Not for NT4.0. They did have a license from the original Santa-Cruz Operation for their own UNIX version called XENIX. The 2003 license was to fund SCOX' coffers to spread the FUD - they never licensed anything from SCOX prior to the lawsuit, so apparently there was no pressing need.
Microsoft never purchased a license to do POSIX on NT4.0, just like they never paid for any of the BSD TCP/IP code they snagged (not that they needed, the former being a standard you don't need to license, the latter being BSD-licensed).
But that's the whole point; linux isn't a UNIX clone, and neither is NT 4.0.
Also note that buying licenses from SCOX doesn't stop them from sueing you, so they would sue Microsoft, if they weren't shills that Microsoft is bankrolling in the first place.
As an aside, reverse engineering was never necessary to understand or duplicate a unix kernel and is therefore his mention of it is a complete red herring.
Not only that, it proves a vital misunderstanding of what UNIX was and is; from the start it was an operating system that had its inner workings laid completely bare and published, at least to all who asked - and later it became a specification (POSIX and the OpenGroup's UNIX trademark).
Why isn't SCOX taking on Microsoft? Windows NT 4.0 was POSIX compliant (at least in name), therefore it was cloned, and since it wasn't reverse-engineered (rather, tacked on to a VMS-kernel rip-off), Microsoft MUST have stolen SCOX' precious code, since every UNIX clone MUST be stolen, right? Right?
* other people's spyware ridden computers are spamming me. And DDOSSing people I may care about.
* those that keep hanging on to internet explorer because they're too lazy to learn how to use a program that only works slightly differently than IE are also too lazy to install a firewall, or to apply windows updates (which ironically demands IE). Those people should either learn to deal with a universe that has more than one application, or stop using computers altogether.
* I wince when I see people using IE.. How can they live without tabs?
* If more people use firefox, perhaps some clueless webmasters will catch on and make their sites more accesible towards standards-oriented browsers (and in doing so, perhaps even better accesible for blind people for instance).
* I used to do some sysadmining when I was a student. I used to support people using IE. I know how much work it is to secure it, to keep it secure, and to keep it from fucking up its preferences, helper applications, zones, all that bullshit.
Supporting IE took so much time, I finally resorted to blocking as much I could, hiding the IE icon, and placing an IE icon that started firefox on desktops. No-one noticed.
So, would I recommend a home user to hone his mad spyware-blocking security-zone-tweaking registry-editing skilzz and keep on using IE, even though keeping up with all that stuff kept me occupied for hours a week? Or would I recommend switching to firefox?
As for thunderbird - ANY e-mail client is better than Outlook Express - especially from a not-spreading-worms-thank-you-perspective. And if you're stuck using Outlook for calendaring etc. That just sucks.
Microsoft tried to butt in on Adobe's turf before with Truetype, but no one (or at least, no one important) does Truetype font libraries, Bitstream, Monotye et al all make their fonts type 1 postscript.
The major foundries provide fonts in both formats, and more importantly, in OpenType, which takes either TrueType or Type-1 outlines.
Straight Type-1 won't suffice anymore, even if you use Type-1 outlines, you'll want to use OpenType as the container format for proper Unicode support.
Even though windows now also supports Type-1 fonts natively, the major foundries still provide TrueType fonts - mainly because they kick Type-1's ass for use on displays, due to the 'hinting' used in TrueType (as an added bonus, though typefaces aren't copyrightable in the US, hint-instructions, being software code, are).
With the new flash readers as stock on most new computers, these may be unpopular by next year.
Yes, because unlike USB Mass Storage, which can be accessed out-of-the-box by any computer with a fairly recent OS and a USB port, my CompactFlash will work beautifully on my friend's PC that has a xD-MMC/SD-MemoryStick1/2 reader! Also, his MemoryStick works great in my MMC/SD-xD-CF combo.. NOT.
Meanwhile, my frickin' car radio has got a USB port to play MP3s. It also has an MMC/SD slot (but no xD, MemoryStick 1/2, CF, etc. etc.)
Come-on now I don't have an MBA it is simple math though....
Apparently there still is a need for business school..
Just because the profit is 20x the profit of the offline version, that doesn't mean their costs are 1/20th. Assuming the profit on the offline version is 4%, the profit on the online version would be 80%, so the cost would be $16.80 -- a lot more than $4.20!
Of course, this doesn't necessarily reflect the true cost of the online version too well - I doubt that they're expensing the costs of articles that are written for the paper version and republished online at reasonable prices; i.e. if the paper WSJ wouldn't exist, the online version couldn't copy their articles.
So, yes, it would appear that the online version is doing well, though you'd have to look into what they're paying for their shared content to know just exactly how well.
But if they were selling the same amount of subscriptions at $4.20 a year they'd be making huge losses.
Of course at $4.20 a year they'd sell more subscriptions, but whether that would still make a profit remains to be seen.
So I'm afraid your simple math didn't quite cut it..
Websense is blocking too much and yet too little. Now, that's bad in all sorts of ways. If you're being blocked and think you shouldn't (blocking gay rights pages as porn etc.) you're being slandered basically. If you bought the product, it's giving you a false sense of security. That's all websense's doing.
But in your case, unless you installed websense yourself, you're probably being forced by your employer into using it. That makes them the "fuckheads", not websense. If all companies would stop using websense, they'd go bankrupt, and the world would be a better place. So don't complain to websense, or other censorware vendors, complain to your fuckhead boss.
She deserved the criticism for not pointing out these obvious flaws. Whether the "extremists" were a bit too radical is another case altogether.
Another point to consider is that I've never had the pleasure of reading one of DiDio's commentaries and thinking to myself "that is a sane opinion and valid analysis". Most of the time, DiDio's utterances appear to be either bought-for or the ravings of a madman on crack-cocaine. But for some reason, they end up on the newswires.
Well, if you use your media-exposure to piss off people often enough you can expect some-one to react to it unfavourably. Calling people "extremists" doesn't help.
If I were to describe my view on DiDio based on what I've seen so far, "idiot" would be the nicest word I could muster. Guess that makes me an extremist.
It makes me wonder though, if DiDio made equally ill-informed statements about how great linux is and what a bunch of wankers SCO or Microsoft are, would she not encounter just as harsh criticism from Microsoft-fanboys? On the Internet, everyone's a dog, even Microsoft-fanboys.
We have a room full of people of varying ability who all have unlimited access because [censored p.o.s. software package] doesn't run otherwise. These guys surf a lot, clicking "yes" on every friggen dialogue box they see... literally can't go a full week without some exploit being loaded.
Why aren't you using RunAs to run that one single application using administrator rights, leaving the rest of the system to run as a normal user? VMWare? Qemu? Running the application through citrix winframe/rdesktop/whatever the windows application server thingamajig is called now?
Aren't you using server2003/XP's software restriction policies to disallow all but a set of "blessed" applications to run?
Are your users not restricted in writing to c:\program files? You should only open up permissions on the filesystem and registry where the application needs it - malware usually doesn't install in "c:\program files\some obscure vendor\stupid app". Most badly behaved apps don't need to write to Internet Explorer's settings, or even to the system32 folder. Why not, like, figure out the least permissions the app needs?
This malware, are you allowing your people to use Internet Explorer? Aren't you ristricting the internet zone? Aren't you making them use firefox or opera? Aren't you using spybot to block ActiveX malware? Hosts-file based url blocking? A filtering proxy?
You have a lot of options, especially if it's only the one badly behaved app that you have to sort out additional permissions for.
If bloggers wish to be afforded the privileges and protections held by mainstream journalists (the ones not named Jayson Blair or Mary Mapes), they should follow the same ethical standards.
If flesh-and-blood reporters felt too ethical to report the story, no publication ban would be needed. The publication ban is there to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Evidently, there are journalists who want to. Is there in fact any evidence that this story wasn't in some way written up or leaked by a flesh-and-blood journalist?
Seeing as how the story is on sworn testimony about corrupt politicians, this would be, morally, a good time to err on the side of freedom of speech.
Unless you prefer journalists, and bloggers alike, not ever questioning authority. Even if the authorities happen to be corrupt politicians. That seems to be all the rage these days, so perhaps you really mean it.
The Best Froogle could do wiht that same model number? $70 for a refurbished white box.
Best Pricewatch could do for that drive? $62 (This was a diffrent model number, but to be fair, as far as I could tell, same specs. The same model number was $74)
Let's go with the $74 figure. That's $25.99 less than $99.99. The mail-in-rebate is $50. Which means you should go for the mail-in-rebate if you seriously expect there's a higher than 52% probability that it will actually pay out. (Disregarding the expense of time and effort to fill in and follow-up on the rebate, as well as any loss in value of the product because the warrantee is invalid if you send away the original UPC or purchase slip or whatever to get the rebate).
Or, to put it like this; a probability of less than 48% than the rebate people will fuck you in the ass.
If you like those odds, you might as well steal the product and take your chances with your cellmate.
"Mesothelioma"? It's a cancer, I guess (or so Google says), but not one I've ever heard of. How did that get to be an expensive adsense word?
It's a specific form of cancer caused by asbesthos. And since some-one has to put asbesthos somewhere before you get to breathe it (it doesn't grow on trees), there's some one to blame, and to sue, and therefore, a handsome profit to be made.
The assumption is that people who have it will know the name and search for it on google, whereas the unwashed masses wouldn't begin to think of stringing that many syllables together.
So if you enter Mesothelioma on google you'll get lots of ambulance-chasers' ads. Feel free to click on those to rob them of the dime they're paying for an adsense click-through.
I still have a bag full of old receipts with full credit card numbers I'm trying to figure out how to dispose.
Wait until winter. Burn as fuel. Stir around the ashes. Easy-peasy-lemon-cheesy. No need for cross-cutting shredders.
Wait.. Wait, forget I said that. As luck has it, I have a "data destruction" company. I've got some really advanced cross-cutting shredders, right here, siree! Just fork over your metric loads of privacy-sensitive information, and a few hundred bucks for disposal, and go and have a good night's sleep. And if people from the credit-card company call, saying some-one's been using your cards out-of-state, just remember they're most likely identity thieves trying to scam you into giving them your personal information. After all, all your data was safely destroyed....
The very definition of public domain is that no-one owns it (not even "the public", since you'd have to define who the public is); no one has any right to prohibit anyone from doing anything with it. When copyright lapses, after 1000 years if Disney can help it, it reverts to the public domain.
There's nothing particularly special about public domain, other than the fact that the term is often abused ("this program is public domain, but if youse commercial gimme cash").
Being in the public domain is the natural state of software. Without copyright laws, all software would be in the public domain.
Note also, that being in the PD doesn't entitle you to get some piece of software's source code; there's no obligation on the author to give it to you - this is exactly what the GPL is intended to solve.
Note that your mileage may vary outside the US; for example, not only are government publications not in the public domain by default, but if their copyrights are released, often this only applies to the rights to copying, (re)distribution and creating derivative works, but retaining moral rights (the right of an author to protest if his/her work is "raped"/"abused"; for example if your public domain music is being used by neo-Nazis to promote their political party. Moral rights cannot be reassigned at all(!))
The MSI for firefox is included only with nightly builds.
The (official) MSI "wrapper" for Internet Explorer is only available from microsoft by calling them and convincing them you need it (as a "hotfix"), and then you need to convince them that you should get the $35 you paid for phone support back. Neat eh?
There's an unofficial IE MSI wrapper from sywan solutions, but it didn't work properly for me.
While Internet Explorer can be managed using group policies, which you have to use to lock down windows anyway, that doesn't mean firefox is entirely unmanageable in a network environment.
Firefox accepts a startup flag (-profile d:\foo) that tells it what it's configuration directory is. You can install firefox on a shared directory, and have it retrieve settings from a (read-only) shared directory (or on a per user basis).
While it's not as finegrained as internet explorer's policies (where you might prevent some-one from changing only the homepage, and nothing else, or vice-versa), it's by no means unconfigurable.
This sort of thing should hardly come as a surprise. Applications have been using.ini-style settings or profiles stored in directories for ages. Using shared or synchronized files (with appropriate permissions) to propagate settings has been a common way to manage applications for ages as well.
Now, it's a shame firefox doesn't come with a handy-dandy MSI file, but then, neither does Internet Explorer. Then again, "deploying" firefox is a question of copying/sharing a directory and adding a shortcut with a -profile flag. Much easier and less prone to failure than a (remote/MSI) IE install.
Also, check out sysinternals. They have some real handy tools like PsExec (in the Pstools package); basically rexec for windows, which can really ease your pain when managing a zillion workstations where some change needs to be applied NOW.
And for more security options, check out windows-2003 server and XPs "software restriction policies"; and the great tdifw firewall (no GUI, just a service configured by copying a text-based file to your workstations and restarting the service, mucht better than any Norton offering) (wipfw might also be nice).
Slashdot Mirror
Injecting human DNA into sheep is nothing new to lonely shepherds..
The cops are probably just confusing people who wear pajamas all day (e.g. Michael Jackson?) with Trekkies..
Maybe, but what other public tech company, other than Oracle, is, in it's customers eyes, as much about an individual as the company?
Apple?
1. IBM is also a long standing UNIX licensee
2. IBM is also a long standing UNIX licensee
Remember, SCO only sues its customers.
That's Dutch for "You think 300 bucks is a lot? Wait until you hear what we're actually gonna make you pay!"
Not for NT4.0. They did have a license from the original Santa-Cruz Operation for their own UNIX version called XENIX. The 2003 license was to fund SCOX' coffers to spread the FUD - they never licensed anything from SCOX prior to the lawsuit, so apparently there was no pressing need.
Microsoft never purchased a license to do POSIX on NT4.0, just like they never paid for any of the BSD TCP/IP code they snagged (not that they needed, the former being a standard you don't need to license, the latter being BSD-licensed).
But that's the whole point; linux isn't a UNIX clone, and neither is NT 4.0.
Also note that buying licenses from SCOX doesn't stop them from sueing you, so they would sue Microsoft, if they weren't shills that Microsoft is bankrolling in the first place.
SCOX is sueing IBM for violating their copyright.
Novell have a contract with SCOX saying they never bought that copyright, and that even if they did, Novell can prohibit them from sueing people.
Novell told SCOX to quit, SCOX didn't.
Looks pretty clear-cut to me.
As an aside, reverse engineering was never necessary to understand or duplicate a unix kernel and is therefore his mention of it is a complete red herring.
Not only that, it proves a vital misunderstanding of what UNIX was and is; from the start it was an operating system that had its inner workings laid completely bare and published, at least to all who asked - and later it became a specification (POSIX and the OpenGroup's UNIX trademark).
Why isn't SCOX taking on Microsoft? Windows NT 4.0 was POSIX compliant (at least in name), therefore it was cloned, and since it wasn't reverse-engineered (rather, tacked on to a VMS-kernel rip-off), Microsoft MUST have stolen SCOX' precious code, since every UNIX clone MUST be stolen, right? Right?
* other people's spyware ridden computers are spamming me. And DDOSSing people I may care about.
* those that keep hanging on to internet explorer because they're too lazy to learn how to use a program that only works slightly differently than IE are also too lazy to install a firewall, or to apply windows updates (which ironically demands IE). Those people should either learn to deal with a universe that has more than one application, or stop using computers altogether.
* I wince when I see people using IE.. How can they live without tabs?
* If more people use firefox, perhaps some clueless webmasters will catch on and make their sites more accesible towards standards-oriented browsers (and in doing so, perhaps even better accesible for blind people for instance).
* I used to do some sysadmining when I was a student. I used to support people using IE. I know how much work it is to secure it, to keep it secure, and to keep it from fucking up its preferences, helper applications, zones, all that bullshit.
Supporting IE took so much time, I finally resorted to blocking as much I could, hiding the IE icon, and placing an IE icon that started firefox on desktops. No-one noticed.
So, would I recommend a home user to hone his mad spyware-blocking security-zone-tweaking registry-editing skilzz and keep on using IE, even though keeping up with all that stuff kept me occupied for hours a week? Or would I recommend switching to firefox?
As for thunderbird - ANY e-mail client is better than Outlook Express - especially from a not-spreading-worms-thank-you-perspective. And if you're stuck using Outlook for calendaring etc. That just sucks.
Microsoft tried to butt in on Adobe's turf before with Truetype, but no one (or at least, no one important) does Truetype font libraries, Bitstream, Monotye et al all make their fonts type 1 postscript.
The major foundries provide fonts in both formats, and more importantly, in OpenType, which takes either TrueType or Type-1 outlines.
Straight Type-1 won't suffice anymore, even if you use Type-1 outlines, you'll want to use OpenType as the container format for proper Unicode support.
Even though windows now also supports Type-1 fonts natively, the major foundries still provide TrueType fonts - mainly because they kick Type-1's ass for use on displays, due to the 'hinting' used in TrueType (as an added bonus, though typefaces aren't copyrightable in the US, hint-instructions, being software code, are).
With the new flash readers as stock on most new computers, these may be unpopular by next year.
Yes, because unlike USB Mass Storage, which can be accessed out-of-the-box by any computer with a fairly recent OS and a USB port, my CompactFlash will work beautifully on my friend's PC that has a xD-MMC/SD-MemoryStick1/2 reader! Also, his MemoryStick works great in my MMC/SD-xD-CF combo.. NOT.
Meanwhile, my frickin' car radio has got a USB port to play MP3s. It also has an MMC/SD slot (but no xD, MemoryStick 1/2, CF, etc. etc.)
Come-on now I don't have an MBA it is simple math though....
Apparently there still is a need for business school..
Just because the profit is 20x the profit of the offline version, that doesn't mean their costs are 1/20th. Assuming the profit on the offline version is 4%, the profit on the online version would be 80%, so the cost would be $16.80 -- a lot more than $4.20!
Of course, this doesn't necessarily reflect the true cost of the online version too well - I doubt that they're expensing the costs of articles that are written for the paper version and republished online at reasonable prices; i.e. if the paper WSJ wouldn't exist, the online version couldn't copy their articles.
So, yes, it would appear that the online version is doing well, though you'd have to look into what they're paying for their shared content to know just exactly how well.
But if they were selling the same amount of subscriptions at $4.20 a year they'd be making huge losses.
Of course at $4.20 a year they'd sell more subscriptions, but whether that would still make a profit remains to be seen.
So I'm afraid your simple math didn't quite cut it..
Websense is blocking too much and yet too little. Now, that's bad in all sorts of ways. If you're being blocked and think you shouldn't (blocking gay rights pages as porn etc.) you're being slandered basically. If you bought the product, it's giving you a false sense of security. That's all websense's doing.
But in your case, unless you installed websense yourself, you're probably being forced by your employer into using it. That makes them the "fuckheads", not websense. If all companies would stop using websense, they'd go bankrupt, and the world would be a better place. So don't complain to websense, or other censorware vendors, complain to your fuckhead boss.
Mabye I should mail Dr.Noskin my findings
He doesn't touch e-mail. Apparently e-mail, as well as "My Little Pony" toys have "cooties"
the frame for a house is the easy part - it goes up in a day or two for even the largest houses.
Concrete/brick walls, or wooden? I can imagine concrete or brick taking a lot longer than wooden walls.
She deserved the criticism for not pointing out these obvious flaws. Whether the "extremists" were a bit too radical is another case altogether.
Another point to consider is that I've never had the pleasure of reading one of DiDio's commentaries and thinking to myself "that is a sane opinion and valid analysis". Most of the time, DiDio's utterances appear to be either bought-for or the ravings of a madman on crack-cocaine. But for some reason, they end up on the newswires.
Well, if you use your media-exposure to piss off people often enough you can expect some-one to react to it unfavourably. Calling people "extremists" doesn't help.
If I were to describe my view on DiDio based on what I've seen so far, "idiot" would be the nicest word I could muster. Guess that makes me an extremist.
It makes me wonder though, if DiDio made equally ill-informed statements about how great linux is and what a bunch of wankers SCO or Microsoft are, would she not encounter just as harsh criticism from Microsoft-fanboys? On the Internet, everyone's a dog, even Microsoft-fanboys.
We have a room full of people of varying ability who all have unlimited access because [censored p.o.s. software package] doesn't run otherwise. These guys surf a lot, clicking "yes" on every friggen dialogue box they see... literally can't go a full week without some exploit being loaded.
Why aren't you using RunAs to run that one single application using administrator rights, leaving the rest of the system to run as a normal user? VMWare? Qemu? Running the application through citrix winframe/rdesktop/whatever the windows application server thingamajig is called now?
Aren't you using server2003/XP's software restriction policies to disallow all but a set of "blessed" applications to run?
Are your users not restricted in writing to c:\program files? You should only open up permissions on the filesystem and registry where the application needs it - malware usually doesn't install in "c:\program files\some obscure vendor\stupid app". Most badly behaved apps don't need to write to Internet Explorer's settings, or even to the system32 folder. Why not, like, figure out the least permissions the app needs?
This malware, are you allowing your people to use Internet Explorer? Aren't you ristricting the internet zone? Aren't you making them use firefox or opera? Aren't you using spybot to block ActiveX malware? Hosts-file based url blocking? A filtering proxy?
You have a lot of options, especially if it's only the one badly behaved app that you have to sort out additional permissions for.
If bloggers wish to be afforded the privileges and protections held by mainstream journalists (the ones not named Jayson Blair or Mary Mapes), they should follow the same ethical standards.
If flesh-and-blood reporters felt too ethical to report the story, no publication ban would be needed. The publication ban is there to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Evidently, there are journalists who want to. Is there in fact any evidence that this story wasn't in some way written up or leaked by a flesh-and-blood journalist?
Seeing as how the story is on sworn testimony about corrupt politicians, this would be, morally, a good time to err on the side of freedom of speech.
Unless you prefer journalists, and bloggers alike, not ever questioning authority. Even if the authorities happen to be corrupt politicians. That seems to be all the rage these days, so perhaps you really mean it.
Best Buy's Price: $99.99 - $50 MIR = $49.99
The Best Froogle could do wiht that same model number? $70 for a refurbished white box.
Best Pricewatch could do for that drive? $62 (This was a diffrent model number, but to be fair, as far as I could tell, same specs. The same model number was $74)
Let's go with the $74 figure. That's $25.99 less than $99.99. The mail-in-rebate is $50. Which means you should go for the mail-in-rebate if you seriously expect there's a higher than 52% probability that it will actually pay out. (Disregarding the expense of time and effort to fill in and follow-up on the rebate, as well as any loss in value of the product because the warrantee is invalid if you send away the original UPC or purchase slip or whatever to get the rebate).
Or, to put it like this; a probability of less than 48% than the rebate people will fuck you in the ass.
If you like those odds, you might as well steal the product and take your chances with your cellmate.
"Mesothelioma"? It's a cancer, I guess (or so Google says), but not one I've ever heard of. How did that get to be an expensive adsense word?
It's a specific form of cancer caused by asbesthos. And since some-one has to put asbesthos somewhere before you get to breathe it (it doesn't grow on trees), there's some one to blame, and to sue, and therefore, a handsome profit to be made.
The assumption is that people who have it will know the name and search for it on google, whereas the unwashed masses wouldn't begin to think of stringing that many syllables together.
So if you enter Mesothelioma on google you'll get lots of ambulance-chasers' ads. Feel free to click on those to rob them of the dime they're paying for an adsense click-through.
I still have a bag full of old receipts with full credit card numbers I'm trying to figure out how to dispose.
Wait until winter. Burn as fuel. Stir around the ashes. Easy-peasy-lemon-cheesy. No need for cross-cutting shredders.
Wait.. Wait, forget I said that. As luck has it, I have a "data destruction" company. I've got some really advanced cross-cutting shredders, right here, siree! Just fork over your metric loads of privacy-sensitive information, and a few hundred bucks for disposal, and go and have a good night's sleep. And if people from the credit-card company call, saying some-one's been using your cards out-of-state, just remember they're most likely identity thieves trying to scam you into giving them your personal information. After all, all your data was safely destroyed....
The very definition of public domain is that no-one owns it (not even "the public", since you'd have to define who the public is); no one has any right to prohibit anyone from doing anything with it. When copyright lapses, after 1000 years if Disney can help it, it reverts to the public domain.
There's nothing particularly special about public domain, other than the fact that the term is often abused ("this program is public domain, but if youse commercial gimme cash").
Being in the public domain is the natural state of software. Without copyright laws, all software would be in the public domain.
Note also, that being in the PD doesn't entitle you to get some piece of software's source code; there's no obligation on the author to give it to you - this is exactly what the GPL is intended to solve.
Note that your mileage may vary outside the US; for example, not only are government publications not in the public domain by default, but if their copyrights are released, often this only applies to the rights to copying, (re)distribution and creating derivative works, but retaining moral rights (the right of an author to protest if his/her work is "raped"/"abused"; for example if your public domain music is being used by neo-Nazis to promote their political party. Moral rights cannot be reassigned at all(!))
Search for "cow" on wikipedia. Of course you will find a blurb that a cow is a female of the bovine family. It also says:
COW is also an acronym for copy-on-write, a technique in computer science
I mean come on! There are a zillion acronyms for the word cow.
Feel free to add the other
27.
The MSI for firefox is included only with nightly builds.
The (official) MSI "wrapper" for Internet Explorer is only available from microsoft by calling them and convincing them you need it (as a "hotfix"), and then you need to convince them that you should get the $35 you paid for phone support back. Neat eh?
There's an unofficial IE MSI wrapper from sywan solutions, but it didn't work properly for me.
While Internet Explorer can be managed using group policies, which you have to use to lock down windows anyway, that doesn't mean firefox is entirely unmanageable in a network environment.
.ini-style settings or profiles stored in directories for ages. Using shared or synchronized files (with appropriate permissions) to propagate settings has been a common way to manage applications for ages as well.
Firefox accepts a startup flag (-profile d:\foo) that tells it what it's configuration directory is. You can install firefox on a shared directory, and have it retrieve settings from a (read-only) shared directory (or on a per user basis).
While it's not as finegrained as internet explorer's policies (where you might prevent some-one from changing only the homepage, and nothing else, or vice-versa), it's by no means unconfigurable.
This sort of thing should hardly come as a surprise. Applications have been using
Now, it's a shame firefox doesn't come with a handy-dandy MSI file, but then, neither does Internet Explorer. Then again, "deploying" firefox is a question of copying/sharing a directory and adding a shortcut with a -profile flag. Much easier and less prone to failure than a (remote/MSI) IE install.
Also, check out sysinternals. They have some real handy tools like PsExec (in the Pstools package); basically rexec for windows, which can really ease your pain when managing a zillion workstations where some change needs to be applied NOW.
And for more security options, check out windows-2003 server and XPs "software restriction policies"; and the great tdifw firewall (no GUI, just a service configured by copying a text-based file to your workstations and restarting the service, mucht better than any Norton offering) (wipfw might also be nice).