> If GM executives were constantly involved in car crashes due to mechanical failure, how many cars do you think GM would sell?
Bah, bad analogy. How about "if everytime some spammer-type put out a 'turn here for viagra' sign pointing your car off a cliff, your family always would click on... er... turn their car off the cliff and crash down the embankment, how many times would it take before you told your family to stop doing it?"
Wow, it sure took them long enough. I can't believe the EU has been around for so long, just itching to prove their significance, without actually doing anything. They sure showed the dirty, nasty US though.
Sorry, they want me to pay $$ for this so-called "RC3" you linked to.
As a Slashdot reader, this is anathema to me; I'd much rather get the free RC2 from the article I didn't read, even if the implication of the first sentence (which I skimmed) is that it crashes my machine and costs me lots of time and effort.
Note to any future reader -- this is totally false. Exchange is a database storage-based email server that provides protocol interfaces for several different connection protocols (including POP3 and IMAP4, but certainly not limited to it). Most people connect to Exchange server using Outlook with the MAPI and NSPI protocols, not IMAP.
> While a stupid windows user has full admin access out of the box to all his settings, config, hardware setup etc. a linux user does not
Realistically, this is only true if the stupid windows user adds himself to the admins group (or signs in as administrator) and the linux user does not. It's just as possible for someone to always logon as root in linux or to add root permissions to their daily-logon account in linux as it is to do the equivalent in Windows!
The only way your comment makes sense is if you're not distinguishing between the myriad versions of Windows that are out there. Windows 98, sure... you were able to easily spork the entire computer -- 6 years ago. Windows 2000 and XP give you all the power you need to not make your daily-logon account an admin by default.
Imagine the uproar on Slashdot if Windows apologists showed up here (every day) posting things like "Linux has a local root exploit" and provided a link to some Redhat 5.2 hack from 6 years ago. Come on.
This will set you up to generate a kernel dump on-demand with a key-sequence. If you're so inclined, you can analyze the kernel dump and see just what's backed up at the time of the hang...
> (suggestion to cut-and-paste or screenprint as a method of bypassing OF2003 DRM)
Sorry, you've clearly never tried your suggestions. They both do not work, as they are explictly disabled. You can't even connect with a kernel debugger and get the data out.
Now, sure, you can point a webcam at the screen, or you can whip out a pad of paper and a pencil and transcribe -- but these are not really problems with a technology solution.
> The Exchange Server protocol is another example.
Exchange server provides a heck of a lot of protocol interfaces, but I can only presume you're referring to MAPI? In any case, you can find LOTS of documented protocol interface information for Exchange on MSDN as part of the Exchange Development Kit.
I'll leave finding protocol information on the other standards used and supported by Exchange Server (SMTP, NNTP, IMAP4, POP3, LDAP, etc) as an exercise for the interested reader. (hint: http://www.google.com/ is a good place to start)
>It's easy to change it, but things just stop working due to authentication errors.
Sorry for the long delay in my reply, but I absolutely have to post a follow-up. This is 100% not true. You can change the password just fine, and so long as you do it correctly, absolutely everything will continue working. I've done it dozens of times.
Is it possible you're thinking of changing the actual service account itself (using a different account)? This can be done in a pure Exchange 5.5 environment, but as soon as you implement Exchange 2000/2003 in the same organization you can no longer change the account itself (you can still change the password). If you change the account after bringing in Exchange 200x, the MTA will stop functioning, and you're sure to get event 8213 CDO errors from MSExchangeFBPublish.
>People notice when mail doesn't get through, so with exchange you need to be in early each day to be sure that the services all came up again after backup
Not meaning to pick on you specifically, but this is a perfect example of the "poorly administered environment" I was talking about!
Why are the services being stopped at all?! Exchange has a built-in "online" backup mechanism that takes care of data validation and logfile maintenance. Stopping the databases to do a flat-file backup is a very risky way to backup your Exchange server, and not just because some script you've written to restart the services doesn't always work right!!
In any case, for the other points you've made -- you're probably right. Exchange 5.5 is not a great standalone mail-transfer-agent. It's not intended to be! It's intended to be a groupware/collaboration server that handles all aspects of email/calendaring/contact management in concert with Outlook. Later versions of Exchange make tremendous improvements, but it's still not designed strictly for mailflow. If you want a lightweight mailer, best to stick with Windows 2000/2003 SMTP service or something like Exim.
I once made the mistake of trying to change the postmaster password on exchange 5.5 after previous admins left the company rather rapidly. It can't be done without breaking things - check the microsoft docs.
In 5.5, it's cake to change the service account password (I presume that's what you mean by the "postmaster password" since postmaster is generally just an email address on your service account). This functionality is even made available directly in the Exchange Admin GUI!
And in Exchange 2000 and 2003, it's a totally irrelevant argument because there is no manually-maintained service account to change the password on.
Quite frankly MS Exchange does not do it's job, since the wrong ex-employee can get access to all the companies email if they can get onto your network. That can cost a lot more than an Exchange licence.
In a poorly administered environment (say, not disabling administrators after they've left), you could substitute *any* OS or mail application for "MS Exchange" in that sentence. It is certainly not related to Exchange in the least...
What caused Exchange to go down? We ran forestprep and domainprep on Active Directory.
At the risk of quibbling with you here, I've run forestprep and domainprep in existing Exchange/AD environments many times and it never caused my "Exchange to go down". Survey says something else was involved.
Actually, having Exchange integrated with the AD can be a real godsend in recovery. In the Exchange 5.5 days, if you lost your Exchange server to a failure, you lost both your data store *AND* your directory. Now, you still have your directory information stored in your (hopefully separate from Exchange, if you're smart) domain controller boxes. "setup/disasterrecovery" + restore the mail databases from backup and voila! No loss restore in 1/2 the time.
And the very article you didn't read in the slashdot posting states that MS didn't provide this $50 million to SCO (The article even provides information on who did -- you should have a look!)
You can not believe it all you want, but those are the facts.
> able to buy a suitable motor from another company for a song,
Do you really think the success of BG and Microsoft is based only on the original purchase of DOS? What makes BG a success is that he's been able to "ride the wave" of technology-business without falling off for 25 years!
If you really believe your users won't rise up to lynch you for loss of functionality after a migration from Exchange to generic POP3 mail, you either: 1) Have no idea what your users actually do in Outlook/Exchange or 2) Have a very poorly configured and maintained Exchange setup
Outlook/Exchange and generic POP3 are not even in the same ballgame...
I plugged in my new Kodak digital camera to the USB port and XP immediately found it and automatically added it to my windows explorer... voila, instant drag and drop photo retrieval.
No driver disks, no reboots. Same thing on W2k required both.
I could argue that I'm not qualified to instruct my children in all of the subjects they'll need to learn in order to excel in this world; or at least not to the depth which society will require.
However, since religion really hasn't advanced much in the last few centuries, I'm reasonably capable of indoctrinating my children on that subject with only the help of my local parish.
Oh goodie! We can add the UnitedLinux distributors to our list of "outraged boycotts" just behind (1) the MPAA and (2) theatres that don't show Star Wars EP2 in a digital format!
Slashdot Mirror
> If GM executives were constantly involved in car crashes due to mechanical failure, how many cars do you think GM would sell?
Bah, bad analogy. How about "if everytime some spammer-type put out a 'turn here for viagra' sign pointing your car off a cliff, your family always would click on... er... turn their car off the cliff and crash down the embankment, how many times would it take before you told your family to stop doing it?"
Sorry, two factor auth might get in the way here. Unless you have an MS Smartcard and his second auth credential...
Wow, it sure took them long enough. I can't believe the EU has been around for so long, just itching to prove their significance, without actually doing anything. They sure showed the dirty, nasty US though.
Sorry, they want me to pay $$ for this so-called "RC3" you linked to.
As a Slashdot reader, this is anathema to me; I'd much rather get the free RC2 from the article I didn't read, even if the implication of the first sentence (which I skimmed) is that it crashes my machine and costs me lots of time and effort.
> Exchange is just a hacked IMAP server
Note to any future reader -- this is totally false. Exchange is a database storage-based email server that provides protocol interfaces for several different connection protocols (including POP3 and IMAP4, but certainly not limited to it). Most people connect to Exchange server using Outlook with the MAPI and NSPI protocols, not IMAP.
> While a stupid windows user has full admin access out of the box to all his settings, config, hardware setup etc. a linux user does not
Realistically, this is only true if the stupid windows user adds himself to the admins group (or signs in as administrator) and the linux user does not. It's just as possible for someone to always logon as root in linux or to add root permissions to their daily-logon account in linux as it is to do the equivalent in Windows!
The only way your comment makes sense is if you're not distinguishing between the myriad versions of Windows that are out there. Windows 98, sure... you were able to easily spork the entire computer -- 6 years ago. Windows 2000 and XP give you all the power you need to not make your daily-logon account an admin by default.
Imagine the uproar on Slashdot if Windows apologists showed up here (every day) posting things like "Linux has a local root exploit" and provided a link to some Redhat 5.2 hack from 6 years ago. Come on.
>What is the stupid thing doing?
You may want to have a look at: MSKB.244139
This will set you up to generate a kernel dump on-demand with a key-sequence. If you're so inclined, you can analyze the kernel dump and see just what's backed up at the time of the hang...
> (suggestion to cut-and-paste or screenprint as a method of bypassing OF2003 DRM)
Sorry, you've clearly never tried your suggestions. They both do not work, as they are explictly disabled. You can't even connect with a kernel debugger and get the data out.
Now, sure, you can point a webcam at the screen, or you can whip out a pad of paper and a pencil and transcribe -- but these are not really problems with a technology solution.
> The Exchange Server protocol is another example.
Exchange server provides a heck of a lot of protocol interfaces, but I can only presume you're referring to MAPI? In any case, you can find LOTS of documented protocol interface information for Exchange on MSDN as part of the Exchange Development Kit.
I'll leave finding protocol information on the other standards used and supported by Exchange Server (SMTP, NNTP, IMAP4, POP3, LDAP, etc) as an exercise for the interested reader. (hint: http://www.google.com/ is a good place to start)
>It's easy to change it, but things just stop working due to authentication errors.
; en-us;157780
Sorry for the long delay in my reply, but I absolutely have to post a follow-up. This is 100% not true. You can change the password just fine, and so long as you do it correctly, absolutely everything will continue working. I've done it dozens of times.
Here's the KB article that walks you through all the steps to change the password without incident: "XADM: How to change the service account password" - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
Is it possible you're thinking of changing the actual service account itself (using a different account)? This can be done in a pure Exchange 5.5 environment, but as soon as you implement Exchange 2000/2003 in the same organization you can no longer change the account itself (you can still change the password). If you change the account after bringing in Exchange 200x, the MTA will stop functioning, and you're sure to get event 8213 CDO errors from MSExchangeFBPublish.
>People notice when mail doesn't get through, so with exchange you need to be in early each day to be sure that the services all came up again after backup
Not meaning to pick on you specifically, but this is a perfect example of the "poorly administered environment" I was talking about!
Why are the services being stopped at all?! Exchange has a built-in "online" backup mechanism that takes care of data validation and logfile maintenance. Stopping the databases to do a flat-file backup is a very risky way to backup your Exchange server, and not just because some script you've written to restart the services doesn't always work right!!
In any case, for the other points you've made -- you're probably right. Exchange 5.5 is not a great standalone mail-transfer-agent. It's not intended to be! It's intended to be a groupware/collaboration server that handles all aspects of email/calendaring/contact management in concert with Outlook. Later versions of Exchange make tremendous improvements, but it's still not designed strictly for mailflow. If you want a lightweight mailer, best to stick with Windows 2000/2003 SMTP service or something like Exim.
That's cool and stuff, but it's totally wrong.
I once made the mistake of trying to change the postmaster password on exchange 5.5 after previous admins left the company rather rapidly. It can't be done without breaking things - check the microsoft docs.
In 5.5, it's cake to change the service account password (I presume that's what you mean by the "postmaster password" since postmaster is generally just an email address on your service account). This functionality is even made available directly in the Exchange Admin GUI!
And in Exchange 2000 and 2003, it's a totally irrelevant argument because there is no manually-maintained service account to change the password on.
Quite frankly MS Exchange does not do it's job, since the wrong ex-employee can get access to all the companies email if they can get onto your network. That can cost a lot more than an Exchange licence.
In a poorly administered environment (say, not disabling administrators after they've left), you could substitute *any* OS or mail application for "MS Exchange" in that sentence. It is certainly not related to Exchange in the least...
What caused Exchange to go down? We ran forestprep and domainprep on Active Directory.
/disasterrecovery" + restore the mail databases from backup and voila! No loss restore in 1/2 the time.
At the risk of quibbling with you here, I've run forestprep and domainprep in existing Exchange/AD environments many times and it never caused my "Exchange to go down". Survey says something else was involved.
Actually, having Exchange integrated with the AD can be a real godsend in recovery. In the Exchange 5.5 days, if you lost your Exchange server to a failure, you lost both your data store *AND* your directory. Now, you still have your directory information stored in your (hopefully separate from Exchange, if you're smart) domain controller boxes. "setup
1815 feet 553 Meters http://www.cntower.ca/
Well, at least Guinness didn't...
He donates 2 million to India to fight Aids
He donates 50 million to SCO to fight GPL in spreading fud.
You make an excellent point, except that you're totally wrong on both counts:
The Bill Gates foundation provided $100 million for AIDS work in India
And the very article you didn't read in the slashdot posting states that MS didn't provide this $50 million to SCO (The article even provides information on who did -- you should have a look!)
You can not believe it all you want, but those are the facts.
CN Tower is still the world's tallest building according to Guinness. Not just the tallest tower, but the tallest free-standing building.
CN tower is definitely the "world's tallest building". http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/index.asp?id=4 9675
X is slow unless you work at it. ... and then it's slow and the screen resolution looks strange. :)
Well then... they should upgrade to Windows2003 (Longhorn)!
Windows 2003 != Longhorn
> able to buy a suitable motor from another company for a song,
Do you really think the success of BG and Microsoft is based only on the original purchase of DOS? What makes BG a success is that he's been able to "ride the wave" of technology-business without falling off for 25 years!
If you really believe your users won't rise up to lynch you for loss of functionality after a migration from Exchange to generic POP3 mail, you either: 1) Have no idea what your users actually do in Outlook/Exchange or 2) Have a very poorly configured and maintained Exchange setup
Outlook/Exchange and generic POP3 are not even in the same ballgame...
So to translate: that means that they can be left out of the BUILD, not left out of a working system at runtime.
> I'd like to hear *anyone* here list off a real,
Ok, here's one (of many):
I plugged in my new Kodak digital camera to the USB port and XP immediately found it and automatically added it to my windows explorer... voila, instant drag and drop photo retrieval.
No driver disks, no reboots. Same thing on W2k required both.
> And why isn't school where it belongs: at home?
I could argue that I'm not qualified to instruct my children in all of the subjects they'll need to learn in order to excel in this world; or at least not to the depth which society will require.
However, since religion really hasn't advanced much in the last few centuries, I'm reasonably capable of indoctrinating my children on that subject with only the help of my local parish.
Oh goodie! We can add the UnitedLinux distributors to our list of "outraged boycotts" just behind (1) the MPAA and (2) theatres that don't show Star Wars EP2 in a digital format!
> Exchange made my life miserable for many years in the 93-95 timeframe. It might be better now.
Wow, that's amazing since MS Exchange was first released in 1996.