Yes, but you can see where this is going: Licence Servers for corporate Office use.
In fact, one of MS's propaganda pieces for ActiveDirectory specifically mentions licence management as a possible application. I think the only thing holding them back is the fact that AD hasn't been widely deployed yet (or ever?). --
And what's worse is that credit card companies will try to trick you into buying "Fraud Insurance", which is really fraud insurance for THEM, even though you are paying for it.
Almost every card has $0 liablity, even though they could charge you a maximum of $50. --
The fact of the matter is that Windows is much harder to keep up to date than even the cruftiest of *nix boxes
And you are the first person in this discussion to get to the REAL heart of this matter -- it's not 'point-n-drool', it's the fact that MS's patch system is horrific. As NT4 became overly-long in the tooth, it got even worse and worse.
Here's some other examples, I've run into:
+ The method for installing IIS4 is SP6a, OptionPack, SP6a Again. However the installer tells you are doing the wrong thing somewhere in there.
+ MDAC ships with IE/IIS/Office, but security updates are seperate an in a different corner of the MS site.
+ The only sane way to keep track of IIS patches is to follow the NTBUGTRAQ guy, because MS's security site is so non-informative.
+ The process for installing Site Server Commerce 3.0 is about 4 pages long, all printed out. Make one mistake or forget one patch, and you need to start all over. --
Problem with Atari-era stuff is that there's been an established collectors market for a number of years. The guys who really have the loot (like O'Shea's and the million cartridge cave) bought from distributers and surplus stores in the mid-80s. Now, it's all eBay auctions, so it has value, and you'll never make any money 'day-trading' Atari gear. (Which is not to say that you can't scour flea markets and thrift stores.)
Atari also had the deadly problem of massive overproduction as well as strong-arming retailers to buy less desirable games. This means there's lots of stuff, way too much stuff out there. O'Shea sells carts at something like 80 cents a piece, for example. Nowdays, Sony et al have short run production and inventory turnover down to a science, so there's less likely to be a 'forgotten warehouse' full of games out there somewhere.
So, the key is to grab a bunch of inventory, and sit on it hoping that a crowd develops later that decides that they want it. Somewhere out there there's a big lot of Sega Saturn or older Playstation stuff waiting for you to store in your warehouse for another 5 years. Will there be nostalgia value for old Saturn games? Well, you'll just have to wait and see. --
I should have mentioned that: When we looked at it MSDE is 'free' only if you have 1) SQL Client licence, 2) VisualStudio licence ($$!), 3) Office 2000 Developer licence ($$! - Normal users get Office Professional, not Developer).
Unless I'm wrong, you don't get MSDE included with the normal version of Access. --
MSDE is actually only a "dumbed-down" version of SQL Server in that it doesn't ship with the normal admin tools and is tweaked to run in low memory situations. Other than that it's the real thing.
As for the "Free Beer" nature of it - I'd double check that. When we looked into it for SQL 7.0, you needed a full MS-SQL Client Licence to use it, which runs about $200/seat. Which is great if you've already bought MS-SQL, but if you are using another vendor, you might want to check on their desktop solutions. --
Well as the guy said, Novell couldn't even digest all of the stuff it had just bought, and it sounds like that the one thing they might have been able to execute on (UnixWare) was kiboshed in favor of the WordPerfect client strategy. As it was, WordPerfect barely had Novell's logo stamped on it before falling NetWare sales forced it's fire sale to Corel.
SuperNOS would have been great - Novell could have leveraged their huge userbase onto UNIX, and would have had a compeling product to stop WinNT's tide into server rooms. As it was, later versions of NetWare were never that compelling of an upgrade, and the Unix on PC hardware was probably set back 5 years or more. --
OT: Do you know why SuperNOS was cancelled? Was it purely polticical between the NetWare and Unix groups, or were there technical reasons?
I always thought that SuperNOS was sort of a genius make-or-break strategy for Novell, and when it broke it forced a massive amount of re-engineering for NetWare.
Anyway, I totally concur with the OS/2 comment. IBM doesn't really want to be in a position where they are fighting an OS war again, they just want to sell hardware (which was the original idea behind OS/2, after all).
Not to mention that anything that IBM puts it's brand name on is going to have to recieve a much higher level of support than 3rd party software it ships with its hardware. OS/2 is a good example in that it was effectively abandoned by the company in about 1994, but is still being updated and maintained. --
I have Lucida Typewriter installed as TT on this winbox. Can't say that I ever use it, mostly because it's not hinted, so it scales down below 12pts really poorly.
Can't say where I got it, unfortunately. (It could been from a momentary installation of Lotus WordPro a couple years ago.) However, it looks verrry similar to the Lucida Console font which is part of the standard Windows install, and is hinted.
To answer the Ask Slashdot: MS's Anadale Mono is the only way to go for monospaced text. It even has a dotted 0 (zero), and a clear distinction between l and 1. --
.NET is revolutionary for VisualBasic programmers, because it essentially puts them in the same territory as Java programmers. The cost of this, however, is that a huge chunk of their VB6 stuff breaks - the cost of turning VB into a 'safe' language.
On the other hand, if someone has already invested in Java,.NET really doesn't give you anything except a 1.0 RSN platform. The features it does have (including SOAP and 'web objects') could be added to Java (and probably will be) by the time MS ships.
My feeling is that C# is really there for propaganda value, both so that.NET doesn't get pigeonholed as a "VisualBasic" technology, and so that MS can tout it's language-independance. Plus it gives them the JUMP Java migration program.
VB has lots of users behind it, and MS is planning to ride.NET in on VB programmers. Too bad Sun didn't come up with the idea of a ObjectBASIC for the Java Platform a couple years ago. --
Jason Kersey removed all ads from mozillazine.org, and I think he did that because people complained about that ad so much
Well, there's also the issue that there's been numerous Java install glitches with Mozilla, which probably is the primary browser hitting the site. So, it's possible the ad network figured out that half the hits they got didn't even load the ads.
I thought it funny that I could only see Mozillazine's ads in IE, anyway. (Eventually a massive JVM purge and reinstall sorted the issue out.) --
Well, under Unix someone with superuser access can replace/bin/login with a version that captures passwords, and that's not considered a security hole.
And that's what happened in the incident list. Some smart person got SYSTEM access through an IIS bug and then replaced the Gina with a password interceptor.
For an example of similar software that hooks into the gina, look no further than the Novell Client32 software.
The point of Ctrl+Alt+Del is that a unprivledged user that uses it can't be busted by a trojan on a uncomprimsed installation of the OS. Once you are owned, all bets are off. (Not to mention that you could create a 2-bit VB program that asked for a password and probably dupe 90% of the dupes, SAS or not.) --
OK - you got me on the PCjr! But, I still don't think IBM used the term "PC" in any of it's marketing materials for the original beast.
On the other hand, you have Apple's "Welcome" ad when IBM entered the market. It pretty clearly was trying to decapitalize "personal computer".
Another datapoint was "PC Magazine", which I think debuted with a picture of the XT on the cover. So by then the term "PC" was already pretty common for "IBM Clone". --
"Marketing" as in "We'll sustain the enormous R+D costs of maintaining two very similar operating systems, and then making them 98% compatible with each other; because by doing so we can use our monopoly position to 'upsell' consumers to the version that actually works somewhat well, and therefore we make higher profits." --
News Flash -- OS/2 was DEAD in the market by the time Windows 95 shipped. In case you weren't aware, it had been for sale since 1987 and had plenty of chances to find a real market, which it never did.
Lots of people at IBM (including most of the PC Group) were in favor of dropping it as a standard configuration because it was a big expense that competitors (Compaq, etc) didn't have to carry. I worked at a big IBM PC shop in 1994, and IBM sent a rep out to personally apologize for the nightmare of their preloaded OS/2 2.1 / Windows 3.1 machines duel-boot machines.
Furthermore, the "reasonable price" you are referring to was $11 for a copy of Windows. IBM was getting that low price because they co-owned Windows 3.0. Do you think Compaq and Dell were getting anything near this price? So, of course IBM took the bait -- they were getting a significant rebate for doing something they were going to do anyway (drop OS/2 as a standard configuration). --
Microsoft have allowed this to happen. They could've laid down standards on how PC hardware ought to operate.
You really are suggesting this? With a 90% marketshare, the OS independance of PC hardware is already hanging from a thin string, and I don't think most people would like the outcome of giving Microsoft more control over hardware. (See the "Secure Audio Path" issue...)
Bottom line is that there's nothing Microsoft can do about some OEM stuffing cheap ass RAM into a cheap ass machine for sale for $999 at Office Depot. Consumers are going to have to get smarter.
Other points:
+ Windows NT hardware certification list was originally intended for complete systems. Guess what? Folks don't want to have to buy some overpriced Compaq or IBM Certified "Workstation" when you can get a screwdriver box that does the same thing for half the price, and folks will bitch if Win2000 doesn't run on that mystery box. So testing when to shit to get broader hardware support and more drivers.
Again, blame the consumer -- when people were bitching about their Not-MS-Certified GeForce drivers running on their Not-MS-Certified Athlon motherboards with their Not-MS-Certified IDE controllers and their Not-MS-Certified SoundBlasters on Windows 2000 just to get maximum Quake fps, it's totally unreasonable to yell "Save Us Microsoft!".
+ Microsoft's PC OS Tax is nothing compared to Intel's CPU tax. The problem is that people want a 1000Mhz machine for $1000. They won't buy a better 700Mhz machine for that price. So the OEM have to skimp on everything, or give people value that they can *see* (stupid stuff like volume knobs on the keyboard are the only way they can get their margin up). Intel or AMD takes all the profit, not the OEM and not MS.
+ PCI hardware detection is documented. Linux uses it. Microsoft does have some real voodoo for ISA legacy non-PnP device detection (eg: old Token Ring and SCSI cards), but that is 99% a non-issue with new hardware. --
People don't know that MS decided way back with the PC/AT's 80286
IBM/Microsoft decided that 286+ support would be in OS/2 and and DOS would be legacied. PC customers rejected that decision, and it set the state of PC software back for a number of years. OS/2 was such a loser in the market that Microsoft was pretty much forced to come up with the protected mode DOS hack that is Windows today. That doesn't mean that they weren't holding their nose while they were doing it (see Windows NT).
Trying to blame MS for the long life of DOS is a no-go. Blame the consumers for not buying OS/2 (or later, NT), or blame IBM for making OS/2 into a viable product until many versions later. --
All MS needs to say is that it saw a trend and a new market emerging.
Which is somewhat true. The launch of Windows 95 in Aug 1995 was all about connectivity via the "integrated" MSN client. By December 7 1995, Microsoft had totally turned around and announced that future connectivity would be via integration with Internet Explorer. It took them all of 3 months to flush millions of dollars of R+D and MSN hype down the toliet (not to mention MSN contributing to the Win95 schedule slip), and this was based almost purely on a limited understanding of Andresson's comment about Netscape turning Windows into "a poorly debugged collection of device drivers". In retrospect, small thanks are in order for Microsoft to at least have the sense to not to try to lock us into MSN.
What lots of Slashdotter's miss is that after Dec 1995, Microsoft immedately started acting as if IE was "integrated", even though it took 2-3 more years before it actually was. That's right -- a good chunk of the trial evidence surrounded Microsoft's behavior with Internet Explorer versions 2.x and 3.x, both of which were not a superior product and were not really integrated in any way. A good example is OEMs, who are perfectly happy with IE5, but rightfully thought Microsoft was crazy when they suggested that IE 3 should be the default browser instead of Netscape (which had the most features and a 70% marketshare at the time).
Furthermore, nobody questions that Zero Cost Browsers (or psuedo-Zero Cost Browsers like Netscape was) benefit consumers. However, what real benefit has "Integration" (real or proposed) given anyone but Microsoft.
When MS announced the plan on Pearl Harbor day, everyone knew web browsers were slow and crashed alot. For more than 2 years after the plan was executed, Microsoft had a "Integrated shell" that was slow and crashed alot. It's widely felt that Windows 98 (which really was nothing more than a $99 browser upgrade) was a downgrade to the OS as a whole, but OEMs and IT Depts didn't really have the choice not to use it and use Win95.
Browser Integration was one of the biggest farces pawned off on the IT consumer ever, and Microsoft and their monopoly instincts are nearly 100% to blame. This came out in the trial when a MS Exec got on the stand and testified that not one of their supposed "integration" features (such as Windows Update) really depended on integration from a technical standpoint. Perhaps in Windows XP, there really will be some new functionality to come out of shell integration, but that's 7 years after Microsoft announced the idea. --
Agreed! UGO does not scale when you are talking about a centralized directory with tens of thousands of users in it. Especially the G and the O parts.
I also find it funny that everytime ACLs come up, someone posts "ACLs are bad because they are too complicated and the sysadmin can shoot himself in the foot". Which is fucking hilarious attitude towards Unix, where one of the central tenent is "The Sysadmin Can Blow His Leg Off, so be careful". --
Personally, I think Sean Fanning shot himself in the foot a long time ago
No he didn't. He took the idea to a bunch of capitalists, who saw it as a chance that they might get a significant piece of the music distribution business by putting them in a negotating position with the record companies. If they were wrong, they were out their investment. But if they were right... BIG money!
Note that these weren't a bunch of starry-eyed slashdotters who believed in the higher ideals of "Sharing" and "Information wants to be Free". They were balls-to-the-wall, copyrights-be-damned, give-me-a-piece-of-the-action types who could give a shit about anything but potential longterm profits.
Fanning and his little dormrooom VB project was just along for the ride. Well paid for his efforts, of course. --
Thanks for the kick-assed post. Hopefully a moderator will notice late in the day.
There's nothing preventing a Win2K client from authenticating against an MIT Kerb realm instead of a Win2K domain server. I know this because I'm currently logged into an MIT realm in exactly the way you describe is impossible.
I am kind of curious how this works, because in my limited understanding, it would seem that you would need to have ActiveDirectory somewhere, or replace the NT Gina. Do you know of any pointers explaining interop for 2000 logons? --
That is why this case should keep going straight to the Supreme Court, where they will reaffirm the fair use doctrines
You know, there's this Slashdot assumption that 69th Amendment to the Constitution grants "Fair Use" rights that can't be overruled by some little ol law.
Well, it isn't true: Fair Use is a concept defined by copyright law. And if the copyright law (the DMCA) says that "bypassing an access control device is illegal and not Fair Use", then that's the way it is. So the real solution is 1) Mass Civil Disobedience, which will lead to 2) The repeal of the DMCA or (more likely) the passage of the Digital Millennium Consumer Fair Use Act. --
The Windows 95 kernel (a flexible protected-mode launcher that can use DOS drivers as well as provide it's own) is explicity a reaction *against* the OS/2 design, which was thought to be very heavyweight back in the early 90s.
On the other hand, the Windows NT (OS/2 NT) kernel was an opposite reaction against the OS/2 kernel because OS/2 was thought to be too monolithic and far too dependant on i286/i386.
I think it's safe to say that Microsoft felt that the OS/2 kernel (which they helped design and build) was a gigantic clusterfuck, and so they came up with a 2-pronged strategy to do a better job.
As for Microsoft Word, it owes it heritage to Apple/Claris MacWrite far more than WordPerfect (none of the above invented the idea of word processing). I think you'll find that modern versions of both Word and WordPerfect have a lot more in common with Word 4.0 for the Macintosh than they do with WordPerfect 4.2 for DOS. --
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but you can see where this is going: Licence Servers for corporate Office use.
In fact, one of MS's propaganda pieces for ActiveDirectory specifically mentions licence management as a possible application. I think the only thing holding them back is the fact that AD hasn't been widely deployed yet (or ever?).
--
And what's worse is that credit card companies will try to trick you into buying "Fraud Insurance", which is really fraud insurance for THEM, even though you are paying for it.
Almost every card has $0 liablity, even though they could charge you a maximum of $50.
--
You are aware that you need to install SP6a again after installing IIS?
Anyway, I've done NT4 SP0 to SP6a several times with no problem. It's usually the first thing I do (before drivers or IE or anything else).
--
The fact of the matter is that Windows is much harder to keep up to date than even the cruftiest of *nix boxes
And you are the first person in this discussion to get to the REAL heart of this matter -- it's not 'point-n-drool', it's the fact that MS's patch system is horrific. As NT4 became overly-long in the tooth, it got even worse and worse.
Here's some other examples, I've run into:
+ The method for installing IIS4 is SP6a, OptionPack, SP6a Again. However the installer tells you are doing the wrong thing somewhere in there.
+ MDAC ships with IE/IIS/Office, but security updates are seperate an in a different corner of the MS site.
+ The only sane way to keep track of IIS patches is to follow the NTBUGTRAQ guy, because MS's security site is so non-informative.
+ The process for installing Site Server Commerce 3.0 is about 4 pages long, all printed out. Make one mistake or forget one patch, and you need to start all over.
--
Problem with Atari-era stuff is that there's been an established collectors market for a number of years. The guys who really have the loot (like O'Shea's and the million cartridge cave) bought from distributers and surplus stores in the mid-80s. Now, it's all eBay auctions, so it has value, and you'll never make any money 'day-trading' Atari gear. (Which is not to say that you can't scour flea markets and thrift stores.)
Atari also had the deadly problem of massive overproduction as well as strong-arming retailers to buy less desirable games. This means there's lots of stuff, way too much stuff out there. O'Shea sells carts at something like 80 cents a piece, for example. Nowdays, Sony et al have short run production and inventory turnover down to a science, so there's less likely to be a 'forgotten warehouse' full of games out there somewhere.
So, the key is to grab a bunch of inventory, and sit on it hoping that a crowd develops later that decides that they want it. Somewhere out there there's a big lot of Sega Saturn or older Playstation stuff waiting for you to store in your warehouse for another 5 years. Will there be nostalgia value for old Saturn games? Well, you'll just have to wait and see.
--
I should have mentioned that: When we looked at it MSDE is 'free' only if you have 1) SQL Client licence, 2) VisualStudio licence ($$!), 3) Office 2000 Developer licence ($$! - Normal users get Office Professional, not Developer).
Unless I'm wrong, you don't get MSDE included with the normal version of Access.
--
MSDE is actually only a "dumbed-down" version of SQL Server in that it doesn't ship with the normal admin tools and is tweaked to run in low memory situations. Other than that it's the real thing.
As for the "Free Beer" nature of it - I'd double check that. When we looked into it for SQL 7.0, you needed a full MS-SQL Client Licence to use it, which runs about $200/seat. Which is great if you've already bought MS-SQL, but if you are using another vendor, you might want to check on their desktop solutions.
--
Well as the guy said, Novell couldn't even digest all of the stuff it had just bought, and it sounds like that the one thing they might have been able to execute on (UnixWare) was kiboshed in favor of the WordPerfect client strategy. As it was, WordPerfect barely had Novell's logo stamped on it before falling NetWare sales forced it's fire sale to Corel.
SuperNOS would have been great - Novell could have leveraged their huge userbase onto UNIX, and would have had a compeling product to stop WinNT's tide into server rooms. As it was, later versions of NetWare were never that compelling of an upgrade, and the Unix on PC hardware was probably set back 5 years or more.
--
OT: Do you know why SuperNOS was cancelled? Was it purely polticical between the NetWare and Unix groups, or were there technical reasons?
I always thought that SuperNOS was sort of a genius make-or-break strategy for Novell, and when it broke it forced a massive amount of re-engineering for NetWare.
Anyway, I totally concur with the OS/2 comment. IBM doesn't really want to be in a position where they are fighting an OS war again, they just want to sell hardware (which was the original idea behind OS/2, after all).
Not to mention that anything that IBM puts it's brand name on is going to have to recieve a much higher level of support than 3rd party software it ships with its hardware. OS/2 is a good example in that it was effectively abandoned by the company in about 1994, but is still being updated and maintained.
--
I have Lucida Typewriter installed as TT on this winbox. Can't say that I ever use it, mostly because it's not hinted, so it scales down below 12pts really poorly.
Can't say where I got it, unfortunately. (It could been from a momentary installation of Lotus WordPro a couple years ago.) However, it looks verrry similar to the Lucida Console font which is part of the standard Windows install, and is hinted.
To answer the Ask Slashdot: MS's Anadale Mono is the only way to go for monospaced text. It even has a dotted 0 (zero), and a clear distinction between l and 1.
--
.NET is revolutionary for VisualBasic programmers, because it essentially puts them in the same territory as Java programmers. The cost of this, however, is that a huge chunk of their VB6 stuff breaks - the cost of turning VB into a 'safe' language.
.NET really doesn't give you anything except a 1.0 RSN platform. The features it does have (including SOAP and 'web objects') could be added to Java (and probably will be) by the time MS ships.
.NET doesn't get pigeonholed as a "VisualBasic" technology, and so that MS can tout it's language-independance. Plus it gives them the JUMP Java migration program.
.NET in on VB programmers. Too bad Sun didn't come up with the idea of a ObjectBASIC for the Java Platform a couple years ago.
On the other hand, if someone has already invested in Java,
My feeling is that C# is really there for propaganda value, both so that
VB has lots of users behind it, and MS is planning to ride
--
Jason Kersey removed all ads from mozillazine.org, and I think he did that because people complained about that ad so much
Well, there's also the issue that there's been numerous Java install glitches with Mozilla, which probably is the primary browser hitting the site. So, it's possible the ad network figured out that half the hits they got didn't even load the ads.
I thought it funny that I could only see Mozillazine's ads in IE, anyway. (Eventually a massive JVM purge and reinstall sorted the issue out.)
--
Well, under Unix someone with superuser access can replace /bin/login with a version that captures passwords, and that's not considered a security hole.
And that's what happened in the incident list. Some smart person got SYSTEM access through an IIS bug and then replaced the Gina with a password interceptor.
For an example of similar software that hooks into the gina, look no further than the Novell Client32 software.
The point of Ctrl+Alt+Del is that a unprivledged user that uses it can't be busted by a trojan on a uncomprimsed installation of the OS. Once you are owned, all bets are off. (Not to mention that you could create a 2-bit VB program that asked for a password and probably dupe 90% of the dupes, SAS or not.)
--
OK - you got me on the PCjr! But, I still don't think IBM used the term "PC" in any of it's marketing materials for the original beast.
On the other hand, you have Apple's "Welcome" ad when IBM entered the market. It pretty clearly was trying to decapitalize "personal computer".
Another datapoint was "PC Magazine", which I think debuted with a picture of the XT on the cover. So by then the term "PC" was already pretty common for "IBM Clone".
--
"Marketing" as in "We'll sustain the enormous R+D costs of maintaining two very similar operating systems, and then making them 98% compatible with each other; because by doing so we can use our monopoly position to 'upsell' consumers to the version that actually works somewhat well, and therefore we make higher profits."
--
Apple used the term "personal computer" heavily in it's marketing long before IBM was selling it's "Personal Computer". (IBM never called it a "PC".)
The idea that "PC" == "IBM Personal Computer Compatible" wasn't universal until a few years later.
--
News Flash -- OS/2 was DEAD in the market by the time Windows 95 shipped. In case you weren't aware, it had been for sale since 1987 and had plenty of chances to find a real market, which it never did.
Lots of people at IBM (including most of the PC Group) were in favor of dropping it as a standard configuration because it was a big expense that competitors (Compaq, etc) didn't have to carry. I worked at a big IBM PC shop in 1994, and IBM sent a rep out to personally apologize for the nightmare of their preloaded OS/2 2.1 / Windows 3.1 machines duel-boot machines.
Furthermore, the "reasonable price" you are referring to was $11 for a copy of Windows. IBM was getting that low price because they co-owned Windows 3.0. Do you think Compaq and Dell were getting anything near this price? So, of course IBM took the bait -- they were getting a significant rebate for doing something they were going to do anyway (drop OS/2 as a standard configuration).
--
Microsoft have allowed this to happen. They could've laid down standards on how PC hardware ought to operate.
You really are suggesting this? With a 90% marketshare, the OS independance of PC hardware is already hanging from a thin string, and I don't think most people would like the outcome of giving Microsoft more control over hardware. (See the "Secure Audio Path" issue...)
Bottom line is that there's nothing Microsoft can do about some OEM stuffing cheap ass RAM into a cheap ass machine for sale for $999 at Office Depot. Consumers are going to have to get smarter.
Other points:
+ Windows NT hardware certification list was originally intended for complete systems. Guess what? Folks don't want to have to buy some overpriced Compaq or IBM Certified "Workstation" when you can get a screwdriver box that does the same thing for half the price, and folks will bitch if Win2000 doesn't run on that mystery box. So testing when to shit to get broader hardware support and more drivers.
Again, blame the consumer -- when people were bitching about their Not-MS-Certified GeForce drivers running on their Not-MS-Certified Athlon motherboards with their Not-MS-Certified IDE controllers and their Not-MS-Certified SoundBlasters on Windows 2000 just to get maximum Quake fps, it's totally unreasonable to yell "Save Us Microsoft!".
+ Microsoft's PC OS Tax is nothing compared to Intel's CPU tax. The problem is that people want a 1000Mhz machine for $1000. They won't buy a better 700Mhz machine for that price. So the OEM have to skimp on everything, or give people value that they can *see* (stupid stuff like volume knobs on the keyboard are the only way they can get their margin up). Intel or AMD takes all the profit, not the OEM and not MS.
+ PCI hardware detection is documented. Linux uses it. Microsoft does have some real voodoo for ISA legacy non-PnP device detection (eg: old Token Ring and SCSI cards), but that is 99% a non-issue with new hardware.
--
People don't know that MS decided way back with the PC/AT's 80286
IBM/Microsoft decided that 286+ support would be in OS/2 and and DOS would be legacied. PC customers rejected that decision, and it set the state of PC software back for a number of years. OS/2 was such a loser in the market that Microsoft was pretty much forced to come up with the protected mode DOS hack that is Windows today. That doesn't mean that they weren't holding their nose while they were doing it (see Windows NT).
Trying to blame MS for the long life of DOS is a no-go. Blame the consumers for not buying OS/2 (or later, NT), or blame IBM for making OS/2 into a viable product until many versions later.
--
All MS needs to say is that it saw a trend and a new market emerging.
Which is somewhat true. The launch of Windows 95 in Aug 1995 was all about connectivity via the "integrated" MSN client. By December 7 1995, Microsoft had totally turned around and announced that future connectivity would be via integration with Internet Explorer. It took them all of 3 months to flush millions of dollars of R+D and MSN hype down the toliet (not to mention MSN contributing to the Win95 schedule slip), and this was based almost purely on a limited understanding of Andresson's comment about Netscape turning Windows into "a poorly debugged collection of device drivers". In retrospect, small thanks are in order for Microsoft to at least have the sense to not to try to lock us into MSN.
What lots of Slashdotter's miss is that after Dec 1995, Microsoft immedately started acting as if IE was "integrated", even though it took 2-3 more years before it actually was. That's right -- a good chunk of the trial evidence surrounded Microsoft's behavior with Internet Explorer versions 2.x and 3.x, both of which were not a superior product and were not really integrated in any way. A good example is OEMs, who are perfectly happy with IE5, but rightfully thought Microsoft was crazy when they suggested that IE 3 should be the default browser instead of Netscape (which had the most features and a 70% marketshare at the time).
Furthermore, nobody questions that Zero Cost Browsers (or psuedo-Zero Cost Browsers like Netscape was) benefit consumers. However, what real benefit has "Integration" (real or proposed) given anyone but Microsoft.
When MS announced the plan on Pearl Harbor day, everyone knew web browsers were slow and crashed alot. For more than 2 years after the plan was executed, Microsoft had a "Integrated shell" that was slow and crashed alot. It's widely felt that Windows 98 (which really was nothing more than a $99 browser upgrade) was a downgrade to the OS as a whole, but OEMs and IT Depts didn't really have the choice not to use it and use Win95.
Browser Integration was one of the biggest farces pawned off on the IT consumer ever, and Microsoft and their monopoly instincts are nearly 100% to blame. This came out in the trial when a MS Exec got on the stand and testified that not one of their supposed "integration" features (such as Windows Update) really depended on integration from a technical standpoint. Perhaps in Windows XP, there really will be some new functionality to come out of shell integration, but that's 7 years after Microsoft announced the idea.
--
Agreed! UGO does not scale when you are talking about a centralized directory with tens of thousands of users in it. Especially the G and the O parts.
I also find it funny that everytime ACLs come up, someone posts "ACLs are bad because they are too complicated and the sysadmin can shoot himself in the foot". Which is fucking hilarious attitude towards Unix, where one of the central tenent is "The Sysadmin Can Blow His Leg Off, so be careful".
--
Personally, I think Sean Fanning shot himself in the foot a long time ago
... BIG money!
No he didn't. He took the idea to a bunch of capitalists, who saw it as a chance that they might get a significant piece of the music distribution business by putting them in a negotating position with the record companies. If they were wrong, they were out their investment. But if they were right
Note that these weren't a bunch of starry-eyed slashdotters who believed in the higher ideals of "Sharing" and "Information wants to be Free". They were balls-to-the-wall, copyrights-be-damned, give-me-a-piece-of-the-action types who could give a shit about anything but potential longterm profits.
Fanning and his little dormrooom VB project was just along for the ride. Well paid for his efforts, of course.
--
Thanks for the kick-assed post. Hopefully a moderator will notice late in the day.
There's nothing preventing a Win2K client from authenticating against an MIT Kerb realm instead of a Win2K domain server. I know this because I'm currently logged into an MIT realm in exactly the way you describe is impossible.
I am kind of curious how this works, because in my limited understanding, it would seem that you would need to have ActiveDirectory somewhere, or replace the NT Gina. Do you know of any pointers explaining interop for 2000 logons?
--
That is why this case should keep going straight to the Supreme Court, where they will reaffirm the fair use doctrines
You know, there's this Slashdot assumption that 69th Amendment to the Constitution grants "Fair Use" rights that can't be overruled by some little ol law.
Well, it isn't true: Fair Use is a concept defined by copyright law. And if the copyright law (the DMCA) says that "bypassing an access control device is illegal and not Fair Use", then that's the way it is. So the real solution is 1) Mass Civil Disobedience, which will lead to 2) The repeal of the DMCA or (more likely) the passage of the Digital Millennium Consumer Fair Use Act.
--
The Windows 95 kernel (a flexible protected-mode launcher that can use DOS drivers as well as provide it's own) is explicity a reaction *against* the OS/2 design, which was thought to be very heavyweight back in the early 90s.
On the other hand, the Windows NT (OS/2 NT) kernel was an opposite reaction against the OS/2 kernel because OS/2 was thought to be too monolithic and far too dependant on i286/i386.
I think it's safe to say that Microsoft felt that the OS/2 kernel (which they helped design and build) was a gigantic clusterfuck, and so they came up with a 2-pronged strategy to do a better job.
As for Microsoft Word, it owes it heritage to Apple/Claris MacWrite far more than WordPerfect (none of the above invented the idea of word processing). I think you'll find that modern versions of both Word and WordPerfect have a lot more in common with Word 4.0 for the Macintosh than they do with WordPerfect 4.2 for DOS.
--