Umm... The GUI tool in IIS is simply an easy way to get at the Metabase where all the configurations are saved.
There are tools and such available to dump this out into a text file, or you could write a script to compare between the two servers.
It's not that difficult, and from a scripting perspective far far easier to deal with than the "dumb" text files.
Microsoft is moving back to text configures in IIS6. Although they'll be XML files this time around, which will help alleviate the scripting problems of "dumb" text files.
Hmm, perhaps Linux should cater more towards hardware vendors... Developing a standard by which binary drivers can be easily utilized.
I guess it really all comes down to what is your purpose in life. If it's to have a completely free, totally open source solution... then you are screwed and will never obtain complete support of everything available for Windows.
If the goal is to have a good alternative to Windows, then you have to play the game and support the expectations of the vendors who will come to help.
How much leeway are you going to give me on setting up the installations?
I'm just wondering because I could use RIS with a custom Win2k install that included a SP2 rollup, drivers, admin policies and my suite of needed applications.
It'd be completely automated, and I could walk an enduser through it over the phone. Hit F12 on boot, enter username/password, walk away...
Arguing that Windows is hard to install is futile because it's so bloody easy to customize the install with just the tools Microsoft provides.
It sounds as though Slackware doesn't provide very good support. If you check RedHat, they issue about 5-6 security patches a month, on average for their Linux distribution.
I count 20 out on their site for RedHat 7.1 since April of this year.
I use that one as an example, but I suspect if you studied the realm of what ships with RedHat you would find many items would qualify as beta releases, or are projects that are in a constant state of beta.
Apache takes the attitude of shipping a very minimal set of tools. The problems are seldom in Apache, they are in all the third party add-ins.
Microsoft's IIS is a very featureful suite of utilities that includes much more than a web server. It's not surprising at all that it has more bugs than the spartan Apache.
Now that's an interesting quandry. LLC's were setup to protect shareholders from liability claims against the company. So I as a developer for software at Acme Corp cannot be legally held liable, myself, for the software I created while working for the company.
But Acme Corp can. Hell if it's bad enough, they'll get sued to high heaven and go bankrupt. Then I can just go find another job.
But what corporation protects Linux? If there's a fault in the Linux kernel which causes something bad to happen... Who do I sue?
Are Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox protected by a LLC? Or do I just sue them personally?
Now you enter into the world of politics. How do you write a law which damages your adversaries, while protecting your friends?
Then the question comes in. What exact purpose does this serve to our society? Will software get better, or will there just be less of it? Especially in light of the fact that you mentioned indirect uses of software, such as AT&T.
It's very easy for people like Bruce Schneier to talk about this because they don't actually write and sell software.
I'll be impressed when you get Larry Ellison or Scott McNealy up there saying it's a good idea. I'll be really impressed when you get Bill Gates.
Just a correction... Apache does *NOT* run MUCH more of the web than does IIS.
You just have to go look at the Netcraft survey's to understand. In the past they've pointed out that half of SSL enabled sites run IIS. Then about a month or two ago they started trying to identify individual machines and found IIS/Windows combination again on half of the overall web.
What we do know is that Apache is used in many more cohosting situations. Jimmy and Susy set up a web page and pay $0-10/month for it. Is it a signifigant thing that companies providing low price service with no service level agreements use a free OS/web server? I don't think so, but you be the judge.
Two other points:
Microsoft fixed the problem before there was a problem. I don't see how Open Source would be any better in this regard.
You should *ALWAYS* test patches and new releases before installing them into a production environment. That applies not only to Microsoft, but also to Linux, Sun, HP, Oracle, Peoplesoft, everything!
In our testing service packs don't usually break apps. But they do have a tendency to break drivers or low-level hardware monitoring tools provided by the manufacturer. Is this surprising? No. Again we have the same problems on our Unix servers with OS patches.
A company called
Keyghost makes a small device that you place either inside a keyboard, or in between the keyboard and the computer that will log several kilobytes of keystrokes.
I would assume this is similar to the super secret technology that the FBI used.
I've been involved with a Open Source game called Netrek for the past 9 years or so. Around 10 years ago someone came up with the bright idea of using Public Key Encryption to authenticate a client against a server to verify it's identity.
At the time the primary example of this type of technology was RSA, and they held a patent for it(that has subsequently expired).
This person sent them a letter and asked "Can I use RSA for our purpose?"
They said yes and granted a royalty free conditional license, as long as it's just for authentication and not any sort of data stream encryption.
It seems to me like it's worthwhile to at least ask before trying to implement. Implementing without permission is going to guarantee a letter like the one here.
First of all you refer to "before the breakup measures are even decided". I don't know if you haven't been paying attention but... there isn't going to be a breakup.
Even if the SCOTUS decides not to hear the case and it goes back to the lower court for remedy hearings, the appeals court has already made it clear that a breakup was unjustified. This was the one part of the case clearly overturned.
As far as the likelihood of the SCOTUS hearing the case. I don't think you can predict what cases this court will hear and how they'll decide. Certainly not after Bush v Gore.
It's quite possible they might hear this case if for no other reason than to get it over with quickly. The presence of this case is causing a great deal of stagnation in the tech economy and it would be good to finally clear it out of the way.
The article talks about patents, and how if Microsoft were to integrate some form of patented technology into their authentication system it may require Samba to license it.
It's just a general discussion about patents and how they might impact an Open Source project. They use Samba as an example, but are primarily referring to.Net and Mono.
Hey Mr. Taco... Read the article next time before posting a comment about it.
This is really quite common in the world. It's called 'lobbying'.
Various special interests send out form letters with stamped envelopes even that people are supposed to sign and send to their congresscritters, newspaper editors, etc.
The Christian Coalition is certainly one of the heaviest users of this tactic, so it is not surprising that Ralph Reed is familiar with the tactic, but it's hardly contained to just right-wing groups.
Another common one is when a media outlet runs a call in poll, or a web poll and special interests will send out announcements encouraging people to enter their opinion.
It comes in all shapes and sizes.
I'll bet if you looked into it, you'd find a lot of anti-MS letters written by employees of Netscape, AOL, Oracle, Sun, etc. You certainly see opinion articles written by their CEOs. Is this acceptable, or isn't it the same thing?
They give their view on selling software because they are trying to be deceptive. They know exactly what they are doing, but want to misdirect criticism.
It's kind of weird for me as I'm a dyed in the wool Liberal Democrat. But yet I can see in the tactics of the FSF the same things which the GOP has long accused liberals of doing.
It amazes me how eagerly people will believe that the kool-aid they are being fed doesn't contain poison. Why do you find my points to be so controversial that I need to back them up? Have you never bothered to think about these issues yourself?
Free as in Speech is clearly a misnomer, as Free Software has little if anything to do with Free Speech. It's a rather poor attempt to misdirect criticism by wrapping oneself in the flag.
As far as my last paragraph, maybe you need to go read the GNU Manifesto again:
"What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned. "
Are you familiar with the definition of the word banned?
I can't say I've ever been particularly impressed with either Reichard or Joe Barr. Barr has been around a long time as a kook, he was a known antangonist in the OS/2 community.(I wouldn't be surprised to learn he owned an Amiga)
But if you want to express outrage, the best thing to do is plain stop visiting Linuxtoday.com.
Anything else will just increase the hits on their advertising. As they say any publicity is good publicity, even if it is negative.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... The GUI tool in IIS is simply an easy way to get at the Metabase where all the configurations are saved.
There are tools and such available to dump this out into a text file, or you could write a script to compare between the two servers.
It's not that difficult, and from a scripting perspective far far easier to deal with than the "dumb" text files.
Microsoft is moving back to text configures in IIS6. Although they'll be XML files this time around, which will help alleviate the scripting problems of "dumb" text files.
After reading this, the only response I could come up with was:
HUH?
Just out of curiousity. What is hosts.txt and why do you think it's needed?
Somehow I don't think it will be difficult to find prior art on this patent. :)
I had the same idea. I even checked and the domain name is still available.
:)
I just don't think I could keep up with the traffic of news items it would garner.
Hmm, perhaps Linux should cater more towards hardware vendors... Developing a standard by which binary drivers can be easily utilized.
I guess it really all comes down to what is your purpose in life. If it's to have a completely free, totally open source solution... then you are screwed and will never obtain complete support of everything available for Windows.
If the goal is to have a good alternative to Windows, then you have to play the game and support the expectations of the vendors who will come to help.
How much leeway are you going to give me on setting up the installations?
I'm just wondering because I could use RIS with a custom Win2k install that included a SP2 rollup, drivers, admin policies and my suite of needed applications.
It'd be completely automated, and I could walk an enduser through it over the phone. Hit F12 on boot, enter username/password, walk away...
Arguing that Windows is hard to install is futile because it's so bloody easy to customize the install with just the tools Microsoft provides.
The story about how Mexico was going to deploy Linux in all their schools everywhere...
/. should revisit this city a year or two later when the current support tech leaves and find out if the decision to use Linux is still in place.
Followed up a year later by another story stating that never happened because Linux was too hard to use.
I say
It used to be when the Mac trolls came along you'd ask them if they could multitask, play stereo sound and have color pictures and they'd shut up.
Of course that was back when I owned an Amiga.
Apple has never really created anything innovative, they just stole it from less well known people like Xerox so it looked original.
It sounds as though Slackware doesn't provide very good support. If you check RedHat, they issue about 5-6 security patches a month, on average for their Linux distribution.
I count 20 out on their site for RedHat 7.1 since April of this year.
I use that one as an example, but I suspect if you studied the realm of what ships with RedHat you would find many items would qualify as beta releases, or are projects that are in a constant state of beta.
Apache takes the attitude of shipping a very minimal set of tools. The problems are seldom in Apache, they are in all the third party add-ins.
Microsoft's IIS is a very featureful suite of utilities that includes much more than a web server. It's not surprising at all that it has more bugs than the spartan Apache.
Now that's an interesting quandry. LLC's were setup to protect shareholders from liability claims against the company. So I as a developer for software at Acme Corp cannot be legally held liable, myself, for the software I created while working for the company.
But Acme Corp can. Hell if it's bad enough, they'll get sued to high heaven and go bankrupt. Then I can just go find another job.
But what corporation protects Linux? If there's a fault in the Linux kernel which causes something bad to happen... Who do I sue?
Are Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox protected by a LLC? Or do I just sue them personally?
Now you enter into the world of politics. How do you write a law which damages your adversaries, while protecting your friends?
Then the question comes in. What exact purpose does this serve to our society? Will software get better, or will there just be less of it? Especially in light of the fact that you mentioned indirect uses of software, such as AT&T.
It's very easy for people like Bruce Schneier to talk about this because they don't actually write and sell software.
I'll be impressed when you get Larry Ellison or Scott McNealy up there saying it's a good idea. I'll be really impressed when you get Bill Gates.
Just a correction... Apache does *NOT* run MUCH more of the web than does IIS.
You just have to go look at the Netcraft survey's to understand. In the past they've pointed out that half of SSL enabled sites run IIS. Then about a month or two ago they started trying to identify individual machines and found IIS/Windows combination again on half of the overall web.
What we do know is that Apache is used in many more cohosting situations. Jimmy and Susy set up a web page and pay $0-10/month for it. Is it a signifigant thing that companies providing low price service with no service level agreements use a free OS/web server? I don't think so, but you be the judge.
Two other points:
Microsoft fixed the problem before there was a problem. I don't see how Open Source would be any better in this regard.
You should *ALWAYS* test patches and new releases before installing them into a production environment. That applies not only to Microsoft, but also to Linux, Sun, HP, Oracle, Peoplesoft, everything!
In our testing service packs don't usually break apps. But they do have a tendency to break drivers or low-level hardware monitoring tools provided by the manufacturer. Is this surprising? No. Again we have the same problems on our Unix servers with OS patches.
http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Tools/codered.ht ml
This was mentioned on slashdot a year ago.
A company called Keyghost makes a small device that you place either inside a keyboard, or in between the keyboard and the computer that will log several kilobytes of keystrokes.
I would assume this is similar to the super secret technology that the FBI used.
I've been involved with a Open Source game called Netrek for the past 9 years or so. Around 10 years ago someone came up with the bright idea of using Public Key Encryption to authenticate a client against a server to verify it's identity.
At the time the primary example of this type of technology was RSA, and they held a patent for it(that has subsequently expired).
This person sent them a letter and asked "Can I use RSA for our purpose?"
They said yes and granted a royalty free conditional license, as long as it's just for authentication and not any sort of data stream encryption.
It seems to me like it's worthwhile to at least ask before trying to implement. Implementing without permission is going to guarantee a letter like the one here.
First of all you refer to "before the breakup measures are even decided". I don't know if you haven't been paying attention but... there isn't going to be a breakup.
Even if the SCOTUS decides not to hear the case and it goes back to the lower court for remedy hearings, the appeals court has already made it clear that a breakup was unjustified. This was the one part of the case clearly overturned.
As far as the likelihood of the SCOTUS hearing the case. I don't think you can predict what cases this court will hear and how they'll decide. Certainly not after Bush v Gore.
It's quite possible they might hear this case if for no other reason than to get it over with quickly. The presence of this case is causing a great deal of stagnation in the tech economy and it would be good to finally clear it out of the way.
Heh.
Could you repeat the questions again, only this time in english?
Thanks,
Steve
/. troll extraordinaire
The article talks about patents, and how if Microsoft were to integrate some form of patented technology into their authentication system it may require Samba to license it.
.Net and Mono.
It's just a general discussion about patents and how they might impact an Open Source project. They use Samba as an example, but are primarily referring to
Hey Mr. Taco... Read the article next time before posting a comment about it.
This is really quite common in the world. It's called 'lobbying'.
Various special interests send out form letters with stamped envelopes even that people are supposed to sign and send to their congresscritters, newspaper editors, etc.
The Christian Coalition is certainly one of the heaviest users of this tactic, so it is not surprising that Ralph Reed is familiar with the tactic, but it's hardly contained to just right-wing groups.
Another common one is when a media outlet runs a call in poll, or a web poll and special interests will send out announcements encouraging people to enter their opinion.
It comes in all shapes and sizes.
I'll bet if you looked into it, you'd find a lot of anti-MS letters written by employees of Netscape, AOL, Oracle, Sun, etc. You certainly see opinion articles written by their CEOs. Is this acceptable, or isn't it the same thing?
I was referring to Joe Barr's uncanny ability to troll at every opportunity.
It hurt the OS/2 community tremendously, especially after the Infoworld ballot stuffing incident.
Interesting.
I have already responded to you in a different message providing you quotations from the GNU website backing up my opinion of them.
Yet you choose to respond to this other message with further requests for clarification.
Why exactly do you feel you have to rely on tactics of misdirection instead of countering the statements on their own merit?
It doesn't sound to me like you are a serious poster at all.
I don't think the FSF is at all naive.
They give their view on selling software because they are trying to be deceptive. They know exactly what they are doing, but want to misdirect criticism.
It's kind of weird for me as I'm a dyed in the wool Liberal Democrat. But yet I can see in the tactics of the FSF the same things which the GOP has long accused liberals of doing.
It amazes me how eagerly people will believe that the kool-aid they are being fed doesn't contain poison. Why do you find my points to be so controversial that I need to back them up? Have you never bothered to think about these issues yourself?
Free as in Speech is clearly a misnomer, as Free Software has little if anything to do with Free Speech. It's a rather poor attempt to misdirect criticism by wrapping oneself in the flag.
As far as my last paragraph, maybe you need to go read the GNU Manifesto again:
"What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned. "
Are you familiar with the definition of the word banned?
Go read Levy on your own.
I can't say I've ever been particularly impressed with either Reichard or Joe Barr. Barr has been around a long time as a kook, he was a known antangonist in the OS/2 community.(I wouldn't be surprised to learn he owned an Amiga)
But if you want to express outrage, the best thing to do is plain stop visiting Linuxtoday.com.
Anything else will just increase the hits on their advertising. As they say any publicity is good publicity, even if it is negative.
Hmm. This is the same WSJ which has editorials that are in direct conflict with news reported on page 1?
I guess as far as journalism goes it is an example of ethics. But not as far as editorials go.
Although the editor in chief recently retired, so perhaps things will improve.