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Microsoft up to Old Tricks Again
Anonyous Coward writes "According to ZDnet UK News, Microsoft is up to its old trick of breaking competing products by changing Windows. This time it's NT service pack 6, which strangely has a problem with Lotus Notes. It denies users 'access to Lotus Notes on NT unless they have been granted administrative access to the
entire network.' So much for the 'findings of fact' putting Microsoft under pressure to stop this sort of thing." Related news: CEGadgets.com publishes the latest NT security hole.
"Old tricks" is right. Years ago, they used to say, "DOS isn't done until Lotus doesn't run."
it's a tradition now.
MSFT - jack of all software, masters of none.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
19,999 of the "users" were computer-generated, using an expanded "Hello World" script.
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)
... this is better, as it demonstrates the true heart of darkness in Microsoft; by being so insolent, they're just digging their own grave.
All that money has gone to Bill Gates head. Now with the imminent discipline by the Gov. I wouldn't be surprised to see Bill throwing a full blown temper tantrum, kicking and screaming on the floor.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Or maybe that's their hope. Infuriate him enough, and provoke him into doing or saying something rash, so that they've better odds in the appeals. It would be sneaky & underhand enough.
If that's what they're doing, you've got to hand it to them, for being devious and manipulative, above and beyond the call of profit.
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)
On the other hand, either way the end result is still the same in that Lotus gets broken, and that should have been caught in the extensive (yeah right) testing done by MS prior to releasing this beast on the world
I go to a college that uses a window's NT network. The sation in my libary only lets me run Internet Explorer. This is the only program can run, and that is run on this computer. It is a HP with a Pentium 2 and 64 meg of RAM. If I open more than one or two windows with Internet Explorer, it crashes. I have to use the task manager to kill the program. NT itself doesn't go down, but if Micro$oft can't get its own programs to run right why should they get others. Just my 2 cents.
I disagree that its a dirty trick. I think, instead, its an example of their continued negligence. They advertise that they have the widest software availabilty (unlike that hippie OS) yet they don't bother to test things. The fact is, if you make the OS, then everyone's software has to work. Thats part of the OSS movement that I never hear talked about - the API is right there, you can be sure if something is going to work, because you can see whats happening!
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
The PCWeek dead tree edition from last week had this info in it. I don't have an url link. It also mentioned that it caused problems with Compaq's Network Teaming when used with load balancing causing BSOD's. Compaq did issue a patch for that, though. One of the few times I have seen ZDNet recommend to delay putting it in until MS issues SP6 fixes.
Microsoft up to its old tricks? Has Slashdot finally sunk to such depths that it needs to create bogus headlines like these?
Please name me one operating system that has to, and in many cases succeeds in inter-operating with so many other systems. The weight that Microsoft carries and the scrutiny under which it carries that weight should be a warning to everyone who wants them out of the way.
Asinine headlines like this one from "Roblimo" only have a place with the rest of the quacks looking for "the smoking man" and UFOs. Because you are making the rest of us look like those quacks when you post that garbage here.
Here is to hoping that Atlas shrugs.
(And take note this post was written in Netscape, under Linux 2.3.x)
http://windows.scares.us
We've just installed the 6 on some test servers where I work, and they've caused more problems than they fixed.
While all of this is going on we are trying to go to Lotus R5. Which there have been some problems with that, too, without even trying to upgrade them to service pack 6.
It's definitely going to be an interesting New Year...
t
That it's just standard Microsoft incompetency, and not a conspiracy? I think it more likely that there's some bug in SP6 that breaks Lotus Notes, unintentionally. Some poor idiot just got a promotion, because his .dll patch breaks Notes. Anyway I think the one QA tester employed by Microsoft is probably really overworked. :-)
Lets see how they remedy this one.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Microsoft has been bullying other copanies for so long that it will probably be impossible for it to stop the process.
I don't know what Mr. Gates is thinking. During a time when you expect the Frankinstein Monster to hide from the rampaging mobs and their torches. Here we find it standing out in the open shouting at the top of its lungs.
Of course maybe Gates does not care. After all he is a multi-billionare. What does he care if his copany is broken up and chaos ensues. This is the man who made his money by stealing the ideas of others (Apple). He may think that we "Can't handle the truth!".
Hey what can I say i'm weird
Linux is little different than Microsoft in this regard. But on /. it's mandatory to hate Microsoft and heap praise on Open Source (no matter how bad the actual code is). Reality has long since been kicked aside by Open Source arrogance and ego.
This isn't exactly a security hole. It's the old thing: If you tell any program to store a password locally, it must be insecure, for this program needs to send the password and needs to decrypt it then. You could use something more complicated than xor, but it doesn't change the fact. The only issue is that they should have warned more explicitly before letting you store the password locally.
I wonder if the DOJ will still be willing to settle, noticing that even after the Judge's ruling they have not changed their predatory business practices.
Although it will be expensive for the government, they are going to have to monitor Microsoft very closely, to make sure they don't continue their predatory behavior. Microsoft has shown that if they are left alone, they will use any dirty trick in order to crush the competition.
On a side note, could this be grounds for a lawsuit from IBM/Lotus? They don't even have to prove they are a monopoly.
Expert Java EE Consulting
I am so glad there are alternatives to windows. You can run linux, BSD, Solaris, BeOS and others.
These are great times we live in.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
If it was deliberate, (which it probably wasn't,)
it would have been planned weeks or months ago.
But like they say, DOS isn't done till Lotus doesn't run. So does this mean they're still goig to have DOS hidden somewhere, cos from what I remember, Lotus 123 is still running fine.
Iain
first, I want to admit that I have not checked to see what it is that SP6 breaks in Lotus.
BUT: My company sells a piece of software that will not run (at all) if certain versions of Lotus notes are installed. We don't use or interface with Lotus in any way, we don't replace any system libraries.
So should we attack lotus for breaking our software?
Lotus clearly does things that are just dumb dumb dumb, so I am not suprised that small changes in windows-nt could potentally break them. Someone needs to show that MS did this on purpose before we point too many fingers.
(The details of my problem (not the SP6 issue) are that Lotus installs a buggy "hook-dll" that gets linked into all running apps on the machine (can you say virus) and it makes our app crash while it is loading. If you are familar with Win32 programming I am sure you have encountered these stupid hook dlls.)
If anyone hasn't noticed, Microsoft has also been working on it's own portable document format, which they conveniently call something else -
Microsoft Reader with Cleartype
I see M$ going after the PDF format next year.
I am sure a great running linux version of the reader will be available from M$ as well. =)
Who said "Never assign to maliciousness what cannot be explained by stupidity".
While the first link on this page could be explained as an MS consipiracy, the second points to the most likely reason. Namely, poor programming and testing.
When he does, it's not going to be the VIPs at Microsoft going on strike. When your product is entirely based on spin and marketing finesse, rather than a brainchild of productivity, creativity, and pride, you're just another looter.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
Referring to- 000/
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-12.11.99
this behaviour is a bug of Service Pack 6 and does not only affect Lotus Software.
on heise they suggest to use the AFD.SYS from SP5 as a workaround.
As much as I think Microsquid is evil... I don't think this was a targeted screw up. I noticed this problem with SP6 and Wall Data's "Rumba" about a week ago. I think it's just a matter of the SP did more harm than good.
Big suprise there
Is this a matter of arrogance, or merely incompetance? I don't really know... But what I do know is that things like this are bound to happen given the spaghetti-like nature of the Windows OS. When you've got random hooks running to and fro, with technical decisions being made for marketting reasons, as in Windows, it is more amazing that things work at all then that they fail in peculiar ways.
I know that my own company's products have had troubles with certain service packs, and Bill Gates doesn't even know who the hell we are. The problem is the monolithic nature of the OS and the determination of Microsoft to sacrifice real backwards compatibility for marketting reasons.
The cake is a pie
Well, this certainly puts Lotus Notes in new light.
In its wisdom, Micro$oft has now declared Notes a tool of such power that should never be wielded by ordinary users.
Apparently SP6 does exactly what it should: plug a security hole.
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
I love these petty little conspiracy theories you little bastards continously improvise. If a Linux patch broke some application nobody would whine these idiotic theories. It's a bug - Microsoft is embarassed by it. Why would they temporarily disable Lotus and release a patch? Are you mildly retarded?
I don't really think that MS did this purposely to take down Lotus. Especially because of the FoF. But this is just a situation that happens when you control the OS and the applications. You do things for your stuff and your stuff alone. You don't care if you hurt someone on the way. MS is trying hard to get companies to develop on their OS again, since most are scared to. If the get a good product, then MS will either buy them out (a good thing for them) or come out with a clone and destroy them (a bad thing). And MS is wondering why noone is developing for them. Of course they don't want Lotus to develop on their OS, since that competes with their stuff.
;)
Thank God that MS failed to buy Quicken. Its the only product left that I use on the MS platform. Someday (hopefully) they will port to Linux
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Microsoft is promising a hotfix.
I am an NT administrator in a Terminal Server environment running Citrix Metaframe, and this exact same error occured when you attempt to connect to the Terminal Servers. As far as I know, there is not a Microsoft competing product for Citrix. (ie, I don't think this is targetted at Lotus, just a general screw up)
This is just another bug, which is almost certainly not designed to destroy Lotus. Why would they warn Lotus users and then scramble to patch SP6 if this was malicious? Why would they intentionally do this with their position with the DOJ?
There's no excuse for it; we simply can't say that Microsoft did it on purpose even before they've been officially accused. Certainly, that's not to excuse their sloppiness, but I'm sure this is not malicious. They know very well that Lotus Notes can be run on many Unices, and they need the revenue. Now if the promised fix doesn't come in a week, then we can start the conspiricy engines. But for now, sloppiness is the only decent explanation.
And if they did it maliciously, or incompetently fail to fix the bug, who the hell cares? People can go on using service pack 5 until they have Lotus Notes working on Linux.
-Ben
I knew about this one over a week ago. Here is a description of the cause from the VNC mailing list.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Although with MS you never really know. Maybe SP6 had a list of current competitors it wanted wiped out. :)
Honestly though, where I work we were told not to install SP6 because it caused serious network connection problems with NT machines that don't have SP6 installed.
I think at this stage with the trial and all MS can do nothing which will not be taken as them throwing thier weight around.
Breaking Lotus might have been Just Gravy, but more likely was an accidental result to a proactive security fix.
I was reading about the SP6 fix earlier, and am desperately trying to remember which other application was having the same problems Lotus was but have so far failed. Essentially, Microsoft had been granting all user level applications raw socket access of some type--"raw ports" was the term being used. Likely, they discovered there was some security issues exploitable via this method.
Unfortunately, people were using this system for legitimate purposes, which caused a good chunk of programming to crash and burn all over.
We probably shouldn't be too harsh on MS for SP6--after all, how painful was the libc5->glibc upgrade effort? How many times did StarOffice mysteriously stop working?
That being said, it's extraordinarily likely that, with Microsoft's enormous test labs, they found that Lotus Notes broke with the new service pack, and intentionally neglected to inform Lotus that they'd need to put out a fix.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
PC Week article
It discusses the Lotus Notes bug in SP6. The MS web site says that a hot fix will be available next week.
One of the explanations forwarded by this article, is that SP6 denies access to TCP/IP ports including 1352, which Notes uses, to all non-admin accounts, but the article goes on to say that IIS (I think?) could use that port with no difficulty.
Unconfirmed, but I have heard that SP 6 also prevents Domino (the Lotus Notes Server) from loading as a service.
... that the for last few weeks, the microsofties seem to have come out in force to defend their master?
/. and ordered his minions to carry forth the windows banner and to battle with the resistance?
It's not just this topic either. All over the rest of the boards, you see a much higher concentration of microsoft FUD than before.
Prehaps bill has finally taken notice of
Bring 'em on....
Hey Lotus... about notes for Linux. At least you can rest easy that Linus won't try to rape you like bill has so many times in the past and present.
john
Imagine all the people...
Actually, Office 95 was very very good. Whereas I don't have enough experience with 2k to judge, and Office 97 was a piece of crap that needed 2 service packs and stil is nightmarish. Matt
You would have thought that a service release for any OS would under go testing by the OS vendors prior to it's release. If I were a server OS vendor then I would want to make damm sure that all the software partnerships that I had formed were not killed off by something as stupid as this.
I am very suprised that this service release ever made it into 'the wild' so to speak. They issue beta CD's to all their major partners before anyone else gets them. Surely someone somewhere noticed this before today! Lotus/IBM must be a major Microsoft partner and must have seen this! If they did and they can prove that they did then the DOJ case could get all the more serious for Microsoft.
I previously worked in Quality Assurance within the a life sciences company. Whenever any modifications were made to the QA managment system, the golden rule was test, test and test again. Okay, the service patch may well work great of the QA managment system but that's no good if it fucks up internal email!
I was under the impression that these sort of "accidents" or "mishaps" would rapidly come to an end following the DOJ 'Findings of Fact' but I was obviously wrong. Microsoft need to take a good long hard look at all aspects of every group in every department within each and every division of it's self in order to ensure that things like this do not happen again.
When all is said and done...wouldn't we all like to see an IBM/Lotus vs Microsoft law suit?
MSFT has been collecting the benefit of the doubt for so long (i.e., 'trusted', as in trusting the fox to guard the henhouse) that now the tide has turned and even HONEST MISTAKES are perceived as wilful and malicious anti-competitive measures.
Spread enough FUD and it'll eventually come back to haunt you!
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
----
----
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
If you saw the doe-eyed little Microsofties on C-SPAN dutifully tossing warm and fuzzy bunny softball questions at Algore and telling him how they come to work every day just to make the world a better place, you know this must be an innocent error on Microsoft's part.
Does anyone else remember, I think it was in the mid-eighties, when a PC Mag. column published a rumor that Windows was doing something to progressively decrease the performance of Lotus 1-2-3 and eventually crash it? Deja vu?
Microsoft: Making the World a Better Place, one B.S.O.D. at a time.
slashdot broke my sig
Domino runs almost everywere (NT, 4 or 5 Unix variants, OS/2, Netware), so I don't think it's NT version uses strange tricks to authenticate users. Besides, Notes/Domino authentication is a lot better/sophisticated than NT one.
;-)
AND, proposing that a NT admin would give Domain Admin rights to its users is plain NONSENSE. He would rather deinstall/not install SP6.
[GUESS MODE ON]
I do not think this has nothing to do with the server: very probably it has to do with an option the Notes client has, that is authenticate using NT services instead of native Notes authentication. That's a feature I personally never used, since it would be something like using telnet to logon as root when you have ssh up and working.
It's a feature Lotus put in in the NT version of the client to mimic Exchange features and to avoid an additional password prompt. While having one less password prompt is IMHO a Good Thing, using a knonw-to-be-flawed auth engine it's NOT...
Moreover, if you (as a Notes Security Admin) have issued valid passwords to your users upoun creation, then disabling the SP6 ruined auth method is as simple as changing an INI file line inside a text file.
[GUESS MODE OFF]
Ciao,
Rob!
P.S.
This article reminds me of the kind of quality you usually get from Italian economical/political journalists. Yes, this is quite an insult...
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
Is there ever going to be a separate Micro$oft section on /.? It would be nice for the some folks to get their fix in one place, and have highly applicable M$ stuff show up on the "front page".
This constant new old news gets, well, old. But when I have the time, I definitely like the laugh/throbbing veins, depending on the story.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
I'm using Office 2K right now.
At first it was great, they've really made
some improvements. (Althought the UI is about as usablable/pretty as one of those red-assed baboons....
Now (after a month), I'm weeping and crying for a return to office 97.....
(Mostly based on Access)
Myddrin
I can't get NT Option Pack to install without .dll errors on any machines with SP6, so Lotus Notes isn't the only one with problems!
I don't know if this was deliberate (I kind of doubt it), but if it's not deliberate it betrays an incredible degree of incompetance on Microsoft's part.
One of the reasons NT is so expensive is the heavy duty testing that goes into the product. Are we really to beleive that MS didn't notice that they broke a major application?
If they didn't notice, they deserve to be lynched for gross incompetance. If they did notice, they should have either 1/ fixed the service pack, or 2/ notified Lotus well before the release so Lotus could issue a patch.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
This is just another case of MS shooting itself in the foot. Some people have been criticising MS for their testing practices, but this was the first SP that I received a beta of in the 9 months I have been receiving Technet as a MCSE. See, we are all running Win2k beta, so we can't be testing NT 4 SP6 beta, can we?
/ recommended/SP6/allSP6.asp
Seriously, if this was an attempt by the evil empire to slap Lotus around, why on earth would they wait til now, when every major corporation has a complete lockdown in anticipation of Y2k. Places that would be affected by this should have in place major review of any system patches due to y2k lockdown.
MS sez they will has a hot fix available next week, which probably means if one were to call their support lines, one could obtain it free of charge. (Note that normally MS charges per call, but will release hot fixes to people who can prove their need for them. Then hot fixes generally are released into a post SPx dir on MS's ftp server, and then finally folded into the next SP. I have no desire to discuss people's woes of fee based customer support, experience with customer support, or MS's hotfix practice. I am just telling it like it is).
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads
That is where MS sez the hot fix will be available next week.
The real problem here is how MS implements changes. Some people have claimed that an article says that every port over 1023 now needs admin access to open. This may well be true, but MS's readme file says absolutely nothing about this. This approach to security is insane. Learning about security in MS products is a gotcha! endeavor. They make changes by stealth. aieee
matt
This kind of thing doesn't surprise me, ok it could be an accident, but SP6 also stops Allaire's Cold Fusion, which could be seen as a competitor to ASP (assuming ASP competes :-) This isn't the first time, and I can't see it being the last whilst the OS and Application sides of MS are in the same company. Splitting up microsoft won't hurt them, they've got enough cash to do whatever they like, but it will do so much more for us consumers who are suffering with their beastly software. (on the other hand Cold Fusion is coming out for Linux soon, bye Bill:-)
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
I am not affiliated Lotus corporation. I just have to support it on Unix and NT. I just grabbed SP6 and tried it with Notes, and here's my answer:
/etc/services` to get a fair listing of TCP ports, and get an idea of which ones are affected.
SP6 requires you to have Admin rights to open a TCP port higher than 1023. That means things like IRC, NFS, Ingres, SNA, Lotus Notes, and hundreds of other things are affected.
Since there's that "magic" number of 1023 in there, I think it's more likely a programmer gaffe than a "Let's Sock it To Them" attitude from Microsoft. Lotus Notes uses port 1352 to communicate. There's an RFC that lists all the services, but most of you can `more
Anyway, it's not just a Lotus vs. Microsoft problem.
Yes, it's a bug. One that disables a rival's product. Excellent work, no, no, really, very good.
The poor cook he caught the fits
And threw away all of my grits
You don't outright break the functionality of the product, you use more subversive techniques.
Making the product crash frequently for unexplained reasons is a better method, eroding the reputation of the product.
Of course, Microsoft can't even keep their own products from doing this, so they wouldn't gain anything by this anyway.
This Lotus Notes glitch is all unintentional on Micro$oft's part I'm sure.
This is kind of a carrot for those that are active in the slashdot community. It's not designed to oppress you specifically or in general.
It just seems that way. :)
Cheers!
...means no text.
Microsoft has published a fix for the problem.
and
--
--
"In Cyberspace, no one can hear you be sarcastic"
Do you know how many incompetent sysadmins on NT there are? Who'll just apply the SP? Who may not be running Lotus *yet*, but were considering it, and will now find that it doesn't work, and may just say "what the hey, let's just use an MS solution".
Microsoft supposedly tests its Service Packs thoroughly. Lotus Notes is one of the most important applications in the business world - do you really think they wouldn't test it? Of course they did.
They have a history of this kind of dirty trick - it's not the first time they've done this sort of thing.
If a linux patch broke some application, it wouldn't matter so much - you could see the source code, no one would be able to maliciously change things without everyone knowing. Repeat after me: Open Source.
I've read that they released a fix for that yesterday? Isn't this just old news?
Lotus Notes is obviously an obscure, rarely used piece of software, so why would they test it at all? Really. Its not like the alert said "Dave's Text Editor doesn't work on NT".
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be adequately explained by ignorance and stupidity.
I don't know about you guys, but the fact that some MS weenie used this scheme, and on top of that used Pegasus as the key, is funny as hell !!! MS is supposed to be the leading software firm in the world and they have no idea what is going out their door. All I can envision is a bunch of programmers giving clueless managers code that they have no idea how to test.
I, for one, am staying as far away from Win2000 as possible. It's clueless stuff like this fiasco that makes it impossible to trust MS. Without being able to review their code, I will never buy another product from them as long as I live. The sad thing for them is there are going to be a lot of people like me in the next few years who will apply that logic to business purchases as well.
MS is in a heap of trouble.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
I think the "Old Trick" that we should be watching for is what Microsoft does with Windows Online. The idea of having an "application server" for office applications can be pretty useful.
But according to The New Forces of Change at Information Week, Microsoft is planning to host Windows Online on MSN. This gives Microsoft the ideal way to leverage their applications monopoly so that they can supress competition in the emerging "application service provider" marketplace, and build up MSN. Of course, if people have the choice of signing with MSN and getting the newest versions of Windows Online all the time, or signing with another ASP that isn't so close to the OS source, which one are they going to choose?
Can you teach an old Microsoft new tricks?
Maybe the libc maintainers should remove unsafe functions like strcpy() and gets() from the standard C library. Force developers to use safer versions like strncpy(). Am I overlooking something here? Isn't strcpy() the most common buffer overflow problem?
.so library! Backwards compatibility is important, but sometimes safety requires a little extra work.
This would be a painful libc upgrade, but maybe it would be worthwhile. A possible upgrade path could be to leave strcpy() and friends in "libc7", but remove it from the headers. This would allow binary compatibility, but not source compatibility. Then in "libc8", remove the code for strcpy() and friends from the actual
cpeterso
And further--if Microsoft anticipates that it's going to get nailed anyway, don't you think they'll bitch and moan even worse than before? In other words, if they've been sneaky about sabotaging the competition before under the guise of "we're competitive, but we want one big happy family", and now they're going to be just one of the competition--you can bet your ass that they'll be even harder to deal with now. Screw Lotus Notes--maybe it won't even work under Windows any longer. I have to admit--I'd do it if I were them! If they don't have to play nice to cover their own asses anymore, then it's going to be a free-for-all.
--SpookComix
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
This just adds evidence to the theory the I've had for a long time: M$ is testing the theory that if you have infinite programmers typing at infinite PC's, eventually you'll get an operating system. I guess they're still waiting.
http://www.ddj.com/articles/1993/9309/9309d/9309d. htm or just click here.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Microsoft is so focused on rushing Windows 2000 out the door, how could they have time/people to test "every" NT application on new NT4 service packs? Remember how crappy SP4 was? SP5 was OK because it was much smaller, but I'm not surprised SP6 is crappy. The press is turning up the heat as Microsoft continues to slip the Windows 2000 ship date. If you were Microsoft what would you do, focus on NT4 SPs or Windows 2000? From a financial perspective, Microsoft will make big cash money with Windows 2000, while NT4 SP development time/people/equipment is just a cash sinkhole.
Windows NT is a huge house of cards. Microsoft can't touch the code without a few cards falling. Here is a great article by Nicholas Petreley from the now defunct magazine "NC World": Will Windows NT develop into a super-OS or an unmanageable disaster?
Also, to quote Microsoft's own Jim McCarthy in Dynamics of Software Development (an insightful but "fluffy" book, BTW): "Shipping a product is like watching a large-sized serving of quivering Jell-O. Gradually, the Jell-O slows its vibrations. But then you fix a bunch of bugs, and it starts quivering again. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the quivering subsides. You wait, focused and primed, for the instant the Jell-O stops shaking. Then... you ship it! And then it starts shaking again."
cpeterso
It's a bug in the way CE stores saved passwords. It has NOTHING to do with NT, let alone Winsock.
Hands in my pocket
Why are you so happy about MS? Do they pay you or is your loyalty more that of a football fan?
I shan't deny that Linux has its fair share of football-fan supporters.
No, it is not well documented because it didn't happen. Microsoft never released a product that deliberately broke a competitor's product.
It very funny that the very next post after yours contains a link to the Dr. Dobbs article that not only shows that it was done but how it was done.
The anti-MS folks are relying on the fact that if you repeat something enough times, some people will start to believe you. Unfortunately, their immoral tactics seem to be working.
No, they are relying on the truth. I've been an MS developer since windows 3.1. I've watched them do these things. I've seen them do everything they can to kill the competition. Well, now finally they are caught (the FoF, not this story which is probably just a mistake on their part) and good lord, talk about the whine that was heard around the world!
Have you read the history of the Dr.Dos case at the Register? It uses documents from the Caldera case... which is about... ta dah exactly what we are talking about.
I hope this help clear up any misconceptions the Microsoft marketing department may have caused you.
Myddrin
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Oh. My. God.
This is not rumour mongering. The situation with respect to DR DOS has been established already, and is being rehashed in a lawsuite brought by the makers of DR DOS (since acquired by Caldera).
Reference the consent decree (which Microsoft appears to have violated) as well as the Findings of Fact in the currently ongoing DOJ department.
Unfortunately, the Microsoft Astroturfers and Apologists are relying on the notion that if you repeat something often enough, some people will start to believe it. Fortunately, their immoral tactics aren't working as well as they used to.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
..has an escapee.
+&x
Sorry, but you can't officially bitch and moan until you get a login. Of course, then you'd realize that most of the people who spend time here have moderated at some time in the past and your whole post wouldn't be necessary. So politely take your outlandish request and ...
+&x
MS has released the 'hotfix' patch for the Winsock problem. You can dload either the Alpha or i386 versions, or read their Knowledge Base article.
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
This flaw is in Windows CE not NT people. So no NT security bashing on this one. If you let someone else have your CE PDA and they go snooping in your registry well then, why'd you let them have your PDA in the first place?
As a software test engineer it amazes me that the STE teams at MS let stuff like this by. And I must admit going to work for a company to fix such a glaring defficiency in testing is actually kind of appealing. It would definatly be a challenge!
Of course you have to *want* to fix it and I doubt MS is ready to do that.
> It's really hard to believe that this is intentional on the part of Microsoft.
/. readers are falling for it. Al Gore and the major media should be pushovers.
What planet did you grow up on? How is this different from what they did to DR-DOS, or their documented intent to make using Netscape "a harrowing experience"?
It's too easy. Make a "mistake", fix it a week later, cry innocent when they inevitable accusations arise... but most importantly, leave that corporate IT manager worried about being left in the lurch if he uses a non-MS product in the future.
Good plan, Bill. Even half the
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What idiots! They're in court for just this sort of thing and they pull another stunt like this! Oh yeah, Judge Jackson's gonna loooooooove this I'm sure. Sheesh.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
jdube is who I am.
If a Linux patch broke some application nobody would whine these idiotic theories. It's a bug - Microsoft is embarassed by it.
It's analogy time! A hypothetical guy (George) has a criminal record. He has been jailed three times for robbing a liquor store and hitting the cashier over the head with a 2x4. Each time he broke the glass door with a brick to gain entry.
Now, you come across a liquor store, broken front door, brick on the floor. Cashier unconscious and bleeding from his scalp. George is standing over him next to a bloody 2x4. What do you think happened?
Perhaps the story that George reformed, came across the liquor store, ran in to help the cashier and etc. etc.
Perhaps George would be more believable if he didn't have such a record.
Perhaps MS would be too.
However, my suspicion is that MS hardly cares any more whether its OS works well with anything other than MS products. Now that they have the dominant office suite, the dominant web browser, and are pushing MS alternatives to practically every other mass-market software there is, why should they care whether anybody other than MS can compete and develop stable programs for Windows?
They don't adequately test 3rd-party software compatibility, and the problem is that they can get away with it.
The ridiculously high number of API calls for Windows (and the fact that they're constantly increasing) only makes sense if they don't care about 3rd-party developers being able to keep up.
Think about it: if Windows didn't have the monopoly on desktop OS that it enjoys now, would anybody in their right mind choose to develop software for it? Would they really want to learn the 2500-or-so API calls, only to have an unknown number of them be obsolete when DirectWhatever 9.0 comes out in another month (timed to coincide with the splashy release of MSWhatever 1.0)?
Come on people, Microsoft has been doing this for years. They seem to have no ~real~ clue as to how a normal (read "non-Microsoft") operationg system works. I've run into various things, like TCP stacks that don't correctly work, for years. Blame this on ineptitude.
webmaster: http://amazing.divingdeals.com
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Well, It seems fairly irrelevant to me whether NT service pack 6 breaks Notes deliberately or accidentally. In the former case, it's criminal, in the latter, it's incompetence.
In either case, developers and users should think very carefully about their use of and reliance on software from closed source companies like Microsoft.
This problem would be almost inconceivable with Linux. I find more and more that closed source software simply cannot be trusted.
Deleted
This is the first reasonable question - and that's purely accidental. I ran NT Server 4 (SP 3-5) on a Cyrix 166 w/ 32MB RAM for over a year and never had a problem with IE or Netscape. I also administrate a lab of Pentium 100's with a wide variety of statistical, engineering, programming, and mathematical packages - along with web browsers and Office 97 and have never had a serious problem that was not a result of my own mistakes in accomodating poorly written programs.
Problems occur when programmers don't obey the API or use undocumented functions. Furthermore, many programmers still write for Win 9x, which desn't understand the concepts of multiple users and read-only systems. Programs written for 2000/NT behave very well - provided they follow the [ever changing, grr] API.
The problem isn't with Windows - it's the programmers for the platform.
Next?
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
1. You should never find out about a problem, bug, inconsistency, or discrepancy in a piece of software as you roll it out to all 100 to 1000 company desktops. This is what a testing environment is for. Therefore the scenario of, "...network administrators could be forced to grant users root access to a network..." is not likely to happen.
2. Software makers cannot test for all three billion or so hardware/software combinations to ensure compatibility. While Open Source projects are a good start they cannot completely solve the problem. A completely compatible OS or software package will come out just about the time that we all start using the same programming language and identical hardware.
Disclaimer: In the event that a totally compatible OS emerges it will be so robust (and bloated) that you will need a PVII 5000 MHz CPU with a terabyte of RAM and some sort of hard drive using molecular storage. Even then people will argue about whether or not it's written the right way, what language it's written in, and what motives are driving the person who wrote it.
3. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem and is providing a hot fix for it sometime within the next week. The problem is not limited to Lotus Notes but also effects other Winsock applications (which I found out on a test machine at work using an internally built mail system.) A serious criminal entity would create problems in less obvious ways and in the end not provide a fix for the problem. Do you really think that Microsoft would attempt, in one fail swoop, to destroy a competitor, alienate more customers, bring more negative press attention, while also inciting more legal battles? The point: this is probably more of a testing discrepancy on someone's part than a grand plot to overthrow the world for Emperor Bill.
4. Your way is not the Holy Grail. Being a third generation geek, I can pull from about forty years of experience. There will never be ONE way to do something. Use what is right for YOU and for YOUR business and try not to drag anyone down with your own personal and sometimes biased views. While Linux/MS-Windows might work for your seventy-something grandfather, it might not work for mine, and vice versa. Don't look down on someone or cast aspersions on him or her based on the software choice that they make, that's what works for them and they are not forcing you to do anything.
5. If you're smart enough to install and use Linux then you're probably smart enough to not buy a computer from Best Buy or Circuit City. In fact you are probably even smart enough to do a little research and then go to the local computer store and buy all the parts to build your own system, install your own chosen OS, and your own favorite software. What a concept! In the end you'll spend less, have a better system, be happier with the results, and will not be sitting around bitching that someone "forced" you to get a computer with an OS that you didn't want or need to pay for.
6. You have choices in your life. You can choose to sit and bitch about software companies that make bad software. You can complain about your project manager that refuses to see the benefits of Linux. You can gripe about the choices that everyone else makes. You can continue to see yourself as powerless. You can post nonsense, forget about grammar and spell checking (come on != common && they're != there || their), and insult peoples intelligence. You can cast aspersions on someone's character, genetic heritage, country of origin, or intelligence quotient. On the other hand, you can make a choice. You can be polite as long as possible. You can use a spell/grammar checker and think while you write. You can see yourself as having power. You can get another job where your ideas are appreciated or better yet work your way up to where you are the one making decisions about software. Lastly, you can choose not to buy or use offending or poorly designed software (for your own personal use) or some of you can even choose to create better software. Make a choice.
End of rant.
Nhavar
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
What is this??? We're news for "nerds" here right? Why do people keep using "nerd" as a derogatory remark? That's almost completely retarded. I'm going to assume this is astroturfing, but I find it rather funny that three times in the comments on this article, someone has tried to insult a member of the community by calling them a member of the community. Am I just missing something here? Yep, I'm a nerd. Raelin
Blah I can't get my sig to work, it won't fit.
Of course, it is our civic duty to keep those people creatively employed at Microsoft. After all, if they couldnt earn their wages getting upset about the companys critics, they might actually be transferred into tech support where people would have to listen to them :).
It is sorta fun tho.
I would be amused by the incompetence of currently active coders (esp. those at Microsoft) and documenters (my theory is, at MS they give them the specs, but don't let them use the product when they're writing the manual!) -- if it didn't negatively affect my work. Not to mention my cost to my clients.
And I don't want to even think about how many hours I've put in exhaustively determining that, indeed, the feature promised and even illustrated in the manual doesn't actually work, no matter how many ways you try to trick the software into working.
I remember when a friend first told me about DOS for the IBM machine, how horrified we were at its primitive abilities. *Sigh*
Then again, if my I look back on my previous expereiences witn Notes (starting vith R3), it doesn't surprise me. Lotus/ IBM have had a way all along of making strange programming decisions in relation to Notes. (e.g. ignoring NT API guidelines to implement proprietary features.) It certainly is an application programmer's prerogative to do whatever they want. However, it's no secret that unless you do everything by Microsoft's API guidelines, you're asking for it when they release a Service Pack. Hell, Service Packs even break Microsoft's own applications! OF course, I personally think Notes is a wretched virus, if not a straight-up plague. I pray nightly for the health and sanity of Notes administrators.... besides, IBM wants you to run it on S/390 or AIX. (The NT version is just a lousy port...)
or very poorly documented, which comes to the same thing.... One of the major charges at an earlier time against MS was their refusal to document (or properly document) their OS in time. So, their own in-house-designed applications could be written to be released for a new release of DOS (or, later, Windows), but no-one else could start work until the new release was actually out there... (Then the programmers had to first examine the OS to make sure what they wanted to do would match what MS had done!)
I assume you haven't read any of the references I gave in my initial comment.
... just that its on one installation CD and Microsoft decided to combine its revenues into one product with the initial Caldera (and other) law suits at the time.
Undocumented DOS is the best reference.
Watch the Caldera suit against MS for many more. Search news.com or another older online news source for references if you wish. Search through your old PC World magazines. There are many references to the tactics MS used to make other DOS operating systems not work with the Windows "platform" so they could then finalise the pressure with an integrated platform. Note: Windows 95 is no more integrated than Dos 6.1 and Windows 3.11
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
These can be replaced with snprintf and vsnprintf... oops! Only if you have glibc, does not appear to be in the VC++ libraries :-) (to be honest they are also missing from Irix and many Unixes).
strncat and strncpy are both too hard to use because of brain-dead original implementations and the need to be compatable (strncpy *always* copies n characters, which is a waste of time, and strncat truncates the *addition* at n, rather than the total length). Then again we live with strchr returning null instead of a pointer to the null and many other atrocities.
Where you say "People have REAL WORK to do" you're wrong. The only reason people go to the office and sit in front of their computers is so they, together with their employers, can enjoy that splendid Microsoft(tm) experience. And the only reason their companies's accounting departments exist is so they can collect enough money from their clients to buy cool new computer software and hardware. The exception to this is companies which make computer software or hardware themselves; they exist so that those lucky people who are allowed to buy into their IPOs can make 600 percent profit in a single day by making a phone call or two, or pressing a few keys on their computer keyboards.
Most foreign nations exist so they can gratify and glorify the United States of America. Some, a minority, which make no positive contribution to the glory of the U.S.A., exist only so the United States of America can look powerful and virtuous in comparison. Finally, humanity itself exists so that rich people will have an abundant supply of sycophants and servants.
And there's no use whatsoever for anyone to imagine that things can ever be any different. They can't, that's all; that's just the way it is!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain
not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain
but so that he will shake off the chain
and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
What is a custom port server ? I will run what ever service on any port I please thank you very much. O btw there are plenty of reasons for doing this.
Well I didn't see Windows 2000 crash. What they did do was have a cluster of 5 machines running over 12000 requests per second(or something like that), and then they purposly unplugged one of them to show have transactions (webbased) weren't lost even tho that user was on that machine.
I think the answer is "yes," at least I hope so. Here it is, a utility program I wrote and compiled (for a specific practical purpose, too) a couple years back:
* This program does nothing at all, and returns an errorlevel of 0.
* (c) 1997 Terrible Software Inc. WDK */
int main()
{
return 0;
}
Didn't Monopolysoft buy that DOS emulator in NT from some company, Insignia Solutions or something like that, who wrote a DOS/8086 emulator for Macintosh? By the way, I like NT as a desktop OS. I have used NT for a few years now and I find it to be reasonably stable, as long as you are pretty conservative about what all you install on it. Of course it comes with a nice selection of bugs, gaps and gotchas. But compare it to Win95! or even worse, Win98! I genuinely pity all those innocent people who, knowing nothing about computers, go down to Best Buy or whatever and buy these Win98 systems in these stupid garish cases you see these days that look like transformer toys.
As I type this, on the other side of the room there's a Win95 system that belongs to one of my coworkers. It worked fine until she tried to install the AOL client on it. After the obligatory reboot, it refused to load up Win95 at all. Unfortunately she applied SCANDISK to it ("Instead of using CHKDSK, try SCANDISK instead...") Now the root directory of C: is filled to the limit with FILE????.CHK and most of her directories have just *poof* disappeared. I see this sort of thing on Win95/98 boxes all the time.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Well, obviously it's harder to make something really excellent than it is to break something. It takes a Michaelangelo to carve La Pieta, any moron who can swing a claw hammer can break it. Besides nobody says Monopolysoft is a bunch of incompetents, its just that what they want and what you or I as as end-users want are two vastly different things. Did you you ever hear the old business saw, "The customer is always right?" Not when he's a customer of a monopoly, he isn't.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Did they decide to add a few more 'fixes' at the last moment? Trying to avoid having SP7 in beta test 2 weeks after the release of 6? Pressure to just get it out the door? Or is NT starting to collapse under it's own code weight?
Seems like MS's developement is being run entirely by the marketing department.
-Resurrected my cookie to avoid being slandered as an AC
I love true life testimonials on MicroSoft operating system hell. I would like to see more testimonials in these forums, perhaps even starting one up solely for this purpose. Disappearing "user profiles", forced reboots followed by filesystem manglings, and install-IE-only-to-find-it-repartitioned-your-disk stories make me squeal with delight!
BRING IT ON!
I think this just highlights how bloody hard it is to really make up your mind about anything you read any more these days... So is it the MS consirators out in force or the Bill Gates sympathisers dishing out their side of the propaganda...
Though I guess at the end of the day "Annonymous Cowards" with no reference bar towing the line "don't be fooled by the roaming MS hating mob", is somewhat less creditable than people who you can reference to.
Still... it's kinda hard to figure out whose version of the truth reflects what really happened... I guess we'll never know
Oh come on!
:-)
Every new RedHat release breaks our network big style. Someone remind me why we ditched NT for Linux? Something about not so many bugs, wasn't it?
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
Before being so beligerent, a bit of research may have come in handy ;-)
Lotus uses an RFC assigned port, number 1352. They ARE playing by the rules, and they are not the only ones affected by this. This has NOTHING to do with what API they write to. (BTW, not all products/service (should) use port 80!!)
I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theory, only that once again MS are shown to be grossly incompetent: for not testing one of the most widely used corporate email/groupware/whatever products, and worse, for not documenting this change (that all ports above 1024 are blocked unless the user is logged on as a local admin).
They have stated, quite publicly that SPs will no longer contain feature enhancements, only bug fixes. With this they changed the way NT worked. Yes, they have posted a fix, but it should have been CLEARLY documented.
Ultimately, they will lose even more respect from this episode.
Whoa! slow down there! What's his wife ever done to us? Besides.. it would hurt far more to rape the wife first and THEN kill Bill G.
//rdj.
PS This post may not have been entirely serious.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
If a company breaks the law, they should be prepared to be punished for it. It's that simple. That's what the Justice Department is there for, and they're doing a damn good job at it. Or do you think that Microsoft should go unharmed just because they're big?
The only reason Microsoft has a bad reputation is because they release loq-quality software (all software that contains as many bugs and doesn't even work correctly with it's manufacturor's own OS is loq-quality, I'm sorry), provide customer service which is worse than poor and are slow with fixing their bugs.
you never know - reality may leave beta-test today!
[from NTBugTraQ]
:-/
Microsoft have acknowledged that SP6 introduces a problem with Winsock-based applications such that Administrator privilege is required for the application/service to function. Any less-privileged user is unable to perform the Winsock functions.
[snip]
I have a report that suggests that using the TCPISN-fix version of TCPIP.sys also resolves the problem with Administrator privilege requirements, however, Microsoft believes the problem may exist in TCPIP.sys itself. Providing a modified version of AFD.sys was seen as a quicker way of getting a workaround out.
[end quote]
Now, obviously this is a winsock privilege problem, obviously they didn't do it on purpose, and quite obviously Microsoft DOES NOT KNOW ANYMORE HOW AND IF IT'S TCP/IP STACK WORKS...
Now, if you can say "runaway OS" and "40 million code-lines"...
Hope it's only a "bad choice of words" from MS or Russ Cooper (NTBTQ moderator).
Ciao,
Rob!
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!