I`d like to see them `require` Linux (and other open source) drivers to respect arbitrary, foreign, protection systems.
I think their plan is, you will no longer (legally) be able to buy a soundcard that doesn't have this built into the hardware. And tampering with a soundcard to disable the protection will be illegal to.
Of course the existing base of soundblasters and such is not going to go away anytime soon, so I don't we have to worry about this just yet.
They only gave about a month to hack it for the $10,000
I guess their logic is, its just like they're hiring you... $10K is your monthly wage. That ain't bad.
Of course, it may seem strange that just getting a (very) temporary job would be treated like winning the lottery or something, but I bet it's actually the future of tech hiring practices!
Wasn't the core part that you say is so well written, created by an outside team. Wasn't it the people behind VMS or somesuch?
Soft of. I don't think you could call it an 'outside team', because they were Microsoft employees. Its not like MS hired some other company to write NT... they just happened to hire a lot of former VMS programmers, including David Cutler, one of VMS original designers!
Of course the couldn't bring any real VMS code with them. AFAIK VMS was (is?) written in VAX assembly anyway. SO they had to re-implement the features of the VMS kernel.
Kinda like how hackers implemented their own versions of Unix, but for very different reasons!
I wonder though, if Microsoft layed off a bunch of programmers, and then some other company hired them to create a product that competes against Microsoft, how quickly would somebody get sued ?
the very core part of the OS(which is largely OS independent) is very well written with tons of comments etc... but once you start getting into the 'windows specific' portions it gets worse and worse and worse...
Huh? The core of the OS is OS-independant?
If you mean that the innards of the NT kernal are completely separate from (and better written than) the Windows environment as users and third-party developers know it, then you are probably correct.
Failing that, how about PPP over HTTP? You could setup a server outside of the firewall and set PPP over POST requests. Could that not be done with a bit of hacking?
Each congress person should be paid the average income of their state (or the country) to force them to better the state of the nation.
Be more specific - I'd say the median income rather than the mean. If it was the mean, it would be much easier to increase the income of the ultra-wealthy by a lot than it would be to increase everyone's income some.
I Am Not An Economist (or a statistician), but
how about the "mode" ? I mean the annual income that the greatest number of people earn ?
This would still have the problems you describe... but I think it would be mathematically better than the mean or the median.
OTOH, paying Cogress less money would probably just give them more incentive to get money through more sneaky, unofficial means.
I thought his name sounded familiar. He's one of co-chairs of the House "Internet Caucus". He has a long history of being involved with Internet-related legislation, some of which was drafted by him and Al Gore (they invented the Internet together... not!). Some of it is listed on his
website.
I don't see anything specific on his website, but I recall reading elsewhere that Boucher was instrumental in the legislation that allowed the Internet to legally be used for non-research purposes. So he's at least partially responsible for the commercialized Internet of today, as opposed to the elite academic community of ten years ago. Whether that's a good thing or not is a matter of opinion, I guess.
To be fair, they'd probably have to sue the NTFS for DOS developers. Although it provides RO access to NTFS volumes, it still gives DOS some NTFS functionality.
The free version is limited to read-only. The "professional" version is not.
I run NT at home and if I used NTFS not only would it be unreadable from linux, it would also be unreadable from my windows95 partition.
I think winternals might be able to help you to a certain extent.
1) Users with multiple OS's on one machine.
... which happens to include most desktop and laptop Linux installations, that I know of anyway.
2) Users who wish to have one of those linux versions that run off of a floppy disk (I don't remember any for linux, just picobsd for bsd)
See this, and
this. All of these are using a Linux boot disk to break NT security. Mostly useful for admins who don't know the password of the box they're trying to administrate!
It makes me wonder... What was their attitude towards stuff like Norton Utilities back when these things first emerged? Did Norton have permission from M$ to write things like undelete and defrag ? Or did he reverse engineer DOS ?
He was probably talking about Outlook Web Access. Its a web server application (from Microsoft, of course) that provides browser-based access to an MS Exchange mail system. Lots of companies use it to allow their employees to check email remotely.
Neither Outlook nor Outlook Express is needed on the client computer. It probably relies on JavaScript, though.
We used to always have trouble with people downloading programs and messing with settings that screwed up the systems. We were forced to restrict so much of the computers that only IE can be opened and only HTTP can be used.
I was just thinking, all the references I've seen so far have been to windows and IE. Are there any libaries that use Linux for their publicly accessible terminals ?
Another reason (separating presentation from
other things)... lets graphic/page designers
work on the front end while application
developers develop the application in parallel.
Has anybody ever actually worked on a project where this goal was realized ?
The way its always been in my personal experience is this: designers just create static pages and then programmers must go in and insert the "magic code" to make the app work. This often involves manual editing of complex HTML that was created with the aid of design tools. I do not consider this to truly live up to the claims that people usually make about separating content from presentation.
WebMacro looks like it might actually solve such problems... haven't used it myself, though.
Slightly off topic, but interesting: ever notice that it claims to accept these whether or not the applications to handle them are actually installed ? Its probably the same with gzip.
For conventional web pages, I agree. The slowness of most web sites is either due to graphics, or they are using some slow CGI on the server side. Compression of HTML wouldn't help them much.
There are also cases where the HTML is just plain resource-intensive for the browser to render (lots of nested tables, for example). Adding in the extra step of de-compressing wouldn't help there either.
However, I could see clients (not necessarily browsers) sucking down large chunks of XML in a gzipped form. It could be used for things like sending thousands of raw database records to a client application for further processing and presentation to the end user.
You mean your company just blatantly violated their licensing agreement with Microsoft.
Most likely. I didn't make these images... I just installed 'em.
For all I know, they were paying twice. Actually they were probably paying once for 95 and then again for NT. That's at least better than paying twice for NT.
But the company's new position, as posted on its licensing Web site, does not include small businesses or other companies with fewer than 500 licenses
But small business don't usually need or want to re-image things the way the big guys do.
Large companies usually do this because they have an approved set of software that their own IT people will be responsible for maintaining, and they want all the computers in the company to be the same. Also they want to install NT or 2000 instead of the Win98 that probably came from the OEM, so they can enforce domains and security and policies and all that other MSCE stuff.
I hate to use the phrase "TCO", but thats what it comes down to. That and the desire for control by the IT people, but thats another issue. In any case, all of this becomes important when you're talking about thousands of PCs, probably not all in one central location.
None of this is an issue in small companies. Or at least its a lot less of an issue.
If you are a mom-and-pop operation with one or two computers, what is there to standardize ? What is there to control ?
I do see companies with 50-500 employees (a big range, that includes a lot of new startup companies) being screwed by this, though. They are just big enough to have an IT department (even if it consists of just one or two guys) and might start to want to re-image things. Of course these are exactly the same companies that are in a good position to embrace alternatives to M$....
I worked for a large company that used scripts to install all the standard software. They ended up switching to re-imaging mostly for the sheer speed.
Installing all the apps that were part of our standard load took several times longer than just re-imaging the whole hard drive.
As soon as things like Ghostwalker became available for NT we switched to images. The original lack of such a tool was, I think, the only reason we ever did scripts to begin with.
OTOH, this company was over 10K employees so wasn't really affected by the issues we're talking about here.
Slashdot Mirror
ln -s
I wonder how many people are going to have to learn about MAKEDEV now...
I think their plan is, you will no longer (legally) be able to buy a soundcard that doesn't have this built into the hardware. And tampering with a soundcard to disable the protection will be illegal to.
Of course the existing base of soundblasters and such is not going to go away anytime soon, so I don't we have to worry about this just yet.
I guess their logic is, its just like they're hiring you... $10K is your monthly wage. That ain't bad.
Of course, it may seem strange that just getting a (very) temporary job would be treated like winning the lottery or something, but I bet it's actually the future of tech hiring practices!
The original ARPAnet systems went online in 1969. If Unix existed at all at that time, it was certainly still confined to its Bell Labs cradle.
Soft of. I don't think you could call it an 'outside team', because they were Microsoft employees. Its not like MS hired some other company to write NT... they just happened to hire a lot of former VMS programmers, including David Cutler, one of VMS original designers!
Of course the couldn't bring any real VMS code with them. AFAIK VMS was (is?) written in VAX assembly anyway. SO they had to re-implement the features of the VMS kernel.
Kinda like how hackers implemented their own versions of Unix, but for very different reasons!
I wonder though, if Microsoft layed off a bunch of programmers, and then some other company hired them to create a product that competes against Microsoft, how quickly would somebody get sued ?
Huh? The core of the OS is OS-independant?
If you mean that the innards of the NT kernal are completely separate from (and better written than) the Windows environment as users and third-party developers know it, then you are probably correct.
Yes. See www.nocrew.org/software/httptunnel.html.
This appears to be for Linux, btw.
I Am Not An Economist (or a statistician), but how about the "mode" ? I mean the annual income that the greatest number of people earn ?
This would still have the problems you describe... but I think it would be mathematically better than the mean or the median.
OTOH, paying Cogress less money would probably just give them more incentive to get money through more sneaky, unofficial means.
I don't see anything specific on his website, but I recall reading elsewhere that Boucher was instrumental in the legislation that allowed the Internet to legally be used for non-research purposes. So he's at least partially responsible for the commercialized Internet of today, as opposed to the elite academic community of ten years ago. Whether that's a good thing or not is a matter of opinion, I guess.
The free version is limited to read-only. The "professional" version is not.
I think winternals might be able to help you to a certain extent.
1) Users with multiple OS's on one machine.
2) Users who wish to have one of those linux versions that run off of a floppy disk (I don't remember any for linux, just picobsd for bsd)
See this, and this. All of these are using a Linux boot disk to break NT security. Mostly useful for admins who don't know the password of the box they're trying to administrate!
It makes me wonder... What was their attitude towards stuff like Norton Utilities back when these things first emerged? Did Norton have permission from M$ to write things like undelete and defrag ? Or did he reverse engineer DOS ?
Neither Outlook nor Outlook Express is needed on the client computer. It probably relies on JavaScript, though.
I was just thinking, all the references I've seen so far have been to windows and IE. Are there any libaries that use Linux for their publicly accessible terminals ?
Has anybody ever actually worked on a project where this goal was realized ?
The way its always been in my personal experience is this: designers just create static pages and then programmers must go in and insert the "magic code" to make the app work. This often involves manual editing of complex HTML that was created with the aid of design tools. I do not consider this to truly live up to the claims that people usually make about separating content from presentation.
WebMacro looks like it might actually solve such problems... haven't used it myself, though.
Slightly off topic, but interesting: ever notice that it claims to accept these whether or not the applications to handle them are actually installed ? Its probably the same with gzip.
For conventional web pages, I agree. The slowness of most web sites is either due to graphics, or they are using some slow CGI on the server side. Compression of HTML wouldn't help them much.
There are also cases where the HTML is just plain resource-intensive for the browser to render (lots of nested tables, for example). Adding in the extra step of de-compressing wouldn't help there either.
However, I could see clients (not necessarily browsers) sucking down large chunks of XML in a gzipped form. It could be used for things like sending thousands of raw database records to a client application for further processing and presentation to the end user.
The "developer edition" is free-as-in-beer. Its limited to three concurrent connections, though.
Yes, he is still around. See http://www.echonyc.com/~steven
Please read the Introduction to the NHD.
The Jargon File goes back to the 1970s. ESR is merely the current caretaker.
It probably depends on the OS version, then. The NT 4 version of WordPad (which I tested earlier today) will only load Word 6.0 files.
Win98 and Win2K probably have a newer version of the Rich Text control than NT, and so don't have this limitation.
You'd think that service packs would keep the NT version current... but apparently not.
Most likely. I didn't make these images... I just installed 'em.
For all I know, they were paying twice. Actually they were probably paying once for 95 and then again for NT. That's at least better than paying twice for NT.
Sure Wordpad reads doc files... "Microsoft Word 6.0" doc files to be precise. Try using it to open a file saved from Word 2000, or Word 97 even.
Point taken, but were there any equations in that license document ?
But small business don't usually need or want to re-image things the way the big guys do.
Large companies usually do this because they have an approved set of software that their own IT people will be responsible for maintaining, and they want all the computers in the company to be the same. Also they want to install NT or 2000 instead of the Win98 that probably came from the OEM, so they can enforce domains and security and policies and all that other MSCE stuff.
I hate to use the phrase "TCO", but thats what it comes down to. That and the desire for control by the IT people, but thats another issue. In any case, all of this becomes important when you're talking about thousands of PCs, probably not all in one central location.
None of this is an issue in small companies. Or at least its a lot less of an issue. If you are a mom-and-pop operation with one or two computers, what is there to standardize ? What is there to control ?
I do see companies with 50-500 employees (a big range, that includes a lot of new startup companies) being screwed by this, though. They are just big enough to have an IT department (even if it consists of just one or two guys) and might start to want to re-image things. Of course these are exactly the same companies that are in a good position to embrace alternatives to M$....
As soon as things like Ghostwalker became available for NT we switched to images. The original lack of such a tool was, I think, the only reason we ever did scripts to begin with.
OTOH, this company was over 10K employees so wasn't really affected by the issues we're talking about here.