OK, so Vista gives content providers a way to lock-down and restrict their products. Microsoft has "added value" to a product for a segment of people that are not their customers.
So as a paying customer (I buy operating systems for personal use, and oh...by the way, I am responsible for IT purchasing for my ENTIRE company), what does Vista give me and my users, that should make me cut a check?
From what I understand, Vista works pretty much like XP, and now thanks to Volume Activation 2.0 Vista corporate copies will now all REQUIRE activation.....every time we re-image a machine. Activation now requires me to either run a key management server (and baby-sit all my roaming users making sure they connect to my network twice per year) OR use multiple activation keys....that means phone calls to Microsoft when eventually the keys stop working.
So microsoft, tell me, why should I fork over my (or my company's) cash?
I'm no copyright attorney, but I thought copyright laws had exemptions for artistic reinterpretation and satirical works. Isn't a remix tape an artistic reinterpretation of the original work?
My brother-in-law works for a road construction company that frequently bids jobs for the NJ Department of Transportation. A few years ago the DOT tried to convert its construction jobs to the metric system.
It was a total a disaster. While the DOT management and construction management thought it was a good idea, the grunts on the ground doing the actual work screwed up constantly. Jobs took longer, simple tools like tape measures became useless and needed to be replaced. Bridge parts needed to be rebuilt due to conversion errors. Materials orders were frequently incorrect resulting in delays or wasted material. The confusion permeated every aspect of the process.
The costs and productivity losses proved excessive for the perceived gain, so the idea of using metric was scrapped.
If one single government department couldn't make it work, how is the ENTIRE country supposed to make it work?
Are these guys nuts? Remember the Treo 600? Everyone griped about the lack of a replaceable battery. Lithium ion batteries need to be replaced periodically. The batteries in the iPhone will definitely need some sort of service within the 24 month contract that Cingular will require with the iPhone.
My last PDAs (Treo 650, Treo 700, and current Motorola Q) all have replaceable batteries, and they get used quite often. It's nice to be able to switch out a battery when you need it.
I guess the non-replaceable battery design drives iPod replacement sales, but that design feature will hinder the useful operation of the iPhone.
Wait for rev 2 or rev 3. This one is going to be painful.
The iPhone looks like a great device, but no company I know will deploy them....why?
No Exchange support.
Sure, it supports POP and IMAP, but full exchange support is much more than that. Having deployed hundreds of Treos, Blackberries, and Windows Mobile devices, I can say that Exchange support is necessary if you want to sell into the corporate market.
Maybe Goodlink will support the iPhone but, now that Motorola owns them, I doubt it.
I routinely do this for hardware upgrades. Take a look at Microsoft's knowledge base. There are many articles, but usually you just demote the primary and the FSMO roles are automatically transfered to another DC. DCs in the same site are given preference, if none are available, then the roles are transfered to a DC in another site.
If the DC catastrophically failed, then you need to seize the FSMO roles (pretty easy) and then remove the AD entries for the old DC. In windows 2000 domains, it requires manual editing of the schema, but in 2003 domains, you simply remove the server from AD Users and Computers, and AD sites and services.
The problem i'm having is maintaining my users in Active Directory and only using Open Directory to manage machine settings. Apple tech support told me this was not possible, and I would need to migrate all my users to OD, or maintain two directories...neither option will work for us. It seems weird that machine settings are dependent on the user having an OD record. Hopefully that will change in Leopard server.
Apple is going in the right direction. Active Directory in terms of failover and replication still beats the pants off of open directory. Open directory is good, but it feels like NT 4's style of domain architecture: Master and slave replicas, manual promotion/demotion, and no seamless failover. Active Directory is nice, multi-master replication with inter/intra-site DC failover.
Love Microsoft or not, Group Polices rock. They are very flexible, and can tweak very detailed settings right out of the box. You can even make custom ADM templates if you are so inclined.
Workgroup manager is a start, but it is not very flexible (no ability for machine specific settings VS user specific settings). I expect OD and AD integration to keep getting better, but as it stands now, it isn't really ready for enterprise use.
Still, Microsoft should look over its shoulder. Apple is coming to eat Redmond's lunch. The next few years should be fun to watch.
The entire point of a franchise agreement is equal coverage for all residents of a town. Here's the deal: if cable companies want to sell into a city or town, they must meet certain service and coverage requirements. Without these franchise agreements, these new fiber services will only be deployed to rich towns (or rich PARTS of towns).
Look at the FIOS roll-out. Verizon says they are not equipped to handle "multi-dwelling" units. So they deploy FIOS to single family properties. If you live in an apartment or town-house - too bad. They can do this because most towns stupidly think it is a "data" service, and do not require a TV franchise.
I have standard copper pairs and coax cable in my townhome, why would a strand of fiber be more difficult to install than either of those?
I'll tell you why. Single-family properties tend to be owned by people with more money than those who own/rent townhomes and apartments, so Verizon uses the excuse that "multi-dwelling" units are too difficult to deploy.
I hate all these companies. They will only deploy service to rich people where they can make HUGE margins and screw all the rest.
Back many years ago when I worked at Circuit City, we sold TONS of big screen TVs around the holidays, and strangely enough, we got a whole bunch of them back after Superbowl Sunday.
I suspect the return rate on sold Zunes will be really high on December 26th.
I was just explaining to my boss why we have so much Microsoft stuff on our network....a big reason was exchange - it requires active directory, and if you're going to invest in AD, you might as well deploy other things that use AD.
Oh yeah, our accountants and state auditors require that we use Quickbooks enterprise edition as well.
If it wasn't for these two things, we'd be a Mac and Linux shop entirely.
My comment was meant to illustrate what happens when businesses are left to their own devices. Large businesses in markets with high barriers to entry evolve into monopolies and then make decisions based solely on profitability - which is usually bad for the consumer. The abuse is even worse when it involves public airspace or networks.
"There's no evidence either in Canada or the United States that we have found for advertisers willing to pay a premium for a program that's in HD."
This sentence proves my point about business mentality - it's not about a higher quality product, it's always about making more money. Don't forget - we are not talking about the airline industry, we are talking about the broadcast industry, an industry that is obscenely profitable.
I'm coming at this from a US perspective, not a Canadian perspective, so I may not know the whole story, but the situation in the US is pathetic.
So call my comment a rant if you like - it may be a rant, but it is the truth.
When is our government going to figure out that what is best for big business is not necessarily best for THE PEOPLE OF THEIR COUNTRY!
If safety was left to the "market" cars would not have air-bags, seat-belts, crumple zones, and average fuel economy would be around 9 MPG.
It's time the US government started treating all communications (data, voice, broadcast) like roads. Make them a vital part of our infrastructure and let private companies compete to provide services to the public. (Just like private companies compete to build and maintain the roads).
I'm not usually an Eminent Domain supporter, but I would support taking the physical network monopoly from companies that have abandoned their stewardship of these networks.
Some people might not like the road analogy, but in a world where I have the choice of one broadband provider and one cable company (that raises its rates monthly) I'm not happy. I'm tired of the crappy customer service and price gouging.
I've been a free market guy my whole life, but what we have right now is not a free market.
Yes, the company I worked for was in the financial industry and was worried about "lifted" fingerprints.
We tried lifting user fingerprints with many types of materials and none we tried could fool the sensor.
Don't confuse Digital Persona's reader with Microsoft's reader. Yes the sensor is the same, but Microsoft does not recommend using their product, to secure sensitive systems, due to the lack of encryption in the USB data stream. This makes Microsoft's reader vulnerable to a replay attack.
I suspect Digital Persona and Microsoft have an agreement to remove the encryption features from the MS product to prevent MS from competing with Digital Persona.
The reason Microsoft does not recommend using their fingerprint reader to secure business data because the data stream between microsoft's reader and the PC is not encrypted. This makes the device vulnerable to a "replay" attack. Even so, a replay attack requires local access to the machine to capture the USB data streams.
This security feature was removed due to an agreement between Digital Persona and Microsoft.
If you want business grade security, you must pay up for the Digital Persona product. Both sets of readers are remarkably resistant to "fake" fingerprints placed on the sensor.
I'm in the process of converting our entire network to OpenOffice. Apart from a few administrators who need to run MS Office, everyone will be on OO by the end of next year.
Have you used the newest version of OpenOffice lately? It is very nice. The suite has vastly improved in the last couple of years.
As a bonus, the OO experience is exactly the same on the Mac. MS office operates differently on the PC than it does on the Mac. This from a company that tries to force developers into the same "windows user experience" model.
As a long time Microsoft advocate and user, I just laugh...the more MS clamps down on the average user, the further MS pushes them away. The alternatives are getting quite compelling.
Every time I read about a new gizmo that will help reduce crime, I think about how much my taxes will increase to pay for someone's new toy. The only things that reduce crime are good parents and a police force that actually polices society....not one that writes tickets to increase revenue.
Red light cameras were supposed to pay for themselves. I've yet to see that system (in my area) be revenue neutral. Actually, the only result was increase rear-end collisions at intersections with the cameras. This expensive system was sold to our township to solve a problem that didn't exist. There was no carnage at intersections due to drivers running red lights. Why did we need an expensive camera system? Where was the danger?
It's time to throw the bums out! Find out who authorizes payment for these things and vote them out. It's your privacy, and your money. Get both back.
Ask any person on wall street and he/she will tell you that markets are brutally honest. They strive for efficiency. Capital flows away from bad ideas and into good ideas.
The markets have dictated the "price" of music for some time. There are an overwhelming number of bands that produce immense amounts of content (good or bad is subjective). Supply is quite high. Unfortunately, thanks to cell phones, game systems, ring-tones, broadband, digital cable, high-def programming, on-demand movies, netflix, portable game systems, laptops, PDAs, and satellite radio. There is much more competition for entertainment dollars than ever before. This will naturally reduce the demand for music and other forms of entertainment. The movie industry is also feeling the pinch.
The music industry, without any reliable metrics, blamed this loss in revenue on illegal P2P downloading. While I'm sure this does contribute to some of the problem, that theory does not account for all the other ways that people spend their entertainment dollars.
Even if the recording industry is successful in eliminating all forms of illegal file sharing, I don't think they will every see the revenues they saw in the past. The CD era was the golden age for recorded music. Lots of demand, coupled with low competition for entertainment dollars. Those days are gone - never to return.
Really - if they did, don't you think they would at least REQUIRE A PIN? This is something that can easily be turned on with the flip of a switch - hell the infrastructure is already in place for ATM and Debit Card transactions.
If they can't be bothered with PIN numbers, why would they be bothered with encryption and authentication?
Netscape lost the browser war partially due to Microsoft's tactics, and partially due to the quality (or lack of) in the product.
Symantec and McAfee have been releasing low-quality products for years. Even Symantec's corporate offerings have been questionable. Release after release gets buggier, slower, and less reliable. If Microsoft's offerings are even a little bit better, Microsoft should have no problem burying these two companies.
Frankly, Trend, Grisoft, Sophos, and Avast have been doing more damage to Symantec and McAfee than Microsoft has in the last few years.
keep it off of portable devices. We grappled with this problem at the bank where I used to work. We opted for Citrix/Remote Desktop inside a VPN tunnel secured via RSA token and accessed via Verizon wireless broadband cards. This kept all non-public information off of laptops, securely stored in our datacenter.
In the 15 years i've been in IT, I have consistently been a white-box/Dell/HP/EMC guy. The current network I admin uses Dell servers and the 3 year old Dell workstations are on their way out. Guess what we are buying to replace the aging workstations? You guessed it - Macs.
The ability to standardize on one platform for both Mac OS and Windows is great. The hardware is nicely designed, and seems to hold up better than Dell or HP.
Still, Dell makes a nice server, and the re-branded EMC stuff is also nice....but who knows...the next Xserves may run Windows....you never know.
Apple's control over its hardware ensures quality. The miracle called Boot Camp will only increase Apple's market share. I hope an MBA doesn't screw that up.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so Vista gives content providers a way to lock-down and restrict their products. Microsoft has "added value" to a product for a segment of people that are not their customers.
So as a paying customer (I buy operating systems for personal use, and oh...by the way, I am responsible for IT purchasing for my ENTIRE company), what does Vista give me and my users, that should make me cut a check?
From what I understand, Vista works pretty much like XP, and now thanks to Volume Activation 2.0 Vista corporate copies will now all REQUIRE activation.....every time we re-image a machine. Activation now requires me to either run a key management server (and baby-sit all my roaming users making sure they connect to my network twice per year) OR use multiple activation keys....that means phone calls to Microsoft when eventually the keys stop working.
So microsoft, tell me, why should I fork over my (or my company's) cash?
-ted
I'm no copyright attorney, but I thought copyright laws had exemptions for artistic reinterpretation and satirical works. Isn't a remix tape an artistic reinterpretation of the original work?
-ted
My brother-in-law works for a road construction company that frequently bids jobs for the NJ Department of Transportation. A few years ago the DOT tried to convert its construction jobs to the metric system.
It was a total a disaster. While the DOT management and construction management thought it was a good idea, the grunts on the ground doing the actual work screwed up constantly. Jobs took longer, simple tools like tape measures became useless and needed to be replaced. Bridge parts needed to be rebuilt due to conversion errors. Materials orders were frequently incorrect resulting in delays or wasted material. The confusion permeated every aspect of the process.
The costs and productivity losses proved excessive for the perceived gain, so the idea of using metric was scrapped.
If one single government department couldn't make it work, how is the ENTIRE country supposed to make it work?
-ted
Are these guys nuts? Remember the Treo 600? Everyone griped about the lack of a replaceable battery. Lithium ion batteries need to be replaced periodically. The batteries in the iPhone will definitely need some sort of service within the 24 month contract that Cingular will require with the iPhone.
My last PDAs (Treo 650, Treo 700, and current Motorola Q) all have replaceable batteries, and they get used quite often. It's nice to be able to switch out a battery when you need it.
I guess the non-replaceable battery design drives iPod replacement sales, but that design feature will hinder the useful operation of the iPhone.
Wait for rev 2 or rev 3. This one is going to be painful.
-ted
The iPhone looks like a great device, but no company I know will deploy them....why?
No Exchange support.
Sure, it supports POP and IMAP, but full exchange support is much more than that. Having deployed hundreds of Treos, Blackberries, and Windows Mobile devices, I can say that Exchange support is necessary if you want to sell into the corporate market.
Maybe Goodlink will support the iPhone but, now that Motorola owns them, I doubt it.
-ted
I routinely do this for hardware upgrades. Take a look at Microsoft's knowledge base. There are many articles, but usually you just demote the primary and the FSMO roles are automatically transfered to another DC. DCs in the same site are given preference, if none are available, then the roles are transfered to a DC in another site.
If the DC catastrophically failed, then you need to seize the FSMO roles (pretty easy) and then remove the AD entries for the old DC. In windows 2000 domains, it requires manual editing of the schema, but in 2003 domains, you simply remove the server from AD Users and Computers, and AD sites and services.
-ted
The problem i'm having is maintaining my users in Active Directory and only using Open Directory to manage machine settings. Apple tech support told me this was not possible, and I would need to migrate all my users to OD, or maintain two directories...neither option will work for us. It seems weird that machine settings are dependent on the user having an OD record. Hopefully that will change in Leopard server.
-ted
Apple is going in the right direction. Active Directory in terms of failover and replication still beats the pants off of open directory. Open directory is good, but it feels like NT 4's style of domain architecture: Master and slave replicas, manual promotion/demotion, and no seamless failover. Active Directory is nice, multi-master replication with inter/intra-site DC failover.
Love Microsoft or not, Group Polices rock. They are very flexible, and can tweak very detailed settings right out of the box. You can even make custom ADM templates if you are so inclined.
Workgroup manager is a start, but it is not very flexible (no ability for machine specific settings VS user specific settings). I expect OD and AD integration to keep getting better, but as it stands now, it isn't really ready for enterprise use.
Still, Microsoft should look over its shoulder. Apple is coming to eat Redmond's lunch. The next few years should be fun to watch.
-ted
Now supports encrypted backups.
Backup Exec does have it's problems on occasion, but it does seem to get the job done.
-ted
The entire point of a franchise agreement is equal coverage for all residents of a town. Here's the deal: if cable companies want to sell into a city or town, they must meet certain service and coverage requirements. Without these franchise agreements, these new fiber services will only be deployed to rich towns (or rich PARTS of towns).
Look at the FIOS roll-out. Verizon says they are not equipped to handle "multi-dwelling" units. So they deploy FIOS to single family properties. If you live in an apartment or town-house - too bad. They can do this because most towns stupidly think it is a "data" service, and do not require a TV franchise.
I have standard copper pairs and coax cable in my townhome, why would a strand of fiber be more difficult to install than either of those?
I'll tell you why. Single-family properties tend to be owned by people with more money than those who own/rent townhomes and apartments, so Verizon uses the excuse that "multi-dwelling" units are too difficult to deploy.
I hate all these companies. They will only deploy service to rich people where they can make HUGE margins and screw all the rest.
We need municipal fiber and we need it now.
-ted
Back many years ago when I worked at Circuit City, we sold TONS of big screen TVs around the holidays, and strangely enough, we got a whole bunch of them back after Superbowl Sunday.
I suspect the return rate on sold Zunes will be really high on December 26th.
-ted
Really?
Apart from "squirting" your friends for three plays?
-ted
I was just explaining to my boss why we have so much Microsoft stuff on our network....a big reason was exchange - it requires active directory, and if you're going to invest in AD, you might as well deploy other things that use AD.
Oh yeah, our accountants and state auditors require that we use Quickbooks enterprise edition as well.
If it wasn't for these two things, we'd be a Mac and Linux shop entirely.
-ted
My comment was meant to illustrate what happens when businesses are left to their own devices. Large businesses in markets with high barriers to entry evolve into monopolies and then make decisions based solely on profitability - which is usually bad for the consumer. The abuse is even worse when it involves public airspace or networks.
"There's no evidence either in Canada or the United States that we have found for advertisers willing to pay a premium for a program that's in HD."
This sentence proves my point about business mentality - it's not about a higher quality product, it's always about making more money. Don't forget - we are not talking about the airline industry, we are talking about the broadcast industry, an industry that is obscenely profitable.
I'm coming at this from a US perspective, not a Canadian perspective, so I may not know the whole story, but the situation in the US is pathetic.
So call my comment a rant if you like - it may be a rant, but it is the truth.
-ted
When is our government going to figure out that what is best for big business is not necessarily best for THE PEOPLE OF THEIR COUNTRY!
If safety was left to the "market" cars would not have air-bags, seat-belts, crumple zones, and average fuel economy would be around 9 MPG.
It's time the US government started treating all communications (data, voice, broadcast) like roads. Make them a vital part of our infrastructure and let private companies compete to provide services to the public. (Just like private companies compete to build and maintain the roads).
I'm not usually an Eminent Domain supporter, but I would support taking the physical network monopoly from companies that have abandoned their stewardship of these networks.
Some people might not like the road analogy, but in a world where I have the choice of one broadband provider and one cable company (that raises its rates monthly) I'm not happy. I'm tired of the crappy customer service and price gouging.
I've been a free market guy my whole life, but what we have right now is not a free market.
-ted
Yes, the company I worked for was in the financial industry and was worried about "lifted" fingerprints.
We tried lifting user fingerprints with many types of materials and none we tried could fool the sensor.
Don't confuse Digital Persona's reader with Microsoft's reader. Yes the sensor is the same, but Microsoft does not recommend using their product, to secure sensitive systems, due to the lack of encryption in the USB data stream. This makes Microsoft's reader vulnerable to a replay attack.
A detailed analysis can be found here.
I suspect Digital Persona and Microsoft have an agreement to remove the encryption features from the MS product to prevent MS from competing with Digital Persona.
-ted
The reason Microsoft does not recommend using their fingerprint reader to secure business data because the data stream between microsoft's reader and the PC is not encrypted. This makes the device vulnerable to a "replay" attack. Even so, a replay attack requires local access to the machine to capture the USB data streams.
A detailed analysis of this can be found here.
This security feature was removed due to an agreement between Digital Persona and Microsoft.
If you want business grade security, you must pay up for the Digital Persona product. Both sets of readers are remarkably resistant to "fake" fingerprints placed on the sensor.
Digital Persona's Kiosk fingerprint reader package is exactly what you need.
I deployed the Workstation Pro package at my last job. It works great, and has group policy ADM templates to aid in setup and deployment.
-ted
I'm in the process of converting our entire network to OpenOffice. Apart from a few administrators who need to run MS Office, everyone will be on OO by the end of next year.
Have you used the newest version of OpenOffice lately? It is very nice. The suite has vastly improved in the last couple of years.
As a bonus, the OO experience is exactly the same on the Mac. MS office operates differently on the PC than it does on the Mac. This from a company that tries to force developers into the same "windows user experience" model.
As a long time Microsoft advocate and user, I just laugh...the more MS clamps down on the average user, the further MS pushes them away. The alternatives are getting quite compelling.
-ted
Every time I read about a new gizmo that will help reduce crime, I think about how much my taxes will increase to pay for someone's new toy. The only things that reduce crime are good parents and a police force that actually polices society....not one that writes tickets to increase revenue.
Red light cameras were supposed to pay for themselves. I've yet to see that system (in my area) be revenue neutral. Actually, the only result was increase rear-end collisions at intersections with the cameras. This expensive system was sold to our township to solve a problem that didn't exist. There was no carnage at intersections due to drivers running red lights. Why did we need an expensive camera system? Where was the danger?
It's time to throw the bums out! Find out who authorizes payment for these things and vote them out. It's your privacy, and your money. Get both back.
-ted
Ask any person on wall street and he/she will tell you that markets are brutally honest. They strive for efficiency. Capital flows away from bad ideas and into good ideas.
The markets have dictated the "price" of music for some time. There are an overwhelming number of bands that produce immense amounts of content (good or bad is subjective). Supply is quite high. Unfortunately, thanks to cell phones, game systems, ring-tones, broadband, digital cable, high-def programming, on-demand movies, netflix, portable game systems, laptops, PDAs, and satellite radio. There is much more competition for entertainment dollars than ever before. This will naturally reduce the demand for music and other forms of entertainment. The movie industry is also feeling the pinch.
The music industry, without any reliable metrics, blamed this loss in revenue on illegal P2P downloading. While I'm sure this does contribute to some of the problem, that theory does not account for all the other ways that people spend their entertainment dollars.
Even if the recording industry is successful in eliminating all forms of illegal file sharing, I don't think they will every see the revenues they saw in the past. The CD era was the golden age for recorded music. Lots of demand, coupled with low competition for entertainment dollars. Those days are gone - never to return.
-ted
Really - if they did, don't you think they would at least REQUIRE A PIN? This is something that can easily be turned on with the flip of a switch - hell the infrastructure is already in place for ATM and Debit Card transactions.
If they can't be bothered with PIN numbers, why would they be bothered with encryption and authentication?
-ted
Netscape lost the browser war partially due to Microsoft's tactics, and partially due to the quality (or lack of) in the product.
Symantec and McAfee have been releasing low-quality products for years. Even Symantec's corporate offerings have been questionable. Release after release gets buggier, slower, and less reliable. If Microsoft's offerings are even a little bit better, Microsoft should have no problem burying these two companies.
Frankly, Trend, Grisoft, Sophos, and Avast have been doing more damage to Symantec and McAfee than Microsoft has in the last few years.
-ted
keep it off of portable devices. We grappled with this problem at the bank where I used to work. We opted for Citrix/Remote Desktop inside a VPN tunnel secured via RSA token and accessed via Verizon wireless broadband cards. This kept all non-public information off of laptops, securely stored in our datacenter.
-ted
In the 15 years i've been in IT, I have consistently been a white-box/Dell/HP/EMC guy. The current network I admin uses Dell servers and the 3 year old Dell workstations are on their way out. Guess what we are buying to replace the aging workstations? You guessed it - Macs.
The ability to standardize on one platform for both Mac OS and Windows is great. The hardware is nicely designed, and seems to hold up better than Dell or HP.
Still, Dell makes a nice server, and the re-branded EMC stuff is also nice....but who knows...the next Xserves may run Windows....you never know.
Apple's control over its hardware ensures quality. The miracle called Boot Camp will only increase Apple's market share. I hope an MBA doesn't screw that up.
-ted