Umm, Exchange is an server application that runs under a service account on NT. It has nothing do with NT's multiuserness.
And to answer your question, it can't because MS Outlook and Exchange groups at MS are too retarded to be even on the same page, so you get a sucky client-server product. Exchange does allow server-side scripts, but they all run under the same privlege level as the server. Not good for user mailboxes.
So, your options are to either run Lotus Notes (which has a server-side security model) or a brain-dead type user-level mailstore such as traditionally found on Unix systems. --
Actually, blame Microsoft too. Just like Adobe, MS Office 95 and 97 isn't multi-user aware either. (Office 2000 is.)
So, if Microsoft can't even code their own applications to take advantage of NT features which have existed for 6 years, why would 3rd parties even bother? --
Trying to do anything while accessing the floppy has routinely blue-screened every 95 and NT machine I've used (not BSOD, the 'an error has occured while writing' full-screen nonsense).
The fact that NT doesn't do a full blue screen unless the kernel has crashed proves you're full of it. You're example is purely a DOS/Win behavior.
Basically, I'm sick of hearing slashdotters try to extrapolate their 9x horror stories to NT because it makes them sound more legitimate. Hopefully people here are smart enough to see past the similar GUI. --
From what I heard, the problems with NT/9x apps on W2K are primarly due to the fact that they're ignorant of security and try to do things like installing their DLLs in the system directory.
NT4 got around this by shipping with pretty loose security (especially on parts of the registry). MS got smart and realized that if they are ever going to make an omelette they're going to have to break some eggs.
For what it's worth, Win2000 is going to ship with a bunch of scripts for the obvious problems (Office 95,97!, etc.), and a tool to switch to box into low security mode. --
I know of certain Win 3.1 client-server programs that relied on special network drivers and the like that broke under 95. (Much of this stuff was NetWare ODI/NETX stuff with a *.386 driver to go along with it.)
As far as CD-ROM drives and SCSI cards, MS put alot of effort in Win95 to get the old DOS drivers to run under 95. (And yes, you can try to run the Novell DOS stuff, although it's troublesome.) The fact that you might want run those old drivers was the primary rational for MS developing Win95 instead of just dropping DOS/Win and just going with NT a long time ago. --
Many NT 3.1 apps broke moving even to NT 3.5. When Office 95 came out, it was accompined by a NT service pack (for 3.51) which, again broke certain things, presumably because NT's Win32 was changed to be compatible with 95's Win32.
I'd be real curious if MS Office 4.2 for NT (~1994) would even run on NT 4.0SP5 or Win2K. It ouuughhhht to, but the number of NT workstation users was so low back in those days that the lack of backwards compatiblity probably doesn't affect anyone. --
According to the virus scanner logs at the mail gateway, we haven't got a Windows virus mailed in for several months that wasn't either a MS Office macro virus or some sort of trojan that attacks IE or Netscape. These viruses all run on NT in user space -- If the workstations are properly set up (of course here they're not), NT is no more vulerable to these sorts of 'viruses' than a unix workstation. We haven't got a boot virus or any of the classic DOS types in a long time.
The attitude in the unix security community seems to be "oh that's only user space - the *system* wasn't comprimised", but that's litte condolence if some VP is pissed because lost all of his porn files and his account spammed the entire company.
Basically the only virus protection advantage that Linux has over NT is that MS Office doesn't run on Linux. You can get the same 'protection' on Windows by running corel, Lotus, Star or something else. --
I occassionally drive north on US101 to San Francisco during afternoon rush hour. Traffic is usually very heavy between the San Mateo bridge and I380 a few miles north. At that point, enough people get off the 101 that traffic opens up until you to San Francisco.
The traffic bufferers are fine in the heavy traffic. Less stop and go, and as has been noted, they 'plug' up the lanes so people stay put.
However, when traffic opens up and people should be driving the speed limit, the "bufferer" guy is always the one who sits in the left lane and forgets to get up to 65. By the time his buffering algorythm has informed his brain that he can speed up, several people have already made dangerous lane changes to get around him.
So, while a theoretical approach might make sense, without practical observations on traffic condition in particular locations, it just makes you look like a bad driver and gets others frustrated enough to do stupid things which could endanger you. --
I agree that the bad driver factor is an important consideration. Take I-280 between San Francisco and San Jose. Running primarly though the 'green belt', it is usually lightly travelled.
The average speed in the left lane is usually 75-80 MPH, that is except for the people who just feel like driving 60-65 MPH. Nobody really wants to slow down for these people, so they swerve right a couple lanes to get around the back up.
To make matters worse, there seems to be a large portion of the population that can't turn on their turn signal without hitting their brakes, leading tailgating drivers to slam on their brakes harder. People start cutting other people off and acting generally stupid just to try to get past the one or two retards blocking traffic.
Pretty soon, traffic speed is down to about 45 MPH - same amount of traffic, just one or two blockages thrown in.
(Note, most Americans might think it wierd to bitch that you can't drive 75 MPH all the time, but that's California.) --
It's great that the "_idea_ of an open PPC platform" lives on, but that doesn't help folks like me or the guy who 'asked slashdot' who what to buy one.
My main problem with your original post is that the question was where parts for a commodity PPC box could be found. Read between the lines, and I assume that the guy doesn't want to buy a Mac and install Linux on it. Yet you essentially told him to go buy a Mac.
(Not that I have a real problem with Macs, since the price is certainly reasonable even if don't want to run MacOS. However, Apple is in the business of selling Macintoshes, not general purpose boxes, so hardware support is always going to be more iffy than a truly 'open' plaform.) --
Of course, what you say is true for any product, whether it's Linux/Apache or Windows 2000. Holes are going to be found that no one bothered to think of before. Linux servers were exploit city about a year ago, despite all the open sourcey stuff.
For example, a serious IIS 4.0 exploit (in 'Remote Data Services') was just found a few weeks ago. This is after the product being out for more than a year.
Also, I'm sure L0pht and others have Windows2000 betas. You can buy it mailorder, if MS hasn't sent it to your company.
Originally, Microsoft billed client-side MAPI as a "Universal Inbox" and as an OS feature -"Windows Messaging". By the time Exchange v1 (v4) was out the door, people figured that they meant no such thing, and MAPI/Outlook is pretty well tied to Exchange server for many of it's features.
So when ever someone advertises that you can use Outlook to get at their mail store, it begs the question how much of Outlook's functionality actually works. (For example, you can sorta get Notes mail from Outlook, but that's about it.)
Well, NT's file/print sharing code came right from OS/2 (according to older NT documentation). The "Server" service even used to be called "LanMan Server" in NT 3.x. NTFS is also based on HPFS.
However, the NT Kernel and HAL stuff looks nothing like anything that's in OS/2. The folks who designed this worked at DEC on VMS, so the design is influnced by VMS, but that's not the same thing as "based on". --
Midrange ~= "Minicomputer" ~= Custom Unix box ~= not a commodity or "desktop" machine.
BTW, while the PowerPC certainly has the technical advantages you speak of, the "true status" of PReP/CHRP is that it's dead as a consumer platform. --
There used to be a small bare PPC motherboard market a few years back when IBM was pushing PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) as an open spec*, and Apple was licencing their motherboard designs. Unfortunately, that whole endevour seems pretty much dead, marketwise.
You might be able to find a board from this era, but it would probably be 603 or 604 only and certainly wouldn't have things like AGP and PC100 memory. It would probably just be easier to pick up an old Mac Clone or maybe a Motorola PPC machine.
* The conventional wisdom in the early 90s was that Intel x86 would fail to keep up with Moore's law. Lots of graphs were produced showing Intel's speed increases leveling out in the late 90s. IBM proposed PReP as a replacement to the x86 PC spec. While virtually everyone announced support, the only OSes that ever shipped for PReP were AIX and Windows NT (and Linux). The big problem was that Apple didn't buy in running their OS on an open platform, and of course, Intel never lost the price/performance lead for lower-end systems. PowerPC right now is pretty much an Apple and IBM midrange-specific CPU. I'd be nice if PReP had succeeded, but alas. --
Yeah, I deleted about three sentances and replaced it with that parentetical note, so I deserve the DUH.
What I meant is that a "WebTV" is only advertised to surf the web and get mail. Anyone can build one of these right now. My understanding is that an EasyPC falls in between a webbox and a real computer. You can surf the web, and use a (cut down?) version of Excel, and play non-accellerated Quake.
The problem comes when consumers figure out that only thing these boxes are real good at is web surfing, and it's difficult to run the hardware and software they need. (Kinda like the old Atari 8-bit machines - great at games, bad at word processing). --
Here's where the 'consumer electric' model falls down as far as "Easy PCs" go. If you are on a cable system that your TV/VCR doesn't support, you have go out and buy/rent a seperate cable box and daisy chain it through channel 3 or something. We're already beyond the comprehention of Joe Sixpack here. Thank god for cable installers.
The computer approach is to just add another software/hardware doohicky to make your computer do what it needs to. A computer (not talking about simple webtv things here) which can't do that is going to frustrate people pretty quickly, and people will get a clue and either buy a real computer or give up.
We've already been through this in the early 80s with $200 plug-n-play boxes like the C-64 and Atari 800. Not that they weren't great machines, but when many people figured out that they needed a $300 disk drive, $200 modem, and $200 printer to do anything other than video games with them, interest dropped off. --
Don't forget that Netscape once had "75% plus share of the browser market" and was dictating internet standards, and was charging for corporate use of their product. Of course, people consider Netscape 1.x - 3.x as the greatest thing to ever happen to the Internet. That didn't stop millions of folks of going out of their way to download and install IE on Win95 and NT4, and there's nothing stopping users from switching back to some future superior product such as Netscape 5.
Microsoft is just reading from the Netscape Embrace and Extend playbook here, although they rightfully have a bad guy reputation. As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy a ~50/50 breakdown and public sites that aren't 'optimized' for any specific browser. Anything goes on your intranet.
(People who don't bother to change their homepage hardly seems like a very ripe market, and it hasn't got either Netscape or MSN rich. Yahoo rightfully wins without 'herding' because they've got superior content. However, the only portal I visit daily is the toliet, so what do I know.) --
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, Exchange is an server application that runs under a service account on NT. It has nothing do with NT's multiuserness.
And to answer your question, it can't because MS Outlook and Exchange groups at MS are too retarded to be even on the same page, so you get a sucky client-server product. Exchange does allow server-side scripts, but they all run under the same privlege level as the server. Not good for user mailboxes.
So, your options are to either run Lotus Notes (which has a server-side security model) or a brain-dead type user-level mailstore such as traditionally found on Unix systems.
--
Actually, blame Microsoft too. Just like Adobe, MS Office 95 and 97 isn't multi-user aware either. (Office 2000 is.)
So, if Microsoft can't even code their own applications to take advantage of NT features which have existed for 6 years, why would 3rd parties even bother?
--
Trying to do anything while accessing the floppy has routinely blue-screened every 95 and NT machine I've used (not BSOD, the 'an error has occured while writing' full-screen nonsense).
The fact that NT doesn't do a full blue screen unless the kernel has crashed proves you're full of it. You're example is purely a DOS/Win behavior.
Basically, I'm sick of hearing slashdotters try to extrapolate their 9x horror stories to NT because it makes them sound more legitimate. Hopefully people here are smart enough to see past the similar GUI.
--
Well, if you don't like notepad, you can run vi.
--
From what I heard, the problems with NT/9x apps on W2K are primarly due to the fact that they're ignorant of security and try to do things like installing their DLLs in the system directory.
NT4 got around this by shipping with pretty loose security (especially on parts of the registry). MS got smart and realized that if they are ever going to make an omelette they're going to have to break some eggs.
For what it's worth, Win2000 is going to ship with a bunch of scripts for the obvious problems (Office 95,97!, etc.), and a tool to switch to box into low security mode.
--
Yeah, that's why Win3.1 had no mouse or video card support.
--
I know of certain Win 3.1 client-server programs that relied on special network drivers and the like that broke under 95. (Much of this stuff was NetWare ODI/NETX stuff with a *.386 driver to go along with it.)
As far as CD-ROM drives and SCSI cards, MS put alot of effort in Win95 to get the old DOS drivers to run under 95. (And yes, you can try to run the Novell DOS stuff, although it's troublesome.) The fact that you might want run those old drivers was the primary rational for MS developing Win95 instead of just dropping DOS/Win and just going with NT a long time ago.
--
Not a programmer, but ...
Many NT 3.1 apps broke moving even to NT 3.5. When Office 95 came out, it was accompined by a NT service pack (for 3.51) which, again broke certain things, presumably because NT's Win32 was changed to be compatible with 95's Win32.
I'd be real curious if MS Office 4.2 for NT (~1994) would even run on NT 4.0SP5 or Win2K. It ouuughhhht to, but the number of NT workstation users was so low back in those days that the lack of backwards compatiblity probably doesn't affect anyone.
--
According to the virus scanner logs at the mail gateway, we haven't got a Windows virus mailed in for several months that wasn't either a MS Office macro virus or some sort of trojan that attacks IE or Netscape. These viruses all run on NT in user space -- If the workstations are properly set up (of course here they're not), NT is no more vulerable to these sorts of 'viruses' than a unix workstation. We haven't got a boot virus or any of the classic DOS types in a long time.
The attitude in the unix security community seems to be "oh that's only user space - the *system* wasn't comprimised", but that's litte condolence if some VP is pissed because lost all of his porn files and his account spammed the entire company.
Basically the only virus protection advantage that Linux has over NT is that MS Office doesn't run on Linux. You can get the same 'protection' on Windows by running corel, Lotus, Star or something else.
--
Me thinks you've been using Windows 9x too long. NT has account security.
--
No. According to Intel Payola W2K requires a PII. As a workstation, the beta seems faster than NT4 on my P-133.
As for the 64MB part - try 128MB instead. Maybe the faster processor is an attempt to make up for all of the swapping.
--
I occassionally drive north on US101 to San Francisco during afternoon rush hour. Traffic is usually very heavy between the San Mateo bridge and I380 a few miles north. At that point, enough people get off the 101 that traffic opens up until you to San Francisco.
The traffic bufferers are fine in the heavy traffic. Less stop and go, and as has been noted, they 'plug' up the lanes so people stay put.
However, when traffic opens up and people should be driving the speed limit, the "bufferer" guy is always the one who sits in the left lane and forgets to get up to 65. By the time his buffering algorythm has informed his brain that he can speed up, several people have already made dangerous lane changes to get around him.
So, while a theoretical approach might make sense, without practical observations on traffic condition in particular locations, it just makes you look like a bad driver and gets others frustrated enough to do stupid things which could endanger you.
--
I agree that the bad driver factor is an important consideration. Take I-280 between San Francisco and San Jose. Running primarly though the 'green belt', it is usually lightly travelled.
The average speed in the left lane is usually 75-80 MPH, that is except for the people who just feel like driving 60-65 MPH. Nobody really wants to slow down for these people, so they swerve right a couple lanes to get around the back up.
To make matters worse, there seems to be a large portion of the population that can't turn on their turn signal without hitting their brakes, leading tailgating drivers to slam on their brakes harder. People start cutting other people off and acting generally stupid just to try to get past the one or two retards blocking traffic.
Pretty soon, traffic speed is down to about 45 MPH - same amount of traffic, just one or two blockages thrown in.
(Note, most Americans might think it wierd to bitch that you can't drive 75 MPH all the time, but that's California.)
--
It's great that the "_idea_ of an open PPC platform" lives on, but that doesn't help folks like me or the guy who 'asked slashdot' who what to buy one.
My main problem with your original post is that the question was where parts for a commodity PPC box could be found. Read between the lines, and I assume that the guy doesn't want to buy a Mac and install Linux on it. Yet you essentially told him to go buy a Mac.
(Not that I have a real problem with Macs, since the price is certainly reasonable even if don't want to run MacOS. However, Apple is in the business of selling Macintoshes, not general purpose boxes, so hardware support is always going to be more iffy than a truly 'open' plaform.)
--
Of course, what you say is true for any product, whether it's Linux/Apache or Windows 2000. Holes are going to be found that no one bothered to think of before. Linux servers were exploit city about a year ago, despite all the open sourcey stuff.
For example, a serious IIS 4.0 exploit (in 'Remote Data Services') was just found a few weeks ago. This is after the product being out for more than a year.
Also, I'm sure L0pht and others have Windows2000 betas. You can buy it mailorder, if MS hasn't sent it to your company.
--
But what if you disable IMAP on your client?
--
Originally, Microsoft billed client-side MAPI as a "Universal Inbox" and as an OS feature -"Windows Messaging". By the time Exchange v1 (v4) was out the door, people figured that they meant no such thing, and MAPI/Outlook is pretty well tied to Exchange server for many of it's features.
So when ever someone advertises that you can use Outlook to get at their mail store, it begs the question how much of Outlook's functionality actually works. (For example, you can sorta get Notes mail from Outlook, but that's about it.)
--
Well, NT's file/print sharing code came right from OS/2 (according to older NT documentation). The "Server" service even used to be called "LanMan Server" in NT 3.x. NTFS is also based on HPFS.
However, the NT Kernel and HAL stuff looks nothing like anything that's in OS/2. The folks who designed this worked at DEC on VMS, so the design is influnced by VMS, but that's not the same thing as "based on".
--
Midrange ~= "Minicomputer" ~= Custom Unix box ~= not a commodity or "desktop" machine.
BTW, while the PowerPC certainly has the technical advantages you speak of, the "true status" of PReP/CHRP is that it's dead as a consumer platform.
--
There used to be a small bare PPC motherboard market a few years back when IBM was pushing PReP (PowerPC Reference Platform) as an open spec*, and Apple was licencing their motherboard designs. Unfortunately, that whole endevour seems pretty much dead, marketwise.
You might be able to find a board from this era, but it would probably be 603 or 604 only and certainly wouldn't have things like AGP and PC100 memory. It would probably just be easier to pick up an old Mac Clone or maybe a Motorola PPC machine.
* The conventional wisdom in the early 90s was that Intel x86 would fail to keep up with Moore's law. Lots of graphs were produced showing Intel's speed increases leveling out in the late 90s. IBM proposed PReP as a replacement to the x86 PC spec. While virtually everyone announced support, the only OSes that ever shipped for PReP were AIX and Windows NT (and Linux). The big problem was that Apple didn't buy in running their OS on an open platform, and of course, Intel never lost the price/performance lead for lower-end systems. PowerPC right now is pretty much an Apple and IBM midrange-specific CPU. I'd be nice if PReP had succeeded, but alas.
--
Yeah, I deleted about three sentances and replaced it with that parentetical note, so I deserve the DUH.
What I meant is that a "WebTV" is only advertised to surf the web and get mail. Anyone can build one of these right now. My understanding is that an EasyPC falls in between a webbox and a real computer. You can surf the web, and use a (cut down?) version of Excel, and play non-accellerated Quake.
The problem comes when consumers figure out that only thing these boxes are real good at is web surfing, and it's difficult to run the hardware and software they need. (Kinda like the old Atari 8-bit machines - great at games, bad at word processing).
--
Here's where the 'consumer electric' model falls down as far as "Easy PCs" go. If you are on a cable system that your TV/VCR doesn't support, you have go out and buy/rent a seperate cable box and daisy chain it through channel 3 or something. We're already beyond the comprehention of Joe Sixpack here. Thank god for cable installers.
The computer approach is to just add another software/hardware doohicky to make your computer do what it needs to. A computer (not talking about simple webtv things here) which can't do that is going to frustrate people pretty quickly, and people will get a clue and either buy a real computer or give up.
We've already been through this in the early 80s with $200 plug-n-play boxes like the C-64 and Atari 800. Not that they weren't great machines, but when many people figured out that they needed a $300 disk drive, $200 modem, and $200 printer to do anything other than video games with them, interest dropped off.
--
Nope the default is still DOC and XLS. You can save as XML, but only if you select "Save as Web Page"
--
Doh! (Thanks for the correction)
--
Don't forget that Netscape once had "75% plus share of the browser market" and was dictating internet standards, and was charging for corporate use of their product. Of course, people consider Netscape 1.x - 3.x as the greatest thing to ever happen to the Internet. That didn't stop millions of folks of going out of their way to download and install IE on Win95 and NT4, and there's nothing stopping users from switching back to some future superior product such as Netscape 5.
Microsoft is just reading from the Netscape Embrace and Extend playbook here, although they rightfully have a bad guy reputation. As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy a ~50/50 breakdown and public sites that aren't 'optimized' for any specific browser. Anything goes on your intranet.
(People who don't bother to change their homepage hardly seems like a very ripe market, and it hasn't got either Netscape or MSN rich. Yahoo rightfully wins without 'herding' because they've got superior content. However, the only portal I visit daily is the toliet, so what do I know.)
--