I created a Kixtart Net install script to rollout OpenOffice.org 2.0 - The requirements are simply a Domain Admin Account and the ability to access the Default Administrative Shares that Windows automatically creates.
For the default saving into Office filetypes - All of the user settings are saved in XML files and you can edit these files before you roll-out OpenOffice.org. To do this simply adjust the settings on a separate machine, find out what file was modified to see what you need to change in the default installation. For instance I created a menu item for my script to add a "From Gallery" option to the "Insert - Picture" Menu.
Probably because Dell offers phone support to it's customers, and windows helpdesk people are going to be MUCH cheaper than Linux helpdesk people.
I am sorry, but I have to call BS on that one - the help desk people I have had to deal with know absolutely nothing about computers, they simply read from a screen, this need not change if a company offers Linux.
Hardware manufacturers are totally dropping the ball here. Here you have a system that is freely re-distributable, anyone has the ability to re-design any of it to their liking. There are also freely available *workable* replacement applications for nearly any basic computing task. Yet every manufacturor still insists on paying the extra licensing fees on a system that they cannot modify.
All computer resellers either have idiots for managers (not likely), or they are forced (under contract) to not pursue other Operating Systems if they sell one copy of Windows on a desktop computer (where are you on that one Justice Department??).
And don't give me the crap that no one would ever want to buy a computer that doesn't have Windows, because given the choice most people would opt for the cheaper one, even when it means to learn a new system. I mean hell, Apple is doing extremely well with their outrageously over-priced computers that don't run Windows.
I'd be interested to see how the content and target audience affects the browser distribution at various websites.
This is a very interesting subject, the media could sway any numbers any way depending on what sites they monitor. For instance, I am sure you would get much higher numbers of people using IE if you monitor msn.com - which is the default home page for MS-IE (anti-trust practices anyone ??). Alternatively I bet if you went to monitor netscape.com the numbers for netscape users would be high. On the same token a site offering content for Windows would have a higher IE ratio than one offering content on Linux or OSX
Until a study monitors impartial generic sites these surveys are mostly meaningless.
As for your site not rendering properly with IE, this is totally normal for any site using CSS - MS's CSS implementation is not very standards compliant (Go Figure).
I always add a BackupPC machine in the mix - This is a great way to maintain an archive of your files. Although mostly used for Win boxes, I also use it for archives of every server I install. You would be surprised at how often it comes in handy on larger networks, I guess people really like that delete button.
It is also the ultimate off-site backup (using rsync w/ssh over the internet).
Most of the time the people higher up have no idea reguards to technology. I have been in the situation where something had to be done to either get off of an NT Server solution, or to re-implement a Windows Network that was drowning fast. In every situation I deployed a Samba/GNU/Linux solution and no one actually cared as long as it worked - and they always work better than any MS Solution (IMO)
The only place that actually asked, I gave them 2 quotes, one with a $8500.00 price tag for the server software alone, and one of $4500.00 which included a Dell PowerEdge 2800 w/6 SCSI drives....Guess which one they chose.
Exactly, the people giving these first looks are idiots. Who the hell cares about Window Media Player - as a Network Admin, the only thing I care about with the new Windows Media Player is if I can actually UNINSTALL the damn thing. On most networks the only thing you need is a small player to play differnet formats - coolplayer works well (why open a memory hog to play a simple sound file).
But what I really want to know is if Vista will be such a different OS that it will break my network infrastructures. Will it work well with a Samba (NT4 Style) Domain, will it happily apply System Policies via an NTConfig.pol file, etc.
As far as I am concerned (as well as many network admins) Windows is in maintenance mode, if I implement anything new it will be based on either alternative Operating Systems, or it will offer a web-interface. I am through with fixing Microsoft's "features".
Unfortunately, there are still idiots who will want this next bloatware release from Microsoft, so it is my job to find out if it will work with our existing Infrastructure - If not, I guess it will just accelerate our switch to other OSes.
Yea, this is probably flamebait, but I really don't care (I just WASTED 3 hours trying to remove viruses from a Winblows machine).
Granted, most scheduling apps you will find are going to be web-based, but they work great ! If you want a stand-alone app, then pony up the money and buy Novell's Open Enterprise Server, or any of the other umpteen schedulers available.
Also, everyone thinks that you cannot switch over a network because they use Exchange. I have switched over 3 networks from MS Win2K to Novell's SLES, the trick is to go to each workstation and ask what they use Outlook for, out of the 300+ people I asked only 1 person actually used the Calendar part of Outlook, and that was to keep track of when to pay bills (Hello Sunbird).
For anyone to say that Exchange/Outlook is the only groupware suite available is paying way too much attention to the FUD that circulates around - For anyone reading this that uses Exchange here is some advice - Get off of it ASAP, Exchange stores nearly ALL of the data into 1 single Database file, when (not if) that gets corrupt you will spend HOURS waiting to see if the utilties will be able to recover the damn file or not (probably not) and I hope you have a very recent backup.
Suse Linux Enterprise Linux 9 should have everything you need. It sets up and stores just about everything in LDAP. It is extremely easy to configure and maintain. Yast's Email Server module will setup Postfix/Cyrus/IMAP for you, hell it even installs Antivirus and Spam filters for you.
If you need to control Windows Clients simply create custom Policies for Microsoft's System Policy Editor (or use mine at my web site).
I have currently replaced 5 Windows Servers with SLES9 and have not had a single problem. IMO it is much easier to maintain/use than anything MS has released in the server department.
I did thorough testing before we went with an Antivirus Solution for our 150 Windows Machines and the results were astonishing !
Mainly I used NetBench because we were having problems with the network speed which were not related to hardware - at the time we used Norton AV Corporate.
Normally with no Antivirus, Spyware, etc. the test should run at ~5.5 Mb/sec per machine. On Windows NT, this dropped to under 3 Mb/sec with Norton AV Running. When tested on Windows XP, it improved some to just over 3.5 Mb/sec per machine. This is nearly a 50% DROP in network performance when Norton AV was running.
After more testing of different solutions, the only one that did NOT affect performance considerably was AVG (at most 5% drop). Most of the others were just as bad (or worse) than Norton Antivirus.
We of course went with AVG and was surprised that the Administration tools were so nice, especially at the price (it is one of the cheapest Enterprise Solutions). Nearly everything is ran from the Admin Center. The only thing I would change with the program would be to not display a status icon by the clock, which we eventually did with a system policy.
Overall AVG is one of the best AV solutions around. Hope this never changes (until we drop Windows altogether).
MS' own recommended strategy for servers is one box for each function. AD tree that's a box. An IIS server? That's a box. A SQL server? Yet another box.
Of course they recommend that, they make tons of money on licensing that way (at least $1,000 per box).
But, when you look at their products, their "Small Business Server" line has all of these services on the *same* box, and it is coded so you cannot separate them (at least not with Small Business Server 2000).
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, why on earth do the courts allow them to snatch up all of the companies that they are buying ?
Granted Image Editing is not terribly important, but when you realize they purchased Antivirus and Anti-Adware companies......They are going to use their market muscle (monopoly) to create a subscription based model, all pre-installed with any and every new computer.
Kixtart will allow you to remotely write to the computer's registry (considering you are a Domain Administrator). I use scripts to remotely install just about every "custom" app our school uses.
For example - writing 2 7-zip registry keys to remote machines: $ = WriteValue("$workstation\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWA RE\7-Zip", "Path", "C:\Program Files\OSS\7-Zip", "REG_SZ") $ = WriteValue("$workstation\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWA RE\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\7-Zip", "", "{23170F69-40C1-278A-1000-000100020000}", "REG_SZ")
I myself work part-time at a private High School where we have a limited budget and yes we deploy Suse Linux Servers.
However, I also attend LAN Manager meetings at the local Educational Service Unit (Public Tax Paid Schools) and have found their spending habbits outrageous. For instance, one school has mostly Mac OSX workstations with 2 classrooms of WinXP machines. In order to control the users using the XP machines they deploy a Windows 2003 server, fair enough. However, because Microsoft 2003 Server will not autenticate to a Mac OS X server, they went ahead and had all of their OSX Servers authenticate to the single 2003 server!?!
Not only is this a stupid implementation, but to control their 50 or so XP machines, they had to purchase an additional 900 Client Access Licenses to be able to use the 2003 server for OS X Authentication. (at least $10,000 of public funds thrown in the garbage for a subpar solution).
This is AFTER I explained how to setup an OS X, Linux or any other server that would run Samba to do the authentication to the OSX servers. Furthermore I explained that you could do pretty much the same "Lock Down" features (that available with Active Directory) with Microsoft's System Policy Editor, and I would have given them updated ADM Templates for the task. Also, I explained that they could also implement AD Policies locally if they didn't change them often.
Their are other instances where public money is being thrown away, such as area schools buying Symantec Ghost licenses for each machine even after I showed how they could do the exact same thing with a KNOPPIX boot CD and using partimage.
EDU overspending will not go away until the people in charge of the LANs will stop buying products to solve a problem and start figuring things out on their own. Like the saying goes - You can lead a horse to water......
And you'll see all this and more when it's released in 2007.
Exactly....
DOJ restrictions went into effect Nov 2002 with a 5 year limit....
Fast forward to Nov 2007, Longhorn is released bypassing all of DOJ restrictions. MS has a big enough monopoly that they will rather wait until restrictions are over instead of abide by them.
Saying "good riddance" to IE is like forecasting the rapid adoption of Linux/Unix/OSX. Just because there are sometimes better alternatives doesn't mean that the current dominant force will suddenly vanish. In any case, Firefox adoption wouldn't happen all at once, and certainly not all within the next few years, as you seem to imply will happen.
Back in the late seventies, early eighties the same thing was said about Atari, there were better alternatives back then but everyone wrote games for the 2600 anyway. Once people started to realize there was better alternatives, Atari all but vanished. Granted Microsoft is "innovating" more than Atari did back then, but once developers start porting their apps to ANYTHING other than Microsoft, people will turn to something else.
I still get a kick out of watching Blade Runner and seeing all the Atari signs and billboards plastered all over the place.
I am sorry I didn't hear you, you had your nose so far up Bill G...... You give Bill Gates WWWWAAAAAYYYY to much credit.
Mark 12:41-44And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.
Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast was it for me too.....and I have a ticket to prove it. I made the mistake of going out to eat after 4+ hours of gameplay.
Lucky for me I was only charged for speeding and not reckless driving (with the intent of just getting around traffic). It is amazing how easy it is to forget that you are driving a real car (which can be damaged in real life).
Microsoft should have quite a team of developers considering the amount of money they have amassed.
Why do they continue to purchase companies to add to the products that they sell ? Why don't they just develop their own software "from the ground up", especially considering that whenever they buy a company, the resulting products are always sub-par compared with similar competing products.
Some of the spyware that is out there will utilize known security vulnerabilities to install itself on the machine WITHOUT the user being an Administrator.
Also, quite a bit of spyware will simply install itself to the user profile (hotbar, etc.), the only way to combat these types of spyware is to utilize Mandatory Profiles.
Spyware is an ongoing problem with ANY Windows machine, whether it is "secured" or not.
On most Windows networks that utilize MSI installers Firefox will not work anyway - the reason, Roaming profiles.
Currently no mozilla based browser will work "automatically" with roaming profiles. What happens is that a user will create his profile on one computer, move to another, then Firefox (Mozilla, Netscape, etc) will continually ask for a profile since it does not find the one that was created previously.
This is a major stumbling block for Enterprise acceptance of FireFox. Currently you can get around this by specifying a profile in the command line that launches firefox (make a batch file), but unfortunately every user that uses a computer will use the same profile. (Unless you have an extremely fast network and server which can sufficiently serve 100+ profiles at the same time).
Another complaint I hear from fellow Adminstrators is the fact that you can easily "lock down" Internet Explorer by using Group Policies through Active Directory. Example, you can easily change the home page of every user by simply creating a policy object and applying it to an Active Directory User Container that includes all of your users. To do this with Firefox would take hours (if not days) depending on the number of installations.
Are you serious in thinking that child porn does not "hurt" anyone !
An example: Ted Bundy publicly stated that he started his warped thinking with reading soft-porn detective novels. He then got into the girlie magazines, and eventually started reading S&M and got into violent sex videos. Once he got that taste, it didn't stop. He assulted many women and eventually started brutally killing them.
ANY pornography changes the way one thinks, whether you start looking at women in a different view, or you start to look to different ways to "satisfy" your sexual urges, it still has a profound impact on your reasoning.
I think the Pope said it best: "(there is a) growing reluctance to acknowledge that all men and women receive their essential and common dignity from God and with it the capacity to move toward truth and goodness."
"Detached from this vision of fundamental unity and purpose of the whole human family, rights are at times reduced to self-centered demands: the growth of prostitution and pornography in the name of adult choice, the acceptance of abortion in the name of women's rights, the approval of same-sex unions in the name of homosexual rights"
It's not the fines that are a hit to Microsoft. It is the restrictions (which there aren't many). But what totally blows is that the length went from 10 years in the drafts to 5 years in the final judgement.
What this basically means is that Microsoft squeaked Windows XP out before the restrictions went into effect, giving them an OS they can market until the restrictions are lifted in November of 2007.
So, if you pay attention, the release date for Windows Longhorn will be November 13, 2007 - the day after the restrictions are lifted.
Slashdot Mirror
I created a Kixtart Net install script to rollout OpenOffice.org 2.0 - The requirements are simply a Domain Admin Account and the ability to access the Default Administrative Shares that Windows automatically creates.
You can Download it at
http://www.pcc-services.com/kixtart/scripts.html
For the default saving into Office filetypes - All of the user settings are saved in XML files and you can edit these files before you roll-out OpenOffice.org. To do this simply adjust the settings on a separate machine, find out what file was modified to see what you need to change in the default installation. For instance I created a menu item for my script to add a "From Gallery" option to the "Insert - Picture" Menu.
I am sorry, but I have to call BS on that one - the help desk people I have had to deal with know absolutely nothing about computers, they simply read from a screen, this need not change if a company offers Linux.
Hardware manufacturers are totally dropping the ball here. Here you have a system that is freely re-distributable, anyone has the ability to re-design any of it to their liking. There are also freely available *workable* replacement applications for nearly any basic computing task. Yet every manufacturor still insists on paying the extra licensing fees on a system that they cannot modify.
All computer resellers either have idiots for managers (not likely), or they are forced (under contract) to not pursue other Operating Systems if they sell one copy of Windows on a desktop computer (where are you on that one Justice Department??).
And don't give me the crap that no one would ever want to buy a computer that doesn't have Windows, because given the choice most people would opt for the cheaper one, even when it means to learn a new system. I mean hell, Apple is doing extremely well with their outrageously over-priced computers that don't run Windows.
This is a very interesting subject, the media could sway any numbers any way depending on what sites they monitor. For instance, I am sure you would get much higher numbers of people using IE if you monitor msn.com - which is the default home page for MS-IE (anti-trust practices anyone ??). Alternatively I bet if you went to monitor netscape.com the numbers for netscape users would be high. On the same token a site offering content for Windows would have a higher IE ratio than one offering content on Linux or OSX
Until a study monitors impartial generic sites these surveys are mostly meaningless.
As for your site not rendering properly with IE, this is totally normal for any site using CSS - MS's CSS implementation is not very standards compliant (Go Figure).
I always add a BackupPC machine in the mix - This is a great way to maintain an archive of your files. Although mostly used for Win boxes, I also use it for archives of every server I install. You would be surprised at how often it comes in handy on larger networks, I guess people really like that delete button.
It is also the ultimate off-site backup (using rsync w/ssh over the internet).
Most of the time the people higher up have no idea reguards to technology. I have been in the situation where something had to be done to either get off of an NT Server solution, or to re-implement a Windows Network that was drowning fast. In every situation I deployed a Samba/GNU/Linux solution and no one actually cared as long as it worked - and they always work better than any MS Solution (IMO)
The only place that actually asked, I gave them 2 quotes, one with a $8500.00 price tag for the server software alone, and one of $4500.00 which included a Dell PowerEdge 2800 w/6 SCSI drives....Guess which one they chose.
Exactly, the people giving these first looks are idiots. Who the hell cares about Window Media Player - as a Network Admin, the only thing I care about with the new Windows Media Player is if I can actually UNINSTALL the damn thing. On most networks the only thing you need is a small player to play differnet formats - coolplayer works well (why open a memory hog to play a simple sound file).
But what I really want to know is if Vista will be such a different OS that it will break my network infrastructures. Will it work well with a Samba (NT4 Style) Domain, will it happily apply System Policies via an NTConfig.pol file, etc.
As far as I am concerned (as well as many network admins) Windows is in maintenance mode, if I implement anything new it will be based on either alternative Operating Systems, or it will offer a web-interface. I am through with fixing Microsoft's "features".
Unfortunately, there are still idiots who will want this next bloatware release from Microsoft, so it is my job to find out if it will work with our existing Infrastructure - If not, I guess it will just accelerate our switch to other OSes.
Yea, this is probably flamebait, but I really don't care (I just WASTED 3 hours trying to remove viruses from a Winblows machine).
Have you even looked ???
Granted, most scheduling apps you will find are going to be web-based, but they work great ! If you want a stand-alone app, then pony up the money and buy Novell's Open Enterprise Server, or any of the other umpteen schedulers available.
Also, everyone thinks that you cannot switch over a network because they use Exchange. I have switched over 3 networks from MS Win2K to Novell's SLES, the trick is to go to each workstation and ask what they use Outlook for, out of the 300+ people I asked only 1 person actually used the Calendar part of Outlook, and that was to keep track of when to pay bills (Hello Sunbird).
For anyone to say that Exchange/Outlook is the only groupware suite available is paying way too much attention to the FUD that circulates around - For anyone reading this that uses Exchange here is some advice - Get off of it ASAP, Exchange stores nearly ALL of the data into 1 single Database file, when (not if) that gets corrupt you will spend HOURS waiting to see if the utilties will be able to recover the damn file or not (probably not) and I hope you have a very recent backup.
Suse Linux Enterprise Linux 9 should have everything you need. It sets up and stores just about everything in LDAP. It is extremely easy to configure and maintain. Yast's Email Server module will setup Postfix/Cyrus/IMAP for you, hell it even installs Antivirus and Spam filters for you.
If you need to control Windows Clients simply create custom Policies for Microsoft's System Policy Editor (or use mine at my web site).
I have currently replaced 5 Windows Servers with SLES9 and have not had a single problem. IMO it is much easier to maintain/use than anything MS has released in the server department.
This might be a good alternative to SCSI drives, except it is only 7200rpm !?!
Why would Western Digital market THIS drive for RAID configs when they have 10K rpm SATA drives (Raptors) they could have used instead ?
I am betting on it being released when the DOJ restrictions are lifted - November 2007
MS will never play fair, why should they start now (even though they are required to by law).
I did thorough testing before we went with an Antivirus Solution for our 150 Windows Machines and the results were astonishing !
Mainly I used NetBench because we were having problems with the network speed which were not related to hardware - at the time we used Norton AV Corporate.
Normally with no Antivirus, Spyware, etc. the test should run at ~5.5 Mb/sec per machine. On Windows NT, this dropped to under 3 Mb/sec with Norton AV Running. When tested on Windows XP, it improved some to just over 3.5 Mb/sec per machine. This is nearly a 50% DROP in network performance when Norton AV was running.
After more testing of different solutions, the only one that did NOT affect performance considerably was AVG (at most 5% drop). Most of the others were just as bad (or worse) than Norton Antivirus.
We of course went with AVG and was surprised that the Administration tools were so nice, especially at the price (it is one of the cheapest Enterprise Solutions). Nearly everything is ran from the Admin Center. The only thing I would change with the program would be to not display a status icon by the clock, which we eventually did with a system policy.
Overall AVG is one of the best AV solutions around. Hope this never changes (until we drop Windows altogether).
Of course they recommend that, they make tons of money on licensing that way (at least $1,000 per box).
But, when you look at their products, their "Small Business Server" line has all of these services on the *same* box, and it is coded so you cannot separate them (at least not with Small Business Server 2000).
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, why on earth do the courts allow them to snatch up all of the companies that they are buying ?
Granted Image Editing is not terribly important, but when you realize they purchased Antivirus and Anti-Adware companies......They are going to use their market muscle (monopoly) to create a subscription based model, all pre-installed with any and every new computer.
They should have broke that company up.
FWIW -
Windows NT's User Documents are in
c:\winnt\profiles\username\personal
not "My Documents", but of course any knowlegeable admin redirects this folder anyway (preferably to a unix/linux home directory running samba).
Kixtart scripts to the rescue -
A RE\7-Zip", "Path", "C:\Program Files\OSS\7-Zip", "REG_SZ")A RE\Classes\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\7-Zip", "", "{23170F69-40C1-278A-1000-000100020000}", "REG_SZ")
Kixtart will allow you to remotely write to the computer's registry (considering you are a Domain Administrator). I use scripts to remotely install just about every "custom" app our school uses.
For example - writing 2 7-zip registry keys to remote machines:
$ = WriteValue("$workstation\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTW
$ = WriteValue("$workstation\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTW
I myself work part-time at a private High School where we have a limited budget and yes we deploy Suse Linux Servers.
However, I also attend LAN Manager meetings at the local Educational Service Unit (Public Tax Paid Schools) and have found their spending habbits outrageous. For instance, one school has mostly Mac OSX workstations with 2 classrooms of WinXP machines. In order to control the users using the XP machines they deploy a Windows 2003 server, fair enough. However, because Microsoft 2003 Server will not autenticate to a Mac OS X server, they went ahead and had all of their OSX Servers authenticate to the single 2003 server!?!
Not only is this a stupid implementation, but to control their 50 or so XP machines, they had to purchase an additional 900 Client Access Licenses to be able to use the 2003 server for OS X Authentication. (at least $10,000 of public funds thrown in the garbage for a subpar solution).
This is AFTER I explained how to setup an OS X, Linux or any other server that would run Samba to do the authentication to the OSX servers. Furthermore I explained that you could do pretty much the same "Lock Down" features (that available with Active Directory) with Microsoft's System Policy Editor, and I would have given them updated ADM Templates for the task. Also, I explained that they could also implement AD Policies locally if they didn't change them often.
Their are other instances where public money is being thrown away, such as area schools buying Symantec Ghost licenses for each machine even after I showed how they could do the exact same thing with a KNOPPIX boot CD and using partimage.
EDU overspending will not go away until the people in charge of the LANs will stop buying products to solve a problem and start figuring things out on their own. Like the saying goes - You can lead a horse to water......
Exactly ....
DOJ restrictions went into effect Nov 2002 with a 5 year limit ....
Fast forward to Nov 2007, Longhorn is released bypassing all of DOJ restrictions. MS has a big enough monopoly that they will rather wait until restrictions are over instead of abide by them.
Back in the late seventies, early eighties the same thing was said about Atari, there were better alternatives back then but everyone wrote games for the 2600 anyway. Once people started to realize there was better alternatives, Atari all but vanished. Granted Microsoft is "innovating" more than Atari did back then, but once developers start porting their apps to ANYTHING other than Microsoft, people will turn to something else.
I still get a kick out of watching Blade Runner and seeing all the Atari signs and billboards plastered all over the place.
I am sorry I didn't hear you, you had your nose so far up Bill G...... You give Bill Gates WWWWAAAAAYYYY to much credit.
Mark 12:41-44 And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.
Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast was it for me too.....and I have a ticket to prove it. I made the mistake of going out to eat after 4+ hours of gameplay.
Lucky for me I was only charged for speeding and not reckless driving (with the intent of just getting around traffic). It is amazing how easy it is to forget that you are driving a real car (which can be damaged in real life).
Microsoft should have quite a team of developers considering the amount of money they have amassed.
Why do they continue to purchase companies to add to the products that they sell ? Why don't they just develop their own software "from the ground up", especially considering that whenever they buy a company, the resulting products are always sub-par compared with similar competing products.
Some of the spyware that is out there will utilize known security vulnerabilities to install itself on the machine WITHOUT the user being an Administrator.
Also, quite a bit of spyware will simply install itself to the user profile (hotbar, etc.), the only way to combat these types of spyware is to utilize Mandatory Profiles.
Spyware is an ongoing problem with ANY Windows machine, whether it is "secured" or not.
On most Windows networks that utilize MSI installers Firefox will not work anyway - the reason, Roaming profiles.
Currently no mozilla based browser will work "automatically" with roaming profiles. What happens is that a user will create his profile on one computer, move to another, then Firefox (Mozilla, Netscape, etc) will continually ask for a profile since it does not find the one that was created previously.
This is a major stumbling block for Enterprise acceptance of FireFox. Currently you can get around this by specifying a profile in the command line that launches firefox (make a batch file), but unfortunately every user that uses a computer will use the same profile. (Unless you have an extremely fast network and server which can sufficiently serve 100+ profiles at the same time).
Another complaint I hear from fellow Adminstrators is the fact that you can easily "lock down" Internet Explorer by using Group Policies through Active Directory. Example, you can easily change the home page of every user by simply creating a policy object and applying it to an Active Directory User Container that includes all of your users. To do this with Firefox would take hours (if not days) depending on the number of installations.
Are you serious in thinking that child porn does not "hurt" anyone !
An example: Ted Bundy publicly stated that he started his warped thinking with reading soft-porn detective novels. He then got into the girlie magazines, and eventually started reading S&M and got into violent sex videos. Once he got that taste, it didn't stop. He assulted many women and eventually started brutally killing them.
ANY pornography changes the way one thinks, whether you start looking at women in a different view, or you start to look to different ways to "satisfy" your sexual urges, it still has a profound impact on your reasoning.
I think the Pope said it best:
"(there is a) growing reluctance to acknowledge that all men and women receive their essential and common dignity from God and with it the capacity to move toward truth and goodness."
"Detached from this vision of fundamental unity and purpose of the whole human family, rights are at times reduced to self-centered demands: the growth of prostitution and pornography in the name of adult choice, the acceptance of abortion in the name of women's rights, the approval of same-sex unions in the name of homosexual rights"
It's not the fines that are a hit to Microsoft. It is the restrictions (which there aren't many). But what totally blows is that the length went from 10 years in the drafts to 5 years in the final judgement.
What this basically means is that Microsoft squeaked Windows XP out before the restrictions went into effect, giving them an OS they can market until the restrictions are lifted in November of 2007.
So, if you pay attention, the release date for Windows Longhorn will be November 13, 2007 - the day after the restrictions are lifted.