Actually I have seen it the way you discuss. I was at Iowa State University and spent 4 years working with Project Vincent(a distributed environment based off the Project Athena work from MIT).
Windows has evolved to the point that it is manageable in a very similar manner. With the introduction of Windows 2000, I could distribute applications to an end user on a needed basis.
One of the fundamental problems that the Unix model you talk about has is that the files needed to run the application all reside on file servers. This results in two things. First, high network utilization, and second, decreased client performance.
You can mitigate these issues slightly, but you never really solve them until you install the application files on the local client. You mention engineers, but don't seem to understand that these are the users who would be most impacted by this as many advanced applications consume large amounts of storage for their binary files.
While at ISU our biggest issue in this regard was a GIS package from ESRI called Arc/Info. The binaries for this app consumed about 500 Megs of drive space all totaled. There was a considerable difference between loading this from local disk versus over a network drive. i.e. like 5 seconds versus 60 seconds on a DEC Alpha station. As such it made sense to install the application to local disk to maintain good performance.
I guess I should also point out that the Windows world also used this same model with all apps residing on the file server back in the era of Windows 3.1. But again the network utilization and performance impact became signifigant constraints. With harddrive prices falling over time it became economically infeasible to continue to maintain this type of environment and the world switched at around the time of Win95/NT4.
The point being it is not much better than it is in Windows, your solution happens to have some severe limitations which makes it impractical and inefficient.
The Windows 2000 model whereby the desktops get a standard set of applications to start with and additional applications are pulled down on an as needed basis is really quite better.
"Only in the Windows world do you really really need a workstation of your own."
Exactly how do you figure?
The company I work for has been using Windows NT for years and we essentially have the same setup. The desktops are the same throughout the company, and I can go to any of them and get my basic work done. All of your data, email, everything is stored out on the network drives and accessible from any computer in the company quite easily.
I've been working out of two different buildings for the past 4 years with no problems and I'm certainly not using a laptop.
Copyrighted material has always had essentially per-seat licenses. Two people can't read a book or newspaper at the same time. While multiple people can view a movie or listen to music at the same time, they are explicitly forbidden from using the material as part of a public performance. i.e. you turn a CD player on in your bar, you have to be licensed with ASCAP.
There's no real need for me to rethink my argument, but perhaps you could admit to yourself that I am right.
"because Microsoft was one of the first companies to introduce such an absurd concept"
Well actually no, this per-seat concept has been around for centuries now.
As an experiment go find someone in a public place reading a newspaper. Look over their shoulder and start reading, when they turn the page say "excuse me I wasn't done reading yet."
If you don't get:
a) punched in the nose
or
b) told to go buy your own damn newspaper
I will buy you a coke.
Anyway, software was licensed in this manner long before Microsoft became a company.
Umm... That's because prior to breakup there was no way for you to have a phone in your home without leasing it from AT&T. AT&T owned the lines, and you could only place AT&T phones on those lines.
So people who remember the days of party lines were so used to this that they never bothered to question it.
On the positive side, those old phones from Western Electric were much better than the $9.99 phones from the dime store. They were probably worth $200 or so, good solid and lasted forever.
In the past 12 years of building PCs for myself I have never fried a power supply. I've had fans go bad in them, which required some surgery and solder to replace but never a complete failure.
You must have one hell of a lot of stuff in your case to overload it that bad, and I thought I was bad.
That sounds great except there is no VREDIR.DLL on Windows NT. That's a Windows 95 thing, or even Windows for Workgroups... VREDIR.VXD, VREDIR.386 respectively.
The redirector in Windows NT is RDR.SYS.
Access 1.1 also was a Win16 application, which makes your explanation seem even more interesting and I'm wondering if you aren't confusing Windows for Workgroups with NT.
BTW, both CodeRed and Nimda had had patches available for them from Microsoft for months prior to their exploits. Also in both cases if you had followed Microsoft's instructions for locking down IIS neither worm would have impacted you.
I hate to be critical but I don't think people who obviously know nothing about NT are really in a position to be critical of the OS.
Go read the original article again. There was never any mention of the problem taking the NT OS down. That's the myth which was inserted by Linux kiddies.
Windows has matured a lot since then, but let's not pretend that it wasn't at fault in that situation.
Better yet, let's not pretend it was at fault in that situation.
Is it your intent to prove how little you know about computer systems to bring up that myth about NT crippling a Navy ship?
Just curious because when that article originally surfaced in '97 it was quite apparent from the problem description to anybody knowledgeable that the problem was caused by the third party software running on top of the OS, and not the OS itself.
This is sort of like the morons who have a bad modem claiming the Internet is broken.
It never ceases to amaze me that the major record companies don't see *free advertising* when it's in front of their faces.
No, I think the RIAA is really just upset that nobody bothered to ask them first if they wanted free advertising.
I am more than willing to provide free advertising for Porsche owners. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anybody to accept my offer by leaving the keys in the ignition of their car. I guess they just don't appreciate innovative and disruptive business plans!
However, it's yet another indicator that if you want to start an innovative business, don't do it inthe USA, or in anywhere with strong treaties with the USA. That part is very sad.
You can start a innovative business in the US, you just need to know who to talk to. Maybe they could hook up with John Gotti, Jr. or one of the other bosses who have a lot of experience setting up innovative businesses in the US. I'm not sure how you get in contact with them though as part of the secret of running an innovative business is to keep under the radar.
Those are some interesting points. I agree that the console world is different from the PC world and having the unified experience will likely cater more towards the intended audience.
I'm glad to see subspace didn't completely die. I played it a little bit when it was beta and it was kind of fun. I just remember the announcement that the were shutting down their servers.
It's interesting that someone choose the name Continuum for the ongoing free game. A bit of history... when subspace was first announced, they harassed some netrek maintainers because they were using the name 'subspace' as the name of one of the servers. It didn't seem to matter to them that netrek had more to do with star trek than their game, and the name had been there on the server for quite some time.
Well anyway, not wishing to fight a legal challenge the server maintainer changed the name of his server to continuum.
the question just remains that if sony can do it for free, how much better does M$'s have to be in order to convince people to pay for it
But Sony isn't going to do it for free. Sony is just not going to do it. That is, all Sony is going to sell you on your PS2 is a modem/network adapter to allow you to connect to your pre-existing ISP.
From then on, whether you play a game online or not is entirely dependent upon your relationship with the software publisher of the particular game. So in the case of playing Everquest, you will pay $10/month to Sony. If you want to play some other game from Sega, you will pay $10/month to Sega and so forth. Now some games may sell so well that the publisher includes online play in the price of the box, like Blizzard does with Diablo, but I suspect most won't be like that. There will either be a charge to get to the Sega network, or per individual title.
So the Sony model is actually going to be far more expensive per month in order to get access to the same number of games as the Microsoft model. I think this makes the Microsoft model far more compelling from a consumer aspect.
Setting up the online gaming infrastructure can be expensive. In the PC world there have been only a handful of success stories. Quake relied mostly on volunteers setting up servers. Blizzard is relying on sheer popularity of their boxed game sales to cover the cost. But others like UO, Everquest, and dozens of others charge $10/month to play.
So Sony is leaving it up to the developers. Which means some games may be free to play online, and others will cost money.
But the way game consoles work, a consumer buys many games and then might wish to play any given game at any time. This means that unless you are entirely committed to one game, you face the possibility of paying $10/month for half a dozen games, which is a signifigant cost. That means you probably only choose one game to play online, sort of a survival of the fittest. Everquest has become this way on the PC, whereas others like Subspace died from lack of subscribers.
On the other hand Microsoft is taking a different tactic. They'll provide the infrastructure for all games. The developer of the game sells their box, and then turns over the server code to MS to maintain. MS in turn charges one price to the consumer(this might be $50/year, maybe it's $10/month, not sure yet) to access all games online.
This means that popular games will drive XBox sales and sales of the online subscription. But less popular games will be able to share these infrastructure costs and as a result not disappear totally because they only have say 200 users instead of 200,000.
I see Microsoft's model as clearly superior from the customer perspective. The only question is how much, if anything, they charge the game producers. If it's little to nothing, MS will clearly be in a better partnership position.
BTW, Sony's model has been criticized by others a bit more knowledgeable and certainly less biased than the Register: http://news.com.com/2100-1040-855039.ht ml
Perhaps there just isn't good documentation on this, but this issue wouldn't be a problem if the SQL Server databases were properly installed and maintained.
First of all, a DB should never be outside a firewall. It's not necessary.
Second of all, this issue is aided by databases installed with blank admin passwords.
I don't know how you solve this. You can't prevent people from installing software. I guess Microsoft's new MBSA will point out the blank password issue and any patches missing, but...
Re:There ARE other ways
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 2
I think it's interesting that you claim I do not understand logic and yet you have failed to provide a compelling argument to differentiate the two points, whereas I already sited an example showing they were.
And if George Lucas' work is so worthless, why then do you care whether or not you can copy it?
I'm sorry, but I don't see an interesting argument here, I just see bitterness and resentment of others. Discussion is over.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I have seen it the way you discuss. I was at Iowa State University and spent 4 years working with Project Vincent(a distributed environment based off the Project Athena work from MIT).
Windows has evolved to the point that it is manageable in a very similar manner. With the introduction of Windows 2000, I could distribute applications to an end user on a needed basis.
One of the fundamental problems that the Unix model you talk about has is that the files needed to run the application all reside on file servers. This results in two things. First, high network utilization, and second, decreased client performance.
You can mitigate these issues slightly, but you never really solve them until you install the application files on the local client. You mention engineers, but don't seem to understand that these are the users who would be most impacted by this as many advanced applications consume large amounts of storage for their binary files.
While at ISU our biggest issue in this regard was a GIS package from ESRI called Arc/Info. The binaries for this app consumed about 500 Megs of drive space all totaled. There was a considerable difference between loading this from local disk versus over a network drive. i.e. like 5 seconds versus 60 seconds on a DEC Alpha station. As such it made sense to install the application to local disk to maintain good performance.
I guess I should also point out that the Windows world also used this same model with all apps residing on the file server back in the era of Windows 3.1. But again the network utilization and performance impact became signifigant constraints. With harddrive prices falling over time it became economically infeasible to continue to maintain this type of environment and the world switched at around the time of Win95/NT4.
The point being it is not much better than it is in Windows, your solution happens to have some severe limitations which makes it impractical and inefficient.
The Windows 2000 model whereby the desktops get a standard set of applications to start with and additional applications are pulled down on an as needed basis is really quite better.
"Only in the Windows world do you really really need a workstation of your own."
Exactly how do you figure?
The company I work for has been using Windows NT for years and we essentially have the same setup. The desktops are the same throughout the company, and I can go to any of them and get my basic work done. All of your data, email, everything is stored out on the network drives and accessible from any computer in the company quite easily.
I've been working out of two different buildings for the past 4 years with no problems and I'm certainly not using a laptop.
Copyrighted material has always had essentially per-seat licenses. Two people can't read a book or newspaper at the same time. While multiple people can view a movie or listen to music at the same time, they are explicitly forbidden from using the material as part of a public performance. i.e. you turn a CD player on in your bar, you have to be licensed with ASCAP.
There's no real need for me to rethink my argument, but perhaps you could admit to yourself that I am right.
"because Microsoft was one of the first companies to introduce such an absurd concept"
Well actually no, this per-seat concept has been around for centuries now.
As an experiment go find someone in a public place reading a newspaper. Look over their shoulder and start reading, when they turn the page say "excuse me I wasn't done reading yet."
If you don't get:
a) punched in the nose
or
b) told to go buy your own damn newspaper
I will buy you a coke.
Anyway, software was licensed in this manner long before Microsoft became a company.
All I can do today is push the off button on my cordless. Maybe if we still had those old ringer wall phones the telemarketers would get the point!
:)
Picking up the car in 2 hours! WOO HOO!
Umm... That's because prior to breakup there was no way for you to have a phone in your home without leasing it from AT&T. AT&T owned the lines, and you could only place AT&T phones on those lines.
So people who remember the days of party lines were so used to this that they never bothered to question it.
On the positive side, those old phones from Western Electric were much better than the $9.99 phones from the dime store. They were probably worth $200 or so, good solid and lasted forever.
How are you killing power supplies?
In the past 12 years of building PCs for myself I have never fried a power supply. I've had fans go bad in them, which required some surgery and solder to replace but never a complete failure.
You must have one hell of a lot of stuff in your case to overload it that bad, and I thought I was bad.
Because when the app started up it began to try to process the bad data again... That was explained in one of the articles.
Sorry, you did not, and still do not know jack shit. End of story.
That sounds great except there is no VREDIR.DLL on Windows NT. That's a Windows 95 thing, or even Windows for Workgroups... VREDIR.VXD, VREDIR.386 respectively.
The redirector in Windows NT is RDR.SYS.
Access 1.1 also was a Win16 application, which makes your explanation seem even more interesting and I'm wondering if you aren't confusing Windows for Workgroups with NT.
BTW, both CodeRed and Nimda had had patches available for them from Microsoft for months prior to their exploits. Also in both cases if you had followed Microsoft's instructions for locking down IIS neither worm would have impacted you.
I hate to be critical but I don't think people who obviously know nothing about NT are really in a position to be critical of the OS.
Ahh, but the machine never crashed... only the database application.
You are claiming the Internet is broken because your modem stopped working.
Go read the original article again. There was never any mention of the problem taking the NT OS down. That's the myth which was inserted by Linux kiddies.
2 .h tml
Windows has matured a lot since then, but let's not pretend that it wasn't at fault in that situation.
Better yet, let's not pretend it was at fault in that situation.
http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus
Just ask the chief engineer on board the ship about what happened.
It's no myth that NT's unreliability was a critical factor in that ship becoming disabled.
2 .h tml
Actually it is...
http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus
By the way, you attempts at ad hominem arguments only further my point, sad to say.
If they are unaccountable, why are these agents being indicted for misuse of the information?
Isn't that a contradiction?
Is it your intent to prove how little you know about computer systems to bring up that myth about NT crippling a Navy ship?
Just curious because when that article originally surfaced in '97 it was quite apparent from the problem description to anybody knowledgeable that the problem was caused by the third party software running on top of the OS, and not the OS itself.
This is sort of like the morons who have a bad modem claiming the Internet is broken.
It never ceases to amaze me that the major record companies don't see *free advertising* when it's in front of their faces.
No, I think the RIAA is really just upset that nobody bothered to ask them first if they wanted free advertising.
I am more than willing to provide free advertising for Porsche owners. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anybody to accept my offer by leaving the keys in the ignition of their car. I guess they just don't appreciate innovative and disruptive business plans!
However, it's yet another indicator that if you want to start an innovative business, don't do it inthe USA, or in anywhere with strong treaties with the USA. That part is very sad.
You can start a innovative business in the US, you just need to know who to talk to. Maybe they could hook up with John Gotti, Jr. or one of the other bosses who have a lot of experience setting up innovative businesses in the US. I'm not sure how you get in contact with them though as part of the secret of running an innovative business is to keep under the radar.
Those are some interesting points. I agree that the console world is different from the PC world and having the unified experience will likely cater more towards the intended audience.
I'm glad to see subspace didn't completely die. I played it a little bit when it was beta and it was kind of fun. I just remember the announcement that the were shutting down their servers.
It's interesting that someone choose the name Continuum for the ongoing free game. A bit of history... when subspace was first announced, they harassed some netrek maintainers because they were using the name 'subspace' as the name of one of the servers. It didn't seem to matter to them that netrek had more to do with star trek than their game, and the name had been there on the server for quite some time.
Well anyway, not wishing to fight a legal challenge the server maintainer changed the name of his server to continuum.
Someone must have a sense of humor.
Very interesting. I've not seen that Netcaptor before and will have to try it.
I think it's impressive how much innovation has resulted from Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows.
Wow, I thought Microsoft canceled WebTV because it totally sucked to use and nobody was buying the damn things.
the question just remains that if sony can do it for free, how much better does M$'s have to be in order to convince people to pay for it
But Sony isn't going to do it for free. Sony is just not going to do it. That is, all Sony is going to sell you on your PS2 is a modem/network adapter to allow you to connect to your pre-existing ISP.
From then on, whether you play a game online or not is entirely dependent upon your relationship with the software publisher of the particular game. So in the case of playing Everquest, you will pay $10/month to Sony. If you want to play some other game from Sega, you will pay $10/month to Sega and so forth. Now some games may sell so well that the publisher includes online play in the price of the box, like Blizzard does with Diablo, but I suspect most won't be like that. There will either be a charge to get to the Sega network, or per individual title.
So the Sony model is actually going to be far more expensive per month in order to get access to the same number of games as the Microsoft model. I think this makes the Microsoft model far more compelling from a consumer aspect.
Setting up the online gaming infrastructure can be expensive. In the PC world there have been only a handful of success stories. Quake relied mostly on volunteers setting up servers. Blizzard is relying on sheer popularity of their boxed game sales to cover the cost. But others like UO, Everquest, and dozens of others charge $10/month to play.
t ml
So Sony is leaving it up to the developers. Which means some games may be free to play online, and others will cost money.
But the way game consoles work, a consumer buys many games and then might wish to play any given game at any time. This means that unless you are entirely committed to one game, you face the possibility of paying $10/month for half a dozen games, which is a signifigant cost. That means you probably only choose one game to play online, sort of a survival of the fittest. Everquest has become this way on the PC, whereas others like Subspace died from lack of subscribers.
On the other hand Microsoft is taking a different tactic. They'll provide the infrastructure for all games. The developer of the game sells their box, and then turns over the server code to MS to maintain. MS in turn charges one price to the consumer(this might be $50/year, maybe it's $10/month, not sure yet) to access all games online.
This means that popular games will drive XBox sales and sales of the online subscription. But less popular games will be able to share these infrastructure costs and as a result not disappear totally because they only have say 200 users instead of 200,000.
I see Microsoft's model as clearly superior from the customer perspective. The only question is how much, if anything, they charge the game producers. If it's little to nothing, MS will clearly be in a better partnership position.
BTW, Sony's model has been criticized by others a bit more knowledgeable and certainly less biased than the Register:
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-855039.h
Perhaps there just isn't good documentation on this, but this issue wouldn't be a problem if the SQL Server databases were properly installed and maintained.
First of all, a DB should never be outside a firewall. It's not necessary.
Second of all, this issue is aided by databases installed with blank admin passwords.
I don't know how you solve this. You can't prevent people from installing software. I guess Microsoft's new MBSA will point out the blank password issue and any patches missing, but...
I think it's interesting that you claim I do not understand logic and yet you have failed to provide a compelling argument to differentiate the two points, whereas I already sited an example showing they were.
And if George Lucas' work is so worthless, why then do you care whether or not you can copy it?
I'm sorry, but I don't see an interesting argument here, I just see bitterness and resentment of others. Discussion is over.
Oh I know that's what they think, but they are terribly wrong in trying to compare this with slavery.
Relying upon hyperbole to make an argument makes one look very foolish. Comparing intellectual property with slavery makes one look like a maroon.
Hell must have just frozen over!