chance to react, and I don't think they will. So I only see Linux and other alternate OSs gaining ground in the following years. Couple that with the assuredly poor initial performance of W2K (I mean, MS never gets it quite right before SP1), and unless MS comes up with a miracle, they won't regain ground with W2K.
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
This would be a Bad Idea anyways. Anyone who designs a system to allow outside Internet users to authenticate against some sort of internal user database is asking for trouble. Even the Apache docs chastise you for even thinking about using /etc/passwd as a source for *web* authentication. My guess is that they are talking about Intranet users connecting to some sort of authenticating Intranet web system.
t h
Why is this (outside authentication) bad? Anyone anywhere in the world can just hammer on your system trying to brute force common passwords.
Ref: http://www.apache.org/docs/misc/FAQ.html#passwdau
æeee!
Given that I can purchase an unlimited licensed Linux OS for $1.99 that makes their base system 600 times (or 60,000% ?) more expensive than Linux.
If I have a lot of servers, that is going to make Linux very much cheaper than W2K.
Deleted
- we have about 4000 visitors a day.
- a day has 1440 minutes
- each visitor looks at our server for about 10 minutes
- this gives about 28 concurrent users (=4000*10/1440)
- at peak times the number of hits at our server is two times the average
- so there may occur 56 concurrent visitors
- we have to buy 56 licenses!
Notice: we don't sell much, so we surely WILL NOT pay this many licenses. How would Microsoft control this anyway?!? Will Microsoft require to have access to our logfiles?ms
Let me see, someone logs onto your site to buy your widgets. This costs your company money. Do you A) Suck up the cost of doing business or B) Pass the cost on to your customers?
Sounds just like the taxes we pay on consumer goods. It just happens to be a flat tax for use versus a percentage. I'm sure it won't be long before M$ tries to change that though.
And M$ claims to provide what the consumer wants and that they are good for consumers. They're going to be costing me money even if I use Linux to go to a site to buy stuff!
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
W2K - act now! While supplies last!
I guess since NT4 & Win98, enough suckers have been born to fall for the upgrade snobbery that most of this is. About the only thing I'm looking for in W2K is an actual directory service - again, in true Microsoft® tradition, finally releasing something that has been in existance for the past 15 years, and a majority of people will come to beleive that M$ 'innovated' it.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I guess the only thing left to charge us for is to speak the name of their products. Maybe we will require a CAL to acces the web server and a CSL (client speech license) to speak of it. Think of it, each aritcle on /. will then be generating revenue for the financially struggling M$. If we refuse to pay the dues, we are hauled off to court for violating their license agreement. I think it's time to look harder at Solaris. Let's see now, it's cheaper, faster, more reliable, more open, more scalable, and runs on at two platforms (which is no longer true of NT).
There's also another factor at work here: M$ may be creating this high prcing strategy to make their rumored X-box seem cheap by comparison.
Originally, I had thought that pricing on W2K may drive those casual Windows users, who primarily use it for surfing and games to the PS2 or Dreamcast. INstead, they may besetting up the X-Box to look attractive by compaarison.
"Is W2K too much for your needs? Look into an X-Box...run all your Windows games for a fraction of the cost." If M$ includes a W2K client-access (or authentication, or whatever it ends up being) license with the X-Box as well, then they will potentially be offering something attractive to those casual Windows users that PS2 and Dreamcast won't have.
So, M$ is really trying to distinguish between the low-end user and the more net-connected user, and segment the market more.
Just a thought
--sugarman--
I'd like to see a performance comparison between a linux box, and a w2k (the w being windows, not Wolfenstein) server, in a mid size buisness setting (a couple hundred users) where the extra money saved on server softwareby using linux is applied to better hardware for the linux box. Therefore, the same amount of money is spent on each server overall. Since the linux box will have substantially better hardware, i bet it would beat the pants off W2k.
IMHO this is where linux can shine.
-Dan
P.S. W2k = Wolfenstein 2000, w2k = windows 2000
and w2k + o2k is worse than y2k
Completly leaving aside the actual topic of the article... did anyone else have a problem with Dataquest's use of the word "emboldened"? Come on... that just as bad as crapulant or embiggen! :)
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin