I think, dear grasshopper, that you may be considering Monty Python's "Life of Brian", during the scene where Brian is addressing a large crowd that's gathered outside his mum's house.
Brian: "You're all different from one another!"
Large crowd (in unison): "Yes! We are all different from one another!"
Brian: "You're all unique!"
Large crowd (in unison): "Yes! We are all unique!"
Lone voice pipes up from the back of the crowd: "I'm not."
One of the original VMS chaps came and worked on it and called it WNT because of the relationship described (VMS morphing to WNT). It was initially advertised like this, but then the marketers thought that might be rather too obvious. So they scratched their heads, realized the W could stand for Windows, which left them wondering whatever they could make of NT. Hmmm...New Technology!!!.
Unless you're knowledgeable enough to build a PC on your own from parts, generally any pre-built PC you buy from any name-brand PC company is required to have Windows bundled in with it. You can't buy a PC from Compaq, Dell, or Gateway without Windows included in the price.
Yes, and this really irritates the CRUD out of me! Like most/. readers, I actually happen to be knowledgeable enough to build a PC on my own, having worked as a network engineer for the last *cough-wheeze* years. Unlike most/. readers, I usually don't want to; for me, it's simply not worth the time involved to get the parts and put it all together. I'd rather spend that time actually using the dratted thing. So I want to buy a pre-built PC and put Linux on it. What are my options? Yep, that's right -- bugger all!
To me, this is one of the most objectionable parts of this sordid little tale. All the guff about "pre-loaded software" sounds very nice, but where on earth do I go to get a pre-built PC without pre-loaded software?!? If I want a nice, plain, simple little PC which I can use for testing various distros, for example, I don't know of any place I can go to buy one without a pre-loaded OS from Microsoft. How does this not qualify as extortion?
I think it's high time that PC manufacturers gave you the capability to order an OS as an option. I can go to Dell's web site and check off whether or not I want a monitor; why not an OS? Imagine how silly it would be if I had to buy a monitor, when I can instead just buy one monitor and use a KVM switch. Why can't I buy a PC from Dell (or HP, or IBM), choose the "no pre-loaded OS" option, and then go down to the local bookstore and pick my favorite Linux packaging off the bookshelf?
And just how did this ridiculous practice become not only commonplace, not only de rigeur -- but accepted unquestioningly?
That's usually the way it works. It takes several years for research to translate into Nobel recognition. I suspect it's partly -- even primarily -- because the committee wants to take sufficient time to ensure that the "discovery" isn't a dud (anyone remember cold fusion?).
I mean, one can't exactly renege on a Nobel prize, now, can one?
Ironic, isn't it? MS is evil 'cause the answer to anything is "reboot the machine". Macs are cool, 'cause rebuilding the desktop is just such a pretty process.
The "open with" dialogue disappears once an extension has been associated with an application.
Yes it does. That's why the original poster said to use Shift-Right-Click, which gets around that little issue. How about that -- read the text, get the details! Imagine...
A DHCP server is pretty simple to set up. But in any case, the 169.254.0.0 auto-address is a W2K feature (APIPA, which stands for something that sounds impressive, I'm sure). If you have a pre-Win2K machine configured as a DHCP client and no DHCP server, you'll find your Windows machine enters a confused and lonely little non-networked world.
* Have backups. Test them.
* Have NT boot disks, with all necessary BOOT.INI mods to take into account mirrors, etc. Test them.
* Have an ERD. Have an up-to-date ERD. If NT 4, make sure you've used RDISK/S to update the SAM on your ERD.
* Check the last time the server was rebooted, and look to see if any errors or warning messages appear around the time of the last reboot. Make sure you know WHY the last reboot occurred -- was it scheduled? a blue screen? reboot after an auto-boot from your UPS because of an extended power outage (if you don't have a generator)?
* Reboot and make sure the server's in a good state before you apply any patches. Check event logs, including Event Viewer logs, SQL logs, etc., etc.
* Using backup software that allows you to create quick recovery disks? Make sure you have them, up to date, and tested.
In short -- don't get caught unprepared. The havoc that can be wreaked by worms attacking unpatched servers can cause serious downtime, and while you may look like a hero to the uninitiated for rescuing a problem, sooner or later you'll be at a place where downtime isn't really looked on very favorably. If you must, compromise: wait for a few days to see if a patch gets withdrawn (remember SP6, followed quickly by SP6a), then apply it and make sure you have a backout plan in case it DOES bluescreen.
I wasn't even going to bother, but then I thought there was one part I wished to address -- the "sci-fi-fantasy" bit.
I don't read science-fiction; it just doesn't really do much for me. No slight intended to those who enjoy it; this is a purely personal and subjective choice of reading matter. The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand -- wow. I don't really consider it sci-fi; perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps not. Who cares what particular label you apply to something? If you enjoy it, then forget the elitist high-minded critics. They're the descendants of those who panned Beethoven and Mozart. What do you consider "real literature"? I love Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Tennyson, so I'm a little taken aback at your sweeping generalization that we consider real literature fruity.
Tolkien has a wide appeal; I've seen it with friends, and I've seen it with friends' children. If you want a perfect story which fascinates toddlers, check out a little-known work of his called "Mr. Bliss". If your children are slightly older, they'll love The Hobbit. Moving on up, a teenager can find LOTR fascinating and readable, while those of we adults who are secure with our own self-image and don't mind what the critics say can read the whole bunch, plus the Silmarillion, and delve into the nuances and stories-behind-the-stories so richly suggested by the Lord of the Rings.
In short, sir, stop being a pillock and learn to enjoy art and music and books because they appeal to you or stimulate you in some way, not because some fusty critic says you ought to enjoy such and such a piece of work. If you're going to dismiss a piece of work, be it Tolkien, Dickens, Mozart or Picasso, then by all means do it, but with well-reasoned dissent; not because you wish to pretend a claim to membership in a crowd.
Oh, and as for your despising those who marginalise you with their unenlightened attitudes...Thank you for your comments, Pot.
Yours, Kettle.
Actually, Code Red IV is already here
on
Make Your Own DSL
·
· Score: 1
Check it out here. It's known as CodeRed.d. Yes, I submitted it as an article, but it was rejected.
It's actually not that fascinating from a worm point of view, but the article hypothesizes that Code Red will never disappear. Wonderful...lazy and incompetent admins have given rise to a new form of life on the Internet.
our knowledge of physics actually breaks down as we theorize back to the "Big Bang"
It certainly was known before "A Brief Theory of Time". What happens is that, as we work backwards in time, trying to figure out what the universe was at certain points in time, we get to a point which is 1.e-43 second away from the Big Bang, and we find that all "laws" break down at that point. We just can't describe what happened in that first fraction of a second; there's no way to get at it. Another way of thinking of it is to say that the "laws" of physics were being created in that first fraction of a second. The analogy is pretty bad, but what is important to realise is that it's not a function dependent on our inability to measure more accurately, or see farther with a bigger telescope, or test with finer granularity...all our laws simply stop working at that point.
A few years ago, Fred Hoyle (along with a couple of other chaps, whose names escape me) postulated a new variation on the steady-state model, known as the quasi-steady-state model or QSSM. This basically says you have periods of rest and then periods of activity in the creation of the universe, perhaps as many as six or seven. Quite seriously, it actually sounds a lot like "On the nth day, God created...and night passed...". (Cue flamebait/troll mods -- but it really does.)
I live roughly 20 miles north of Philadelphia, one of the largest cities in the U.S. I've lost track of how many ISPs, DSL providers, telcos, etc., I've called in the last three months, only to be told "no DSL in your area".
So I thought, fine, I'll go cable. In the last two weeks I've left three "I want to buy NOW, sign me up and start billing" messages with my cable TV provider -- not a sausage. I have come to the conclusion the sods just don't want my business.
I honestly don't get it. With the smaller companies going bankrupt and the larger companies no longer invincible, why don't these companies take the time to call me back? I'm here, I'm ready, I've already got the cable TV service, all they need to do is add on another sum of money to my bill. But I simply cannot get a response. And so I remain a 56K dial-up user.
Use the system policy editor, or do what they did in this instance and use a thin-client solution. Now, to get back to the actual point...
Look, there are hundreds and hundreds of valid complaints, but you've missed the point (deliberately, I think) of my original post. Read it again; and if you're going to rehash other people's arguments which I'm not even disputing, such as cost, or go off-topic again, well, don't!
The alternatives for 400 full windows machines is to have Terminal Services clients on all the desktops.
Or to do what it sounds like they did and buy straight NCDs which have just enough smarts to connect up to the Terminal Server. No magic, no having to set up with a base-OS first in order to install the thin client; all your administration remains at the server. You don't require a workstation running Windows 9x to host the thin client software; you can get a diskless workstation if you want.
There are a dozen of ways to try to accomplish it. This just happens to be one way that works well.
Agreed. And cheaper than a comparable Windows solution, from the sounds of it (although, from the article, and as an earlier poster pointed out, it sounds like there's no redundancy on the server). But the comments about supporting hundreds of Windows workstations is misleading, even if only implicitly; it doesn't have to be done that way, but rather can be done in a similar way to the Linux implementation described. You'll require much more hardware for the Windows solution, and more expense in terms of software, and maybe more support staff -- but those support staff will be required to support the servers, not Windows clients on the user's desktop. That's my point!
As I said, I'm not going to compare the costs, because you can't. But MetaFrame is an add-on to give extra functionality to an already-extant feature of Windows, Terminal Services, which does come out-the-box with Windows 2000. And, if you're interested, every Windows 2000 client you have (including Windows 2000 Professional) has a built-in license to use Terminal Server. I know, it still doesn't compare to Linux, cost-wise. But you do have more options than people may realise; I'm just aiming to present a little balance.
By the way, what exactly do you mean by your commment that "it's impossible to set a 'thin-client device' on windows with std tools"? To me, this means that Windows, as it comes, provides no means to set up some sort of thin-client solution. However, it does; part of the Terminal Services solution includes tools to create a client disk maker, which will provide clients for Windows 95, etc. I'll quite happily admit that it's not a complete solution; if you want a Mac client or a DOS client then you need MetaFrame. (I frankly don't know the cost of MetaFrame, but it'll obviously be significant compared to a free solution.) But either I've misunderstood your comments or you're honestly misinformed. I'm not out for a flame or an argument; just to present some balance.
I'm not going to comment on the relative costs of the hardware/software, because it's all true: Linux vs. Windows will win out, pure and simple. But the story (about Roblimo's take) is comparing apples and oranges.
Look at how they talk about backups: it sounds as though their concept of backups in the Windows world is to have users saving documents on their local hard disk, rather than to a server. The users have become accustomed to system crashes and network failures. I'll address at least part of the former complaint in a moment. The latter is the fault of either poor network administrators (as opposed to systems administrators, or a flaky server that hasn't been set up correctly. One of the biggest reasons people think NT is unstable is because the pretty GUI encourages rank amateurs to call themselves systems engineers. Blame this on the paper-MCSE syndrome, or on Microsoft's psychology, or whatever: but let's at least be honest and admit that, should the quality of admins increase, so would the quality of experience.
The other problem I have with this, and what really prompted my subject line, is that the comparison is between a Linux-based thin client network and a MS-based fat client network. Hello? If you took away all the Windows desktops and put in something like Citrix MetaFrame, then guess what? You'd realise several of the same benefits that the article touts or implies as being advantages unable to be put forth in a Windows-based system.
If you take the article as being a good example of how simple it is to migrate users over from Windows to Linux, then fine. But the system level comparisons are obfuscatory at best, and dishonest at worst. Yes, there's no way you could get the same level of performance out of the hardware they use if you went with a Windows implementation; but an article that compares a 10-person IT staff supporting Linux (or any OS) on 400 thin-client devices with supporting that many devices all running Windows on individual desktops is simply not a valid comparison. Is that really fair? By all means, let's point out the advantages for Linux in terms of ROI, open-source, and so on -- there are plenty of valid bases here -- but let's also be intellectually honest. Pretty please?
Your last line about there being maybe 24 chips in your MicroAce clone interested me. My twin brother and I had the original ZX81 (we bought it from, IIRC, the Farmer's department store in Manukau City Centre in Auckland, New Zealand back in 1981 -- we were 11). One of the most intriguing aspects was that this, the successor to the ZX80, which had over 20 chips, had been so designed as to reduce the chipset down to four -- just four!! That was seen as the true innovation that it offered over the ZX80, as it helped take the price down and thereby introduce the masses to home computing.
It strikes me, however, that they don't need to represent 1440 minutes in a day; a clock is a 12-hour representation, with signatures for AM and PM, so you only need 720. Yes, I admit, I'm going purely by the writeup; that's because a TRS-80 doesn't handle the/. effect very well...
...is that it doesn't clarify the real difference between the legality in Russia and the illegality in the States -- i.e. that the reason you're allowed to do this in Russia is to make backups for personal use.
Overall, I think it's a reasonable story, and not slanted. But the average reader (side-note: how much do we think this will be picked up by the mass-circulation papers?) will end up thinking that this is a symptom of the decline of the Russian ex-empire in that it's legal to pirate CDs there. The reality, of course, is the reverse: it's legal to make a fair-use backup for your own purposes, as opposed to out-and-out piracy, and that is what Sklyarov's software addresses.
Others have replied pointing out that IIS != WWW Server, so I won't bother to go into detail. But here's something else to consider.
The problem as I see it is that Microsoft has put a pretty front-end GUI on everything and thereby allowed idiots to believe they can be a sysadmin. If you want to set up a Unix server, you need to have a certain amount of knowledge before you can even get the thing up and running to serve web pages. But a Windows web server, on the other hand, is so simple to get up and running in a basic configuration that it doesn't take much to struggle through and get a web page presenting. Unfortunately, that's the point at which the average Joe will congratulate himself on his system engineering skills and move on.
Completely forgetting to do any administration, such as disabling the web service if it's unneeded.
For better or worse, Microsoft's integration of internet-serving features into IIS means that IIS is the base platform for both WWW and FTP services. But the people to blame here are the people who don't know enough to take a minute after installation to go in and diable the default and administration web sites (or even just not install those features in the first place -- guess what? You can actually choose to not accept defaults! and go in and uncheck the little box next to web services, and IIS will happily install the basic IIS snap-in and FTP services and you'll have an FTP server without a Web server).
Along with power comes responsibility; and if someone gets seduced by the pretty pictures into believing they can run something without having to check the manual or investigate beyond the defaults, then that's irresponsibility. Like it or not, Britney Spears is not sufficient reason to boycott Shure. Well, probably not...
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I think, dear grasshopper, that you may be considering Monty Python's "Life of Brian", during the scene where Brian is addressing a large crowd that's gathered outside his mum's house.
Brian: "You're all different from one another!"
Large crowd (in unison): "Yes! We are all different from one another!"
Brian: "You're all unique!"
Large crowd (in unison): "Yes! We are all unique!"
Lone voice pipes up from the back of the crowd: "I'm not."
Yes and yes.
One of the original VMS chaps came and worked on it and called it WNT because of the relationship described (VMS morphing to WNT). It was initially advertised like this, but then the marketers thought that might be rather too obvious. So they scratched their heads, realized the W could stand for Windows, which left them wondering whatever they could make of NT. Hmmm...New Technology!!!.
Beautiful...
And thus was the name born.
...that would be an Englishman born in South Africa of English parents whose family moved to England when he was four years old.
Woo-hoo -- do I win?!?
What shouldn't be allowed for is the prima donna attitude fostered by engineers who decide that they're irreplaceable.
It also shouldn't be desired by engineers. Never be irreplaceable -- if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
Unless you're knowledgeable enough to build a PC on your own from parts, generally any pre-built PC you buy from any name-brand PC company is required to have Windows bundled in with it. You can't buy a PC from Compaq, Dell, or Gateway without Windows included in the price.
/. readers, I actually happen to be knowledgeable enough to build a PC on my own, having worked as a network engineer for the last *cough-wheeze* years. Unlike most /. readers, I usually don't want to; for me, it's simply not worth the time involved to get the parts and put it all together. I'd rather spend that time actually using the dratted thing. So I want to buy a pre-built PC and put Linux on it. What are my options? Yep, that's right -- bugger all!
Yes, and this really irritates the CRUD out of me! Like most
To me, this is one of the most objectionable parts of this sordid little tale. All the guff about "pre-loaded software" sounds very nice, but where on earth do I go to get a pre-built PC without pre-loaded software?!? If I want a nice, plain, simple little PC which I can use for testing various distros, for example, I don't know of any place I can go to buy one without a pre-loaded OS from Microsoft. How does this not qualify as extortion?
I think it's high time that PC manufacturers gave you the capability to order an OS as an option. I can go to Dell's web site and check off whether or not I want a monitor; why not an OS? Imagine how silly it would be if I had to buy a monitor, when I can instead just buy one monitor and use a KVM switch. Why can't I buy a PC from Dell (or HP, or IBM), choose the "no pre-loaded OS" option, and then go down to the local bookstore and pick my favorite Linux packaging off the bookshelf?
And just how did this ridiculous practice become not only commonplace, not only de rigeur -- but accepted unquestioningly?
That's usually the way it works. It takes several years for research to translate into Nobel recognition. I suspect it's partly -- even primarily -- because the committee wants to take sufficient time to ensure that the "discovery" isn't a dud (anyone remember cold fusion?).
I mean, one can't exactly renege on a Nobel prize, now, can one?
That's the way to fix that little bugger!
Ironic, isn't it? MS is evil 'cause the answer to anything is "reboot the machine". Macs are cool, 'cause rebuilding the desktop is just such a pretty process.
The "open with" dialogue disappears once an extension has been associated with an application.
Yes it does. That's why the original poster said to use Shift-Right-Click, which gets around that little issue. How about that -- read the text, get the details! Imagine...
A DHCP server is pretty simple to set up. But in any case, the 169.254.0.0 auto-address is a W2K feature (APIPA, which stands for something that sounds impressive, I'm sure). If you have a pre-Win2K machine configured as a DHCP client and no DHCP server, you'll find your Windows machine enters a confused and lonely little non-networked world.
Ditto.
/S to update the SAM on your ERD.
* Have backups. Test them.
* Have NT boot disks, with all necessary BOOT.INI mods to take into account mirrors, etc. Test them.
* Have an ERD. Have an up-to-date ERD. If NT 4, make sure you've used RDISK
* Check the last time the server was rebooted, and look to see if any errors or warning messages appear around the time of the last reboot. Make sure you know WHY the last reboot occurred -- was it scheduled? a blue screen? reboot after an auto-boot from your UPS because of an extended power outage (if you don't have a generator)?
* Reboot and make sure the server's in a good state before you apply any patches. Check event logs, including Event Viewer logs, SQL logs, etc., etc.
* Using backup software that allows you to create quick recovery disks? Make sure you have them, up to date, and tested.
In short -- don't get caught unprepared. The havoc that can be wreaked by worms attacking unpatched servers can cause serious downtime, and while you may look like a hero to the uninitiated for rescuing a problem, sooner or later you'll be at a place where downtime isn't really looked on very favorably. If you must, compromise: wait for a few days to see if a patch gets withdrawn (remember SP6, followed quickly by SP6a), then apply it and make sure you have a backout plan in case it DOES bluescreen.
I wasn't even going to bother, but then I thought there was one part I wished to address -- the "sci-fi-fantasy" bit.
I don't read science-fiction; it just doesn't really do much for me. No slight intended to those who enjoy it; this is a purely personal and subjective choice of reading matter. The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand -- wow. I don't really consider it sci-fi; perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps not. Who cares what particular label you apply to something? If you enjoy it, then forget the elitist high-minded critics. They're the descendants of those who panned Beethoven and Mozart. What do you consider "real literature"? I love Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Tennyson, so I'm a little taken aback at your sweeping generalization that we consider real literature fruity.
Tolkien has a wide appeal; I've seen it with friends, and I've seen it with friends' children. If you want a perfect story which fascinates toddlers, check out a little-known work of his called "Mr. Bliss". If your children are slightly older, they'll love The Hobbit. Moving on up, a teenager can find LOTR fascinating and readable, while those of we adults who are secure with our own self-image and don't mind what the critics say can read the whole bunch, plus the Silmarillion, and delve into the nuances and stories-behind-the-stories so richly suggested by the Lord of the Rings.
In short, sir, stop being a pillock and learn to enjoy art and music and books because they appeal to you or stimulate you in some way, not because some fusty critic says you ought to enjoy such and such a piece of work. If you're going to dismiss a piece of work, be it Tolkien, Dickens, Mozart or Picasso, then by all means do it, but with well-reasoned dissent; not because you wish to pretend a claim to membership in a crowd.
Oh, and as for your despising those who marginalise you with their unenlightened attitudes...Thank you for your comments, Pot.
Yours, Kettle.
Check it out here. It's known as CodeRed.d. Yes, I submitted it as an article, but it was rejected.
It's actually not that fascinating from a worm point of view, but the article hypothesizes that Code Red will never disappear. Wonderful...lazy and incompetent admins have given rise to a new form of life on the Internet.
our knowledge of physics actually breaks down as we theorize back to the "Big Bang"
It certainly was known before "A Brief Theory of Time". What happens is that, as we work backwards in time, trying to figure out what the universe was at certain points in time, we get to a point which is 1.e-43 second away from the Big Bang, and we find that all "laws" break down at that point. We just can't describe what happened in that first fraction of a second; there's no way to get at it. Another way of thinking of it is to say that the "laws" of physics were being created in that first fraction of a second. The analogy is pretty bad, but what is important to realise is that it's not a function dependent on our inability to measure more accurately, or see farther with a bigger telescope, or test with finer granularity...all our laws simply stop working at that point.
A few years ago, Fred Hoyle (along with a couple of other chaps, whose names escape me) postulated a new variation on the steady-state model, known as the quasi-steady-state model or QSSM. This basically says you have periods of rest and then periods of activity in the creation of the universe, perhaps as many as six or seven. Quite seriously, it actually sounds a lot like "On the nth day, God created...and night passed...". (Cue flamebait/troll mods -- but it really does.)
I live roughly 20 miles north of Philadelphia, one of the largest cities in the U.S. I've lost track of how many ISPs, DSL providers, telcos, etc., I've called in the last three months, only to be told "no DSL in your area".
So I thought, fine, I'll go cable. In the last two weeks I've left three "I want to buy NOW, sign me up and start billing" messages with my cable TV provider -- not a sausage. I have come to the conclusion the sods just don't want my business.
I honestly don't get it. With the smaller companies going bankrupt and the larger companies no longer invincible, why don't these companies take the time to call me back? I'm here, I'm ready, I've already got the cable TV service, all they need to do is add on another sum of money to my bill. But I simply cannot get a response. And so I remain a 56K dial-up user.
Their products were well off the radar screen before they went chapter 11. Their services division, OTOH, is strong as ever.
I agree it's not the greatest news for Loki, but it doesn't have to be fatal.
Didn't Wang do precisely this back in, what, the early 90s?
Use the system policy editor, or do what they did in this instance and use a thin-client solution. Now, to get back to the actual point...
Look, there are hundreds and hundreds of valid complaints, but you've missed the point (deliberately, I think) of my original post. Read it again; and if you're going to rehash other people's arguments which I'm not even disputing, such as cost, or go off-topic again, well, don't!
The alternatives for 400 full windows machines is to have Terminal Services clients on all the desktops.
Or to do what it sounds like they did and buy straight NCDs which have just enough smarts to connect up to the Terminal Server. No magic, no having to set up with a base-OS first in order to install the thin client; all your administration remains at the server. You don't require a workstation running Windows 9x to host the thin client software; you can get a diskless workstation if you want.
There are a dozen of ways to try to accomplish it. This just happens to be one way that works well.
Agreed. And cheaper than a comparable Windows solution, from the sounds of it (although, from the article, and as an earlier poster pointed out, it sounds like there's no redundancy on the server). But the comments about supporting hundreds of Windows workstations is misleading, even if only implicitly; it doesn't have to be done that way, but rather can be done in a similar way to the Linux implementation described. You'll require much more hardware for the Windows solution, and more expense in terms of software, and maybe more support staff -- but those support staff will be required to support the servers, not Windows clients on the user's desktop. That's my point!
As I said, I'm not going to compare the costs, because you can't. But MetaFrame is an add-on to give extra functionality to an already-extant feature of Windows, Terminal Services, which does come out-the-box with Windows 2000. And, if you're interested, every Windows 2000 client you have (including Windows 2000 Professional) has a built-in license to use Terminal Server. I know, it still doesn't compare to Linux, cost-wise. But you do have more options than people may realise; I'm just aiming to present a little balance.
By the way, what exactly do you mean by your commment that "it's impossible to set a 'thin-client device' on windows with std tools"? To me, this means that Windows, as it comes, provides no means to set up some sort of thin-client solution. However, it does; part of the Terminal Services solution includes tools to create a client disk maker, which will provide clients for Windows 95, etc. I'll quite happily admit that it's not a complete solution; if you want a Mac client or a DOS client then you need MetaFrame. (I frankly don't know the cost of MetaFrame, but it'll obviously be significant compared to a free solution.) But either I've misunderstood your comments or you're honestly misinformed. I'm not out for a flame or an argument; just to present some balance.
I'm not going to comment on the relative costs of the hardware/software, because it's all true: Linux vs. Windows will win out, pure and simple. But the story (about Roblimo's take) is comparing apples and oranges.
Look at how they talk about backups: it sounds as though their concept of backups in the Windows world is to have users saving documents on their local hard disk, rather than to a server. The users have become accustomed to system crashes and network failures. I'll address at least part of the former complaint in a moment. The latter is the fault of either poor network administrators (as opposed to systems administrators, or a flaky server that hasn't been set up correctly. One of the biggest reasons people think NT is unstable is because the pretty GUI encourages rank amateurs to call themselves systems engineers. Blame this on the paper-MCSE syndrome, or on Microsoft's psychology, or whatever: but let's at least be honest and admit that, should the quality of admins increase, so would the quality of experience.
The other problem I have with this, and what really prompted my subject line, is that the comparison is between a Linux-based thin client network and a MS-based fat client network. Hello? If you took away all the Windows desktops and put in something like Citrix MetaFrame, then guess what? You'd realise several of the same benefits that the article touts or implies as being advantages unable to be put forth in a Windows-based system.
If you take the article as being a good example of how simple it is to migrate users over from Windows to Linux, then fine. But the system level comparisons are obfuscatory at best, and dishonest at worst. Yes, there's no way you could get the same level of performance out of the hardware they use if you went with a Windows implementation; but an article that compares a 10-person IT staff supporting Linux (or any OS) on 400 thin-client devices with supporting that many devices all running Windows on individual desktops is simply not a valid comparison. Is that really fair? By all means, let's point out the advantages for Linux in terms of ROI, open-source, and so on -- there are plenty of valid bases here -- but let's also be intellectually honest. Pretty please?
Your last line about there being maybe 24 chips in your MicroAce clone interested me. My twin brother and I had the original ZX81 (we bought it from, IIRC, the Farmer's department store in Manukau City Centre in Auckland, New Zealand back in 1981 -- we were 11). One of the most intriguing aspects was that this, the successor to the ZX80, which had over 20 chips, had been so designed as to reduce the chipset down to four -- just four!! That was seen as the true innovation that it offered over the ZX80, as it helped take the price down and thereby introduce the masses to home computing.
Wish I could get to the site to check it out.
/. effect very well...
It strikes me, however, that they don't need to represent 1440 minutes in a day; a clock is a 12-hour representation, with signatures for AM and PM, so you only need 720. Yes, I admit, I'm going purely by the writeup; that's because a TRS-80 doesn't handle the
...is that it doesn't clarify the real difference between the legality in Russia and the illegality in the States -- i.e. that the reason you're allowed to do this in Russia is to make backups for personal use.
Overall, I think it's a reasonable story, and not slanted. But the average reader (side-note: how much do we think this will be picked up by the mass-circulation papers?) will end up thinking that this is a symptom of the decline of the Russian ex-empire in that it's legal to pirate CDs there. The reality, of course, is the reverse: it's legal to make a fair-use backup for your own purposes, as opposed to out-and-out piracy, and that is what Sklyarov's software addresses.
Others have replied pointing out that IIS != WWW Server, so I won't bother to go into detail. But here's something else to consider.
The problem as I see it is that Microsoft has put a pretty front-end GUI on everything and thereby allowed idiots to believe they can be a sysadmin. If you want to set up a Unix server, you need to have a certain amount of knowledge before you can even get the thing up and running to serve web pages. But a Windows web server, on the other hand, is so simple to get up and running in a basic configuration that it doesn't take much to struggle through and get a web page presenting. Unfortunately, that's the point at which the average Joe will congratulate himself on his system engineering skills and move on.
Completely forgetting to do any administration, such as disabling the web service if it's unneeded.
For better or worse, Microsoft's integration of internet-serving features into IIS means that IIS is the base platform for both WWW and FTP services. But the people to blame here are the people who don't know enough to take a minute after installation to go in and diable the default and administration web sites (or even just not install those features in the first place -- guess what? You can actually choose to not accept defaults! and go in and uncheck the little box next to web services, and IIS will happily install the basic IIS snap-in and FTP services and you'll have an FTP server without a Web server).
Along with power comes responsibility; and if someone gets seduced by the pretty pictures into believing they can run something without having to check the manual or investigate beyond the defaults, then that's irresponsibility. Like it or not, Britney Spears is not sufficient reason to boycott Shure. Well, probably not...