Thats a rather poor attempt at attack - Corporates buy Windows based on the fact that it is considered a standard in the office workplace - it has nothing to do with stability (and with 1500 boxes here running win2k pro believe me this is not an issue any longer - win2k is stable - unless you are talking uptime which as i have stated before has no relevance to the corporate desktop)
A few reasons again why corporates use MS Win and Office products
1. Lower support costs - Yep its true - with a Standard Environment and SMS admin is mainly remote and cuts down considerably on staff required (Linux is an excellent OS but is still IMHO not stable enough for a corporate luser (i support them so i have some grounds to make this comment)) - you can also be disingenoius and say that a blind monkey can support windows - i dont as this devalues and insults my staff
2. Your documents and files can be exchnaged with other companies - Star Office sucks - sorry theres no other way to say it. Modern companies make major use of macros and customised documents which star office mangles - its compatability is ok for the eductaed user but not for the normal person.
3. Peripherals and hardware are all supported out of the box - when supporting a large number of desktops this is vital -under win2k we have not needed drivers for 95% of our equipment and printers.
4. MS is a corporate as well - dont overlook this one - big companies deal with other big companies - it makes them feel safe
5. Constancy - MS products dont change every month (im not throwing off at constant development in Linux - its one of the things i like about it - but it would be hell in an office) and at the whim of a disparate group of people - this makes corporates feel safer again
6. Simplicity of choice - you choose 1 desktop os and 1 server OS - no complicated distributions to work out and incompatabilites etc - Windows compatible softare works on all windows boxes running the right version - this is a big bonus to corporates.
Now i like linux - i use Slackware at home and find it a great OS for the knowledgeable user - i wouldnt dream of runing a web server or proxy on anything else, but the support loads in rolling it out and training users in a non technical environment is something else - at the moment out IT budget is AU$40 Million - we have major projects on the go including and SAP rollout (ERP), Domain Rebuild and global AD and DNS implementation, SOE Phase 2, Network infrastructire Updgrade, Cognos , Oracle Backend development, Web portal for clients linked into the above, Desktop replacement (all of my machines come off lease this year) etc etc - this is with 90 total staff in IT spread across Australia
Where would we find time to evaluate, design and then implement Linux and the money to pay for the extra staff required to support the product ?
The point im making is to those people outside corporate IT and on the lower levels in IT the decsions to use Open Source etc seem simple, trust me at a higher level they are not and until a company or group brings out a Stable and simple linux disro will full compaptability in software with MS Word, Excel etc then corporates will stay the way they are (frankly many of them wouldnt even give linux a thought then) - The desktop OS is a minor problem for us - in the days of ERP and CRM systems running on global platforms coupled with the constant pressure for growing infrastructure and 24/7/365 availability of said systems (and staffing involved) the decsion of MS (known and understood is sometimes crappy) VS Linux (Unknown, too much like Unix in many of the older managers minds, tarred with image of hackers and zealots, not offered by their chosen vendor (IBM are just 1 and they dont have a major desktop presence in the Aust corporate market) then making no change is the easiest way.
AMD made a mistake and produced bad chips (their first Pentiums) they then seemed to abandon the corporate market - they dont play at getting it back, that was my point.
Dont try and lower EVERYTHING to an MS is shit line - sure some of us think that, some of us dont, some of us think both sides have merit - but the world is not black and white and neither is that issue.
It could be argued (and successfully i think) that Napster and services like this have actually contributed to the sales of albums and development of artists.
As evidence look at Eminem - due to his lyrical content the amount of airplay he could and did get was limited - Top40 tends to stay as far away from controversial subjects as possible - yet the eminem album Marshall Mathers quickly rose to be a best seller ? why ?
I posit that the availabilty of the tracks on napster and other file sharing systems help break him as an artist and build his popularity - look at the demographics or his audience - they range mainly in the 14-25 group - co-incidentally the major user base for napster users - the songs were readily available on naspter befoe the artist made it big and were heavily downloaded (based on the huge number of hits a search on his name would return).
Without napster would this artist have had the worldwide success he has ? His lyrics contain mysonginist, racist and viloent overtones so redio play would have been limited in many countries (in Aust it is very very limited except for Stan) who have less liberal views, yet his albums sell, the marketing for the artist started after he became popular - after people were downloading his songs.
And this is not isolated - How many people would have heard of bands like Sigur Ros if it werent for napster, how much success worldwide would 2nd teir artists like Lil Romeo have ? Groove Armada ? etc etc.
Face it RIAA - MP3 has helped you sell albums - it can i think be succesfully argued that in the range of artists on the market, the number of record companies etc that the music industry is at it's most buoyant point in the last 50 years ?
And where would these independant labels be without Napster, MP3.com etc - by being able to get outside the record company dominated retail chains they have been able to cut sosts and use 'viral' marketing to build artist presence and sales.
Something stinks here i suspect - does the term biting the hand that feeds you mean anything to these guys ?
That they are trying to prove that MP3.com is responsible for the actions of their users when their users are not using their service ?
Does this mean mcdonalds can get sued if i eat burger king and get sick as i normally eat mcd's ?
It seems to me that once the user has verified their right to download from MP3.com (their security as has already been said, appears unbreakable) then Mp3.com hands over any legal responsobility for copyright violation to the user - which of course poses a problem to the companies as you cant sue everyone (as much as the RIAA would like too)
I havent seen one artist named yet and i wonder how much of this is one clever lawyer getting artists to buy into this suit on a basis of 'i might get you some money' ? would be interesting to find out if he is getting paud upfront or working on a percentage of money he can get ?
Also wouldnt an independant artist want as much exposure as they can get ? you would think napster would be good news for the struggling guys, you know word of mouth etc etc.
The problme is that the music industry has been hijacked by the likes of Copyright.net who go out and actively seek out violation (how many people actually download Roy Orbison MP3's anyway ? he's been dead over 10 years - wouldnt eminem have more of a problem) which sounds to me like a desperate attempt to screw every last cent out of their copyright property - most of the artists theyt seem to represent are dead or unknown.
Check out their site at www.copyright.net - is it a coincidence that after being involved in lawsuits against P2P services they have one of their own (PeerGenius) - seems to me like someone is making a lot of money off of this issue (and it isnt Mp3.com !)
The comments against INTEL for being a big company aside (AMD Is a big company as well) i have a few things that i like about AMD processors (and some i dont)
The SD Ram advantage and improved cooling should make this the budget buyers choice - the simple fact that it is a flipchip pro as well means you dont neccesarily have to buy a new board - owners of most compatible boards can simply swap chips.
The new core is a good move - the celeron crippling has bugged me a lot - i have sold a few but im not happy totally with their performance and the morgan does get around that ( i find cache comaprisons irrelevant for most users)
In australia you can pick up a Duron and Board with Ram for under $500 (approx $250US) - this is a great price - the Celerons are neck and neck but generally a little dearer - the price gets better when you go to the Tbird - the difference is up to $100 on some models of P4.
The only concern i have about Athlons (as stated in a post on todays other AMD story) is heat - i have found that the AMD processors need good cooling and this means lots of fans - which are noisy, this is a disadvantage to many of the home user (non enthusiast) market who dont want the noise of 3 or 4 fans.
If the new processors do show the claimed lower heat buildups then they will help in making the AMD accepeted in the mass (home - mums and dads) market.
As for vendor support - well the reasons arent hard to work out - IBM make their own processors and they have an already unwieldy product range so they made a decision to drop AMD - Dell are one of Intel's largest customers and i can only guess at the discounts - and Ditto Compaq. I think we will see them move towards AMD (all but Dell - thats not going to happen trust me) slowly - REMEBER THIS - most of these companies rely on their Major corporate customers for cash flow and sales (corporates buy more and are not as price concious as home and enthusiasts) and those corporates by and large Buy INTEL machines running MICROSOFT software (with 3COM nic's, HP Printers, etc etc) The coporate market is the area AMD need to win over - they have had huge success with Gamers and budget buyers but not in the corporates (they have long memories and AMD have had some spectaculat screw ups in the mid/late 1990's with chip problems - this gave them the unreliable tag in many corporate minds - they stick with what they know)
I hope this chip does all it looks like - i want one at any rate.
In Australia our economy is buoyant and moving ahead, the eruopean economy is stable as are most asian ones - the only one in trouble is the US after the 'throw cash at any moron with a.com in his business plan feeding frenzy' that saw some of the dumbest investment decisions ever.
AMD are one of the strongest companies - they are second only to Intel - if anyone would have to worry it would be Transmeta or the many many chipset and board manufacturers although at the prices PC components are now it could be argued that the PC is now firmly a mass market consumer product.
Sure - being steel and suchlike - the ones that make money - the problem with tech is that so many people were gullible enough to piss money up a wall on ideas like outpost.com or pets.com etc - replacing something you do at a store with something you do online isnt guaranteed to work (and dont get me started in razorfish or some of the 'gaming' companies)
AMD have been around as long as intel - American Micro Devices - check out your history - and BTW Athlon is a product name NOT a company (just a note)
I suspect that you are only 15 now so its not that bad (note - opinion only im not flaming). PC's are cheap at the moment - get out and see what new technology can do for you.
And to close and offer some help - i used to be a Journalist (A Graded - worked on daily papers) and if this is writing then you need to study.
Check your facts
Offer something to back up claims
Check history of companies commenting on
True - 90 farenheit is 32.2 degrees - thats a spring day - also we get humidity of approx 90% on an average day - its hard to keep things cool - keeping yourself cool is hard enough. My point was that the ahtlons i have seen havent been any cooler - this might just be my experience - i dont know - but 4 fans in a tower case should give good cooling - i dont know what to make of figures im seeing of 60-65 degrees celsius - but i have seen them over and over and with my own eyes.
The thing is i want a tbird - my intel processors have been disapointing me for a while - i wasnt happy with my p3500 and although i like the 900 celereon (it was cheap and i needed a PC quick) i would never go to a P4 while the DDR issue is around (i have a gb of SD 133 RAM that im not prepared to replace just cause intel says to (and i have seen talk of better performance on DDR - 10% does not equate to (in Australia) a price of double for DDR VS SD)
Still this was always an AMD problem - i have sold PC's on and off since 386 Days and the early Cyrix and AMD processors were always hotter than an Intel - thats a fact of life i guess and something we have to live with - but i wont be happy until i see them running at the same core temp as a P4 in the same box with the same cooling (although i have seen very hot P4's as well)
Nope they dont run cooler - i would love to upgrade my PC to an athlon but living in QLD in australia i have summer daytime temps of 40 degrees celsius to deal with - my brother runs a duron 950 and this hits 65 celsius just running windows - he has 4 fans and a peltier on his chip and this is still the case.
The Intel celeron 900 runs at 38 degrees - this is much cooler and in comparison between mine and his i dont see a difference in performance times (not neither of us waste money so we are not into overclocking systems)
Then add in a 64mb Nvidia card, burners, hdd etc etc and think about it - i have seen stats that show athlons under load hittin 100+ celsius, thats too hot.
Pity as i would love to dump intel - the P4 is a shitheap (DDR ram my butt)
Checked my copy of the dos 3.0 manual and i cannot find it - i suspect the quote is apocryphal for that and other reasons mainly related to the fact that by the time DOS 3.0 came out Apple was above 640k anyway - and this would not be consistent with the then Microsft business plan of sellling as much software as possible to build a business
Re:Informative - More like criminal action actuall
on
Hotmail Hacked
·
· Score: 2
Actually i have had hotmail accounts for years and have also had accounts on other providers of free mail services.
Yahoo was spam city - it may not be hackable but christ did i get spammed - and emails from yahoo 'affiliates' were a constant problem - even though i asked them not too
RocketMail - not bad - but now gone
Altavista - More porn spam than you can poke a stick at and mesaages from them every day
Thats a fee examples
Hotmail used to be bad - but over the last 8 months with the account i have i average 1 spam a week (those dammned college degree ones) and 1 message a month from hotmal staff - i get little other spam and the filters work - its also fress so who cares about 1 little message - and the address is a non reply - i have them here on my system for helpdesk and notification purposes - its not 'power' it's a standard thing.
Do you use hotmail daily these days ? (just wondering not flamebaiting)
Re:Informative - More like criminal action actuall
on
Hotmail Hacked
·
· Score: 2
Good point on that - but the laws on computer crime are different arent they ?
Still you might be right - but would this not depend on the jurisdiction ? - if the case was in the New York Courts but Slashdot is based in say California it might not neccesarily be precedent setting as its not a federal case ? I dont know as i am not a lawyer but it would be interesting to know as this is a valid question
Re:Informative - More like criminal action actuall
on
Hotmail Hacked
·
· Score: 2
Actually this ruling does not apply to slashdot (it hasnt been tested) the ruling covers communications carriers who cannot be held responsible for the information carried on their medium - be it phone etc - AOL is an ISP and as such fall under this defenition - this ruling protects ISP's from being held responsible for the actions of their users - its a valid and important point - Slashdot can claim protection under this status but it would have to be proven in a court of law - the proscution would attempt to prove that slashdot knowingly allows the information on this and other examples to be posted (disclaimer aside) and this forum is often host to people who advocate hacking and mail bombming and DOS etc as action against companies and individuals - the user posted this under a username as ws his right - but/. cannot claim he is an anymous user and unable to be blocked etc.
note im not commenting on the right or wrong of it - i agree the post may be foolish but thats not my opinion to state - i just disagree with the statement that this ruling covers/. as a common carrier.
I agree with that - i deal with vendors everyday - especially MS (im an MIS manager in an MS environment) but if you think they afe bad try SAP vendors - these guys make the CIA look friendly and easy to deal with.
But you are correct vendors dont fix code and i agree its an issue and we should be telling them about flaws - but these guys told much more than them - if they had only told MS and bugtraq that would be fine, yet in this topic we have full details on the exploit and everyone on IRC and my ICQ contact know about it - it's all over the web, thus they are not just telling the vendors, or bugtraq or CERT but they are telling everyone how to hack a system - this makes them 'black hats' in my eyes (i hate that term !).
All this sort of news does is bring publicity and cause the vendor to circle the wagons and deny everything - and they start another discussion on evil hackers (watch the TV - newsflash Hackers can read your mail) and obfuscate the fact that ALL systems have vulnerabilities - we all need to be aware of that. (not thats my opinion only)
Another damn good point - i enjoy your posts man !
yes i agree - of course - but Tomlinson (and i would say that you could find something related to a more modern era to back your point up) was not telling everyone in the world - his point is that the information may be used for bad and thats a good point - but talking about how to fix a lock and posting exploit code on every available place is hardly covered by this point - sure the flaw would be there - but unless someone went looking with malicious intent (and these guys were doing that trust me) then it would not pose a problem - i make no point as to whether this is right or wrong only that for these guys to claim they are 'helping' hotmail by telling them is invalidated by their telling everyone else as well - sort of like a guy yelling fire whilst hes holding a match.
BTW tomlinson's treatise is very interseting and he was using it to say that just beacuse information may be used for wrong does not mean it should not be covered under freedom of speech, and thats a good poin, However from what i have read freedom of speech does not cover criminal actions and incitment to commit a criminal act - the knowing distribution of information designed to facilitate or encourage an act contrary to the law.
Thats what these guys are doing - they set out to compromise a commercial system belonging to a private company with the aim of exploiting that system for their gain (fame, notoriety etc etc) - this is a crime no matter what they claim. They then spread the information in a way designed to allow people to gain access that system thus allowing them to cmmit the same crime - in effect making them accomplices.
My point is these guys are not worthy of the attention and support they get. Thats my opinion anyway.
But thanks for a great reply post - very well done and ineresting. and made me think - you may be right, i may be wrong , but thats what this place is all about
Im so glad they found this flaw (one which from the reading isnt all that new) as now we know that our hotmail can be read by anyone - how ? well the kind hearted uber skilled hackers didn't just post this to MS did they ? naaah they posted ot everywhere - its the talk of IRC etc etc.
Im so glad hackers keep 'finding' things, like credit card numbers, ways into banking systems, viruses like code red - makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
My question - not to be a troll - is this (and this does not just relate to MS products but im asking a serious question)
if this security flaw had not been found (by these guys looking for a way to break into hotmail to read peoples mail) would anyone have been affected ? i mean if the flaw had to be looked for with carefull thought etc then was it a real serious issue BEFORE these guys told everyone ?
networks can have flaws and holes, open ports etc left active by a careless admin - not the best i know but big systems have a lot of work and these days we are coping with less staff (i know my company is) so sometimes things slip through.
But these guys go and look for the exploit (i mean what other reason would you have to search for this exploit BUT to be able to hack in and read mail? and then why tell everyone?
These things need to be fixed i agree but if no one wold know they were there expect for some kindly souls seeking them out then how much of an issue are they ? Are we just accepting that hackers are a good thing cause they find these problems ? what will you think when they 'fin' that flaw in the company which has your credit card number ?
The fact that Altair Ran Basic (which at that time was considered and OS as there was no such thing as a Disk Operating System for the Altair as yet) is proven to be factually correct ? And regardless Gates wrote the First DOS for the Altair himself (on legal pads in fact and then coded it into a machine in machine language) so the statement is factually correct even if you read it as BASIC/OS
what are you trying to say then ? That history is lying (inclduing numerous non MS sources ?)
The prob with compact flash and smart meida is the formats arent proprietary but the vendors write data in such a way that it is hard to interchange the cards (Sony and Kodak for one example) plus they are expensive (im outside the US)
Memory Stick is a proprietary format belonging to Sony - as yet i dont believe there has been any other vendor making either a memory stick product or a memory stick - thats as proprietary as you want.
PS Proprietary is when a tech is one companies only - the amouont of products on the market means very little if the company hasnt made it an open standard.
Any cd player with a tray will take them - they work in all types - my company uses them constantly for presentations and suchlike - they are small in size and cost effective in bulk - dont know about slot loaders but a friend of mine says his sony slot loading CD Rom plays them fine.
Dennis ritchie didnt thats true - but he built about 90% himself - and thats in the books
No one said they were relevant in current context - they really arent (including Dennis Ritchie) - i was illustrating a point that the people are there and will continue to be there now and in the future - its hard to been seen as the sole creator of anything these days but the geniuses do exist.
As for pointless heor worship - history will teach us many things - pity most people dont want to know.
Steve Wozniak - Apple OS, Games etc (including breakout for Atari)
Bob Metcalfe - Ethernet protocol
Bill Gates (yeah yeah i know - but read your history people) - Altair BASIC (first PC) Altair DOS (ditto) to name but 2
Mitch Kapor - Lotus 123
Gary Kildall - C/PM (first true portable DOS)
Dennis Ritchie - UNIX
John Draper - easy writer (first IBM PC commercially supported word processor)
There are hundreds more
Looks like we just proved that many of you dont bother learning about the very thing whcih you love does'nt it ?
Try reading a few books - may i reccomed Fire IN the Valley by Hildergard/Swaine - the story of the birth of the PC
Giants with the capacity - shit i could give em to you all day - unfortunately this is pre linux... draw your own conclusions on that.
We have over 200 staff running Citrix Metaframe on wyse terminals with Win2k Terminal Server on the back end and heres the rub.
Its a great solution BUT
1. Be prepared to increase your bandwidth A LOT - most of these users are on remote sites and we have one here with a 320 k link and 20 staff that is slower than a wet week -Citrix admit (off the record) that runing a full desktop and apps sucks up as much as 32k each desktop
2. Servers - Minimum has to be a dual pentium with a gig of ram - we specced all ours to be quad xeon with 2.5 gb and they work - but the costs hurt
3. No FDDs, no CD roms, Palm Pilots are shit to set up and much of the software doesnt run properly - Flash for one, printer driver unsupported etc etc.
But i agree with the comment on admins - the MCSE as god syndrome has fucked this industry and left us with morons - but dont blame MS for that totally, the training companies and the corporates did it.
I have a collegue working for a corporate ISP who use this and run all of their desktops as thin clients under linux (slackware) and win terminal server and it seems to work very well - its not a 100% solution but its stable (they still use MS Office). We looked at this for our environment but decided that with 1500 users its a dog with new flea -, requiring increased bandwidth and server usage and more support on the back end (and more knowledgeable thus more expensive staff in this case - and its hard to quantify skillsets) - but its a step in the right direction.
But unforunately it's not Linux for the corporate desktop, something i am always chasing. What corporates want and need is a Linux distro that is easy to set up, easy for users to cope with, does everything their windows box does and with software that can save in the same formats, ie word, excel (so they can still communicate with the outside world) and which is secure and user friendly as well.
I have looked at a couple of solutions and some of the distros (Red Hat, Corel) are almost there but the back end software isn't there and besided here and many things dependent of the next kernal release etc etc, this may be good for a home machine or a Terminal server implementation but its no good for over 1000 desktop machines.
Stability, Ease of Use, Ease of Rollout and Cheaper support costs - thats what we want, Linux is Stable - (im not talking uptime as this is NOT relevant for a corporate desktop) but not easy to use for beginners, isnt easy to rollout and IMHO the support costs increase even thought its free as the ratio of support staff drops - (i think i read something about it bein 1 support person to 10 staff rather than 1 to 20 for Win)
That said i watch with bated breath praying for the day i can move to a new OS for my corporate desktops and get rid of the MS attitude - i dont hate their products i hate their arrogance.
I have seen this story and its never been proven but may be true - the OS undoubtedly contained bits stolen or borrowed from C/PM but then again so did every DOS on the market and most basic implementations were rip offs or copies of Bill Gates original altair one, still its a valid point and thanks for reminding me
I already conceeded the similarities - and the OS2 errors are NT3.51 and that was and is a very different product to NT4 - VMS provided a lot of the staff and NT probably has a lot of VMS in it - and a lot of OS2.
Name 1 general easy to use marketed alternative to Win98 that offered the feature set and stability - NOTE most people dont care it was bundled with IE4 - (Please dont mention Linux - i know it was there and i was using Slackware at the time (still am) but Linux was not at that stage, and not really now, an OS that the unskilled home user could run on his PC - it was next generation - Windows 95 was Generation 1 and MS Considered (8 (any many of us who have to support it as well) 2nd Generation - it still uses DOS as its underpinnings and thats a problem but from a stability front (having supported Win95 in large numbers) the product was an innovation (NOTE by stability i dont mean uptime - i mean general day to day write a document etc for which Win98 is very stable)
I really dislike the fact that anyone who puts forward the view that MS are not the evil satan of the world and produce pus ridden products must be a microsoft apologist - i resent the implication that im either a sheep of the MS camp or a sheep of the Linux Camp.
So heres my story - i have almost 12 years WORKING in MIS and IT (not studying thats after school) durting that time i have worked as an IBM RS operator, supported and admined VAX's, MDIS pegasus, been an AT&T sys admin, have a novell CNA in 3.11 and 4.11, supported OS2 desktops and servers (In a banking environment) and run desktop support in govt and corporate in both Win95, NT 3.51, Win 98 and NT4 and NOW win2000.
I have 4 PC's in this home office, A notebook on Win2k, this machine - dual boot Debian and Winb98, a gateway server on Slackware 6 and an Apple PowerMac 9600 (i also have a 386 notebook somewhere on Win3.11) I believe in choice and different horses for course - Linux offers me a lot and i love working with it and learning about t - im teaching myself to write perl and java at the moment. But i still use Win2k and win98 ?? why.
I have 500 users under support who use Win2k desktops (and its a damn good product) - this is a corporate decision and one i wont argue with until linux can be made foolproof enough for the average user (dont bother ive looked and none are yet - some are getting close but) Our Server backend is split - Win2k Active Dir for our global wan with BSD firewall and web services - SQL and ORACLE DB on Solaris for ERP and Financials and Some NT4 hold ons - mainly terminal server running citrix.
SO i have to support and use a wide range of products - SAP, COGNOS, SQL, INGRES etc, and i work 60 hours + a week.
When i come home i like to surf the web with no fuss and play games - thats it and i use Win98 for that cause its easy - no pissing around - i use IE5 cause it does everything i want with minimal fuss - i have broadband so i dont want to mess around with plug ins although i use Opera for some things and Lynx as well (PC and LINUX)
I dont need to be written off as some sort of MS marketing drone by the likes of you - i respect your opinion and your right to express it - thats what/. and the Open Source community is all about - but i would aks if you can lay out your qualifications and role before you brush off mine.
OHH and PS i work for a Global Real Estate management and Banking services firm - not MS (although i wil say i wouldnt say no to a job with them, nor with Red Hat for that matter)
(Note im not trolling or flaming just defending my honor here and if you want to post a comment that is intelligent feel free, i will reply - if you want to flame me - well hell i can't stop you acting like a child can i ?)
Slashdot Mirror
Thats a rather poor attempt at attack - Corporates buy Windows based on the fact that it is considered a standard in the office workplace - it has nothing to do with stability (and with 1500 boxes here running win2k pro believe me this is not an issue any longer - win2k is stable - unless you are talking uptime which as i have stated before has no relevance to the corporate desktop)
A few reasons again why corporates use MS Win and Office products
1. Lower support costs - Yep its true - with a Standard Environment and SMS admin is mainly remote and cuts down considerably on staff required (Linux is an excellent OS but is still IMHO not stable enough for a corporate luser (i support them so i have some grounds to make this comment)) - you can also be disingenoius and say that a blind monkey can support windows - i dont as this devalues and insults my staff
2. Your documents and files can be exchnaged with other companies - Star Office sucks - sorry theres no other way to say it. Modern companies make major use of macros and customised documents which star office mangles - its compatability is ok for the eductaed user but not for the normal person.
3. Peripherals and hardware are all supported out of the box - when supporting a large number of desktops this is vital -under win2k we have not needed drivers for 95% of our equipment and printers.
4. MS is a corporate as well - dont overlook this one - big companies deal with other big companies - it makes them feel safe
5. Constancy - MS products dont change every month (im not throwing off at constant development in Linux - its one of the things i like about it - but it would be hell in an office) and at the whim of a disparate group of people - this makes corporates feel safer again
6. Simplicity of choice - you choose 1 desktop os and 1 server OS - no complicated distributions to work out and incompatabilites etc - Windows compatible softare works on all windows boxes running the right version - this is a big bonus to corporates.
Now i like linux - i use Slackware at home and find it a great OS for the knowledgeable user - i wouldnt dream of runing a web server or proxy on anything else, but the support loads in rolling it out and training users in a non technical environment is something else - at the moment out IT budget is AU$40 Million - we have major projects on the go including and SAP rollout (ERP), Domain Rebuild and global AD and DNS implementation, SOE Phase 2, Network infrastructire Updgrade, Cognos , Oracle Backend development, Web portal for clients linked into the above, Desktop replacement (all of my machines come off lease this year) etc etc - this is with 90 total staff in IT spread across Australia
Where would we find time to evaluate, design and then implement Linux and the money to pay for the extra staff required to support the product ?
The point im making is to those people outside corporate IT and on the lower levels in IT the decsions to use Open Source etc seem simple, trust me at a higher level they are not and until a company or group brings out a Stable and simple linux disro will full compaptability in software with MS Word, Excel etc then corporates will stay the way they are (frankly many of them wouldnt even give linux a thought then) - The desktop OS is a minor problem for us - in the days of ERP and CRM systems running on global platforms coupled with the constant pressure for growing infrastructure and 24/7/365 availability of said systems (and staffing involved) the decsion of MS (known and understood is sometimes crappy) VS Linux (Unknown, too much like Unix in many of the older managers minds, tarred with image of hackers and zealots, not offered by their chosen vendor (IBM are just 1 and they dont have a major desktop presence in the Aust corporate market) then making no change is the easiest way.
AMD made a mistake and produced bad chips (their first Pentiums) they then seemed to abandon the corporate market - they dont play at getting it back, that was my point.
Dont try and lower EVERYTHING to an MS is shit line - sure some of us think that, some of us dont, some of us think both sides have merit - but the world is not black and white and neither is that issue.
It could be argued (and successfully i think) that Napster and services like this have actually contributed to the sales of albums and development of artists.
As evidence look at Eminem - due to his lyrical content the amount of airplay he could and did get was limited - Top40 tends to stay as far away from controversial subjects as possible - yet the eminem album Marshall Mathers quickly rose to be a best seller ? why ?
I posit that the availabilty of the tracks on napster and other file sharing systems help break him as an artist and build his popularity - look at the demographics or his audience - they range mainly in the 14-25 group - co-incidentally the major user base for napster users - the songs were readily available on naspter befoe the artist made it big and were heavily downloaded (based on the huge number of hits a search on his name would return).
Without napster would this artist have had the worldwide success he has ? His lyrics contain mysonginist, racist and viloent overtones so redio play would have been limited in many countries (in Aust it is very very limited except for Stan) who have less liberal views, yet his albums sell, the marketing for the artist started after he became popular - after people were downloading his songs.
And this is not isolated - How many people would have heard of bands like Sigur Ros if it werent for napster, how much success worldwide would 2nd teir artists like Lil Romeo have ? Groove Armada ? etc etc.
Face it RIAA - MP3 has helped you sell albums - it can i think be succesfully argued that in the range of artists on the market, the number of record companies etc that the music industry is at it's most buoyant point in the last 50 years ?
And where would these independant labels be without Napster, MP3.com etc - by being able to get outside the record company dominated retail chains they have been able to cut sosts and use 'viral' marketing to build artist presence and sales.
Something stinks here i suspect - does the term biting the hand that feeds you mean anything to these guys ?
That they are trying to prove that MP3.com is responsible for the actions of their users when their users are not using their service ?
Does this mean mcdonalds can get sued if i eat burger king and get sick as i normally eat mcd's ?
It seems to me that once the user has verified their right to download from MP3.com (their security as has already been said, appears unbreakable) then Mp3.com hands over any legal responsobility for copyright violation to the user - which of course poses a problem to the companies as you cant sue everyone (as much as the RIAA would like too)
I havent seen one artist named yet and i wonder how much of this is one clever lawyer getting artists to buy into this suit on a basis of 'i might get you some money' ? would be interesting to find out if he is getting paud upfront or working on a percentage of money he can get ?
Also wouldnt an independant artist want as much exposure as they can get ? you would think napster would be good news for the struggling guys, you know word of mouth etc etc.
The problme is that the music industry has been hijacked by the likes of Copyright.net who go out and actively seek out violation (how many people actually download Roy Orbison MP3's anyway ? he's been dead over 10 years - wouldnt eminem have more of a problem) which sounds to me like a desperate attempt to screw every last cent out of their copyright property - most of the artists theyt seem to represent are dead or unknown.
Check out their site at www.copyright.net - is it a coincidence that after being involved in lawsuits against P2P services they have one of their own (PeerGenius) - seems to me like someone is making a lot of money off of this issue (and it isnt Mp3.com !)
The comments against INTEL for being a big company aside (AMD Is a big company as well) i have a few things that i like about AMD processors (and some i dont)
The SD Ram advantage and improved cooling should make this the budget buyers choice - the simple fact that it is a flipchip pro as well means you dont neccesarily have to buy a new board - owners of most compatible boards can simply swap chips.
The new core is a good move - the celeron crippling has bugged me a lot - i have sold a few but im not happy totally with their performance and the morgan does get around that ( i find cache comaprisons irrelevant for most users)
In australia you can pick up a Duron and Board with Ram for under $500 (approx $250US) - this is a great price - the Celerons are neck and neck but generally a little dearer - the price gets better when you go to the Tbird - the difference is up to $100 on some models of P4.
The only concern i have about Athlons (as stated in a post on todays other AMD story) is heat - i have found that the AMD processors need good cooling and this means lots of fans - which are noisy, this is a disadvantage to many of the home user (non enthusiast) market who dont want the noise of 3 or 4 fans.
If the new processors do show the claimed lower heat buildups then they will help in making the AMD accepeted in the mass (home - mums and dads) market.
As for vendor support - well the reasons arent hard to work out - IBM make their own processors and they have an already unwieldy product range so they made a decision to drop AMD - Dell are one of Intel's largest customers and i can only guess at the discounts - and Ditto Compaq. I think we will see them move towards AMD (all but Dell - thats not going to happen trust me) slowly - REMEBER THIS - most of these companies rely on their Major corporate customers for cash flow and sales (corporates buy more and are not as price concious as home and enthusiasts) and those corporates by and large Buy INTEL machines running MICROSOFT software (with 3COM nic's, HP Printers, etc etc) The coporate market is the area AMD need to win over - they have had huge success with Gamers and budget buyers but not in the corporates (they have long memories and AMD have had some spectaculat screw ups in the mid/late 1990's with chip problems - this gave them the unreliable tag in many corporate minds - they stick with what they know)
I hope this chip does all it looks like - i want one at any rate.
Serious global Recession ?
.com in his business plan feeding frenzy' that saw some of the dumbest investment decisions ever.
In Australia our economy is buoyant and moving ahead, the eruopean economy is stable as are most asian ones - the only one in trouble is the US after the 'throw cash at any moron with a
AMD are one of the strongest companies - they are second only to Intel - if anyone would have to worry it would be Transmeta or the many many chipset and board manufacturers although at the prices PC components are now it could be argued that the PC is now firmly a mass market consumer product.
Sure - being steel and suchlike - the ones that make money - the problem with tech is that so many people were gullible enough to piss money up a wall on ideas like outpost.com or pets.com etc - replacing something you do at a store with something you do online isnt guaranteed to work (and dont get me started in razorfish or some of the 'gaming' companies)
AMD have been around as long as intel - American Micro Devices - check out your history - and BTW Athlon is a product name NOT a company (just a note)
I suspect that you are only 15 now so its not that bad (note - opinion only im not flaming). PC's are cheap at the moment - get out and see what new technology can do for you.
And to close and offer some help - i used to be a Journalist (A Graded - worked on daily papers) and if this is writing then you need to study.
Check your facts
Offer something to back up claims
Check history of companies commenting on
Just trying to help you man.
True - 90 farenheit is 32.2 degrees - thats a spring day - also we get humidity of approx 90% on an average day - its hard to keep things cool - keeping yourself cool is hard enough. My point was that the ahtlons i have seen havent been any cooler - this might just be my experience - i dont know - but 4 fans in a tower case should give good cooling - i dont know what to make of figures im seeing of 60-65 degrees celsius - but i have seen them over and over and with my own eyes.
The thing is i want a tbird - my intel processors have been disapointing me for a while - i wasnt happy with my p3500 and although i like the 900 celereon (it was cheap and i needed a PC quick) i would never go to a P4 while the DDR issue is around (i have a gb of SD 133 RAM that im not prepared to replace just cause intel says to (and i have seen talk of better performance on DDR - 10% does not equate to (in Australia) a price of double for DDR VS SD)
Still this was always an AMD problem - i have sold PC's on and off since 386 Days and the early Cyrix and AMD processors were always hotter than an Intel - thats a fact of life i guess and something we have to live with - but i wont be happy until i see them running at the same core temp as a P4 in the same box with the same cooling (although i have seen very hot P4's as well)
Nope they dont run cooler - i would love to upgrade my PC to an athlon but living in QLD in australia i have summer daytime temps of 40 degrees celsius to deal with - my brother runs a duron 950 and this hits 65 celsius just running windows - he has 4 fans and a peltier on his chip and this is still the case.
The Intel celeron 900 runs at 38 degrees - this is much cooler and in comparison between mine and his i dont see a difference in performance times (not neither of us waste money so we are not into overclocking systems)
Then add in a 64mb Nvidia card, burners, hdd etc etc and think about it - i have seen stats that show athlons under load hittin 100+ celsius, thats too hot.
Pity as i would love to dump intel - the P4 is a shitheap (DDR ram my butt)
Checked my copy of the dos 3.0 manual and i cannot find it - i suspect the quote is apocryphal for that and other reasons mainly related to the fact that by the time DOS 3.0 came out Apple was above 640k anyway - and this would not be consistent with the then Microsft business plan of sellling as much software as possible to build a business
Actually i have had hotmail accounts for years and have also had accounts on other providers of free mail services.
Yahoo was spam city - it may not be hackable but christ did i get spammed - and emails from yahoo 'affiliates' were a constant problem - even though i asked them not too
RocketMail - not bad - but now gone
Altavista - More porn spam than you can poke a stick at and mesaages from them every day
Thats a fee examples
Hotmail used to be bad - but over the last 8 months with the account i have i average 1 spam a week (those dammned college degree ones) and 1 message a month from hotmal staff - i get little other spam and the filters work - its also fress so who cares about 1 little message - and the address is a non reply - i have them here on my system for helpdesk and notification purposes - its not 'power' it's a standard thing.
Do you use hotmail daily these days ? (just wondering not flamebaiting)
Good point on that - but the laws on computer crime are different arent they ?
Still you might be right - but would this not depend on the jurisdiction ? - if the case was in the New York Courts but Slashdot is based in say California it might not neccesarily be precedent setting as its not a federal case ? I dont know as i am not a lawyer but it would be interesting to know as this is a valid question
Actually this ruling does not apply to slashdot (it hasnt been tested) the ruling covers communications carriers who cannot be held responsible for the information carried on their medium - be it phone etc - AOL is an ISP and as such fall under this defenition - this ruling protects ISP's from being held responsible for the actions of their users - its a valid and important point - Slashdot can claim protection under this status but it would have to be proven in a court of law - the proscution would attempt to prove that slashdot knowingly allows the information on this and other examples to be posted (disclaimer aside) and this forum is often host to people who advocate hacking and mail bombming and DOS etc as action against companies and individuals - the user posted this under a username as ws his right - but /. cannot claim he is an anymous user and unable to be blocked etc.
/. as a common carrier.
note im not commenting on the right or wrong of it - i agree the post may be foolish but thats not my opinion to state - i just disagree with the statement that this ruling covers
I agree with that - i deal with vendors everyday - especially MS (im an MIS manager in an MS environment) but if you think they afe bad try SAP vendors - these guys make the CIA look friendly and easy to deal with.
But you are correct vendors dont fix code and i agree its an issue and we should be telling them about flaws - but these guys told much more than them - if they had only told MS and bugtraq that would be fine, yet in this topic we have full details on the exploit and everyone on IRC and my ICQ contact know about it - it's all over the web, thus they are not just telling the vendors, or bugtraq or CERT but they are telling everyone how to hack a system - this makes them 'black hats' in my eyes (i hate that term !).
All this sort of news does is bring publicity and cause the vendor to circle the wagons and deny everything - and they start another discussion on evil hackers (watch the TV - newsflash Hackers can read your mail) and obfuscate the fact that ALL systems have vulnerabilities - we all need to be aware of that. (not thats my opinion only)
Another damn good point - i enjoy your posts man !
yes i agree - of course - but Tomlinson (and i would say that you could find something related to a more modern era to back your point up) was not telling everyone in the world - his point is that the information may be used for bad and thats a good point - but talking about how to fix a lock and posting exploit code on every available place is hardly covered by this point - sure the flaw would be there - but unless someone went looking with malicious intent (and these guys were doing that trust me) then it would not pose a problem - i make no point as to whether this is right or wrong only that for these guys to claim they are 'helping' hotmail by telling them is invalidated by their telling everyone else as well - sort of like a guy yelling fire whilst hes holding a match.
BTW tomlinson's treatise is very interseting and he was using it to say that just beacuse information may be used for wrong does not mean it should not be covered under freedom of speech, and thats a good poin, However from what i have read freedom of speech does not cover criminal actions and incitment to commit a criminal act - the knowing distribution of information designed to facilitate or encourage an act contrary to the law.
Thats what these guys are doing - they set out to compromise a commercial system belonging to a private company with the aim of exploiting that system for their gain (fame, notoriety etc etc) - this is a crime no matter what they claim. They then spread the information in a way designed to allow people to gain access that system thus allowing them to cmmit the same crime - in effect making them accomplices.
My point is these guys are not worthy of the attention and support they get. Thats my opinion anyway.
But thanks for a great reply post - very well done and ineresting. and made me think - you may be right, i may be wrong , but thats what this place is all about
Im so glad they found this flaw (one which from the reading isnt all that new) as now we know that our hotmail can be read by anyone - how ? well the kind hearted uber skilled hackers didn't just post this to MS did they ? naaah they posted ot everywhere - its the talk of IRC etc etc.
Im so glad hackers keep 'finding' things, like credit card numbers, ways into banking systems, viruses like code red - makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
My question - not to be a troll - is this (and this does not just relate to MS products but im asking a serious question)
if this security flaw had not been found (by these guys looking for a way to break into hotmail to read peoples mail) would anyone have been affected ? i mean if the flaw had to be looked for with carefull thought etc then was it a real serious issue BEFORE these guys told everyone ?
networks can have flaws and holes, open ports etc left active by a careless admin - not the best i know but big systems have a lot of work and these days we are coping with less staff (i know my company is) so sometimes things slip through.
But these guys go and look for the exploit (i mean what other reason would you have to search for this exploit BUT to be able to hack in and read mail? and then why tell everyone?
These things need to be fixed i agree but if no one wold know they were there expect for some kindly souls seeking them out then how much of an issue are they ? Are we just accepting that hackers are a good thing cause they find these problems ? what will you think when they 'fin' that flaw in the company which has your credit card number ?
Umm i dont understand
The fact that Altair Ran Basic (which at that time was considered and OS as there was no such thing as a Disk Operating System for the Altair as yet) is proven to be factually correct ? And regardless Gates wrote the First DOS for the Altair himself (on legal pads in fact and then coded it into a machine in machine language) so the statement is factually correct even if you read it as BASIC/OS
what are you trying to say then ? That history is lying (inclduing numerous non MS sources ?)
umm
The prob with compact flash and smart meida is the formats arent proprietary but the vendors write data in such a way that it is hard to interchange the cards (Sony and Kodak for one example) plus they are expensive (im outside the US)
Memory Stick is a proprietary format belonging to Sony - as yet i dont believe there has been any other vendor making either a memory stick product or a memory stick - thats as proprietary as you want.
PS Proprietary is when a tech is one companies only - the amouont of products on the market means very little if the company hasnt made it an open standard.
Any cd player with a tray will take them - they work in all types - my company uses them constantly for presentations and suchlike - they are small in size and cost effective in bulk - dont know about slot loaders but a friend of mine says his sony slot loading CD Rom plays them fine.
Actually normally i dont get off on the anti MS jokes in every post - but this one is funny - well worth the rating.
Dennis ritchie didnt thats true - but he built about 90% himself - and thats in the books No one said they were relevant in current context - they really arent (including Dennis Ritchie) - i was illustrating a point that the people are there and will continue to be there now and in the future - its hard to been seen as the sole creator of anything these days but the geniuses do exist. As for pointless heor worship - history will teach us many things - pity most people dont want to know.
Yup we sure do
Steve Wozniak - Apple OS, Games etc (including breakout for Atari)
Bob Metcalfe - Ethernet protocol
Bill Gates (yeah yeah i know - but read your history people) - Altair BASIC (first PC) Altair DOS (ditto) to name but 2
Mitch Kapor - Lotus 123
Gary Kildall - C/PM (first true portable DOS)
Dennis Ritchie - UNIX
John Draper - easy writer (first IBM PC commercially supported word processor)
There are hundreds more
Looks like we just proved that many of you dont bother learning about the very thing whcih you love does'nt it ?
Try reading a few books - may i reccomed Fire IN the Valley by Hildergard/Swaine - the story of the birth of the PC
Giants with the capacity - shit i could give em to you all day - unfortunately this is pre linux... draw your own conclusions on that.
I am looking but i still dont see the 'it thought MS were the mafia post' yet.
:)
Still and all it has to be coming soon
We have over 200 staff running Citrix Metaframe on wyse terminals with Win2k Terminal Server on the back end and heres the rub.
Its a great solution BUT
1. Be prepared to increase your bandwidth A LOT - most of these users are on remote sites and we have one here with a 320 k link and 20 staff that is slower than a wet week -Citrix admit (off the record) that runing a full desktop and apps sucks up as much as 32k each desktop
2. Servers - Minimum has to be a dual pentium with a gig of ram - we specced all ours to be quad xeon with 2.5 gb and they work - but the costs hurt
3. No FDDs, no CD roms, Palm Pilots are shit to set up and much of the software doesnt run properly - Flash for one, printer driver unsupported etc etc.
But i agree with the comment on admins - the MCSE as god syndrome has fucked this industry and left us with morons - but dont blame MS for that totally, the training companies and the corporates did it.
I agree lets see an honest comparison
I have a collegue working for a corporate ISP who use this and run all of their desktops as thin clients under linux (slackware) and win terminal server and it seems to work very well - its not a 100% solution but its stable (they still use MS Office). We looked at this for our environment but decided that with 1500 users its a dog with new flea -, requiring increased bandwidth and server usage and more support on the back end (and more knowledgeable thus more expensive staff in this case - and its hard to quantify skillsets) - but its a step in the right direction.
But unforunately it's not Linux for the corporate desktop, something i am always chasing. What corporates want and need is a Linux distro that is easy to set up, easy for users to cope with, does everything their windows box does and with software that can save in the same formats, ie word, excel (so they can still communicate with the outside world) and which is secure and user friendly as well.
I have looked at a couple of solutions and some of the distros (Red Hat, Corel) are almost there but the back end software isn't there and besided here and many things dependent of the next kernal release etc etc, this may be good for a home machine or a Terminal server implementation but its no good for over 1000 desktop machines.
Stability, Ease of Use, Ease of Rollout and Cheaper support costs - thats what we want, Linux is Stable - (im not talking uptime as this is NOT relevant for a corporate desktop) but not easy to use for beginners, isnt easy to rollout and IMHO the support costs increase even thought its free as the ratio of support staff drops - (i think i read something about it bein 1 support person to 10 staff rather than 1 to 20 for Win)
That said i watch with bated breath praying for the day i can move to a new OS for my corporate desktops and get rid of the MS attitude - i dont hate their products i hate their arrogance.
I have seen this story and its never been proven but may be true - the OS undoubtedly contained bits stolen or borrowed from C/PM but then again so did every DOS on the market and most basic implementations were rip offs or copies of Bill Gates original altair one, still its a valid point and thanks for reminding me
I already conceeded the similarities - and the OS2 errors are NT3.51 and that was and is a very different product to NT4 - VMS provided a lot of the staff and NT probably has a lot of VMS in it - and a lot of OS2.
/. and the Open Source community is all about - but i would aks if you can lay out your qualifications and role before you brush off mine.
Name 1 general easy to use marketed alternative to Win98 that offered the feature set and stability - NOTE most people dont care it was bundled with IE4 - (Please dont mention Linux - i know it was there and i was using Slackware at the time (still am) but Linux was not at that stage, and not really now, an OS that the unskilled home user could run on his PC - it was next generation - Windows 95 was Generation 1 and MS Considered (8 (any many of us who have to support it as well) 2nd Generation - it still uses DOS as its underpinnings and thats a problem but from a stability front (having supported Win95 in large numbers) the product was an innovation (NOTE by stability i dont mean uptime - i mean general day to day write a document etc for which Win98 is very stable)
I really dislike the fact that anyone who puts forward the view that MS are not the evil satan of the world and produce pus ridden products must be a microsoft apologist - i resent the implication that im either a sheep of the MS camp or a sheep of the Linux Camp.
So heres my story - i have almost 12 years WORKING in MIS and IT (not studying thats after school) durting that time i have worked as an IBM RS operator, supported and admined VAX's, MDIS pegasus, been an AT&T sys admin, have a novell CNA in 3.11 and 4.11, supported OS2 desktops and servers (In a banking environment) and run desktop support in govt and corporate in both Win95, NT 3.51, Win 98 and NT4 and NOW win2000.
I have 4 PC's in this home office, A notebook on Win2k, this machine - dual boot Debian and Winb98, a gateway server on Slackware 6 and an Apple PowerMac 9600 (i also have a 386 notebook somewhere on Win3.11) I believe in choice and different horses for course - Linux offers me a lot and i love working with it and learning about t - im teaching myself to write perl and java at the moment. But i still use Win2k and win98 ?? why.
I have 500 users under support who use Win2k desktops (and its a damn good product) - this is a corporate decision and one i wont argue with until linux can be made foolproof enough for the average user (dont bother ive looked and none are yet - some are getting close but) Our Server backend is split - Win2k Active Dir for our global wan with BSD firewall and web services - SQL and ORACLE DB on Solaris for ERP and Financials and Some NT4 hold ons - mainly terminal server running citrix.
SO i have to support and use a wide range of products - SAP, COGNOS, SQL, INGRES etc, and i work 60 hours + a week.
When i come home i like to surf the web with no fuss and play games - thats it and i use Win98 for that cause its easy - no pissing around - i use IE5 cause it does everything i want with minimal fuss - i have broadband so i dont want to mess around with plug ins although i use Opera for some things and Lynx as well (PC and LINUX)
I dont need to be written off as some sort of MS marketing drone by the likes of you - i respect your opinion and your right to express it - thats what
OHH and PS i work for a Global Real Estate management and Banking services firm - not MS (although i wil say i wouldnt say no to a job with them, nor with Red Hat for that matter)
(Note im not trolling or flaming just defending my honor here and if you want to post a comment that is intelligent feel free, i will reply - if you want to flame me - well hell i can't stop you acting like a child can i ?)