"Windows doesn't ship with system-crashing spyware"
You forgot to add - YET.
Remember, Microsoft is buying Claria and has already modified its antispyware tool to downgrade Claria from "Quarantine" to "Ignore."
Also, one could say that the tons of Windows system software that insist on phoning home or listening for pointless services constitutes "spyware" in some sense.
"The drivers are run at kernel level for speed reason as user mode would give a major performance hit."
I can see that with the video drivers.
What about everything else?
Do I need my sound card to run at kernel speed?
The hard disk driver?
Even the NIC card?
I don't think so. The CPU is spending most of its time idle on most machines, so why do drivers for SLOW HARDWARE have to be running at kernel speed?
Because some designer thought it was a good idea back in the 286 days?
Modern OS's do not allow user space to control the hardware. Why allow drivers to take control of the system totally away from the OS?
The biggest annoyance I have with Windows (and even with Linux to a lesser degree) is how it can go wool-gathering for several minutes when some app is trying to do something with hardware that isn't responding? Even Task Manager isn't responsive.
On most mainframe OS, no matter what the hardware is doing (because it's being controlled by an external controller, mostly), the OS can be woke up with a couple keystrokes. This needs to be done on PCs. The point of a preemptive OS is that it can regain control of the system on its terms - which means it's responsive to the USER, not the hardware. Which keeps the USER in control.
Putting drivers outside the OS's control is just dumb design - let alone letting any moron at any hardware company write one and then install it at kernel level. That's just plain idiocy.
"It'd have to be impossible to modify executables."
So? Your point?
Unless you meant it'd have to be impossible to INSTALL NEW executables - in which case you're partly right.
I DON'T WANT to modify executables. I WANT them to run WITHOUT possibility of modification by a virus.
That's the whole point of so-called "trusted computing" - if you believe the proponents of that concept, anyway (I don't.)
And actually if the system can crash even when running software as the administrator, it's still flawed. The administrator should not be able to do anything that will CORRUPT the system - other than tell it to shutdown directly, of course - which is NOT corruption. (And not including the obvious braindead acts like deleting system software from the hard disk - or taking a hammer to the hard disk.)
'Saying "I like Windows because it's more secure and robust" isn't flamebait, no matter how untrue we all believe the comment to be.'
Depends on the context. If the original story is about Windows, it's appropriate, even if in response to one of my posts condemning that fucking POS. If the original story is about Linux, it may be less so. As long as it's presented as a sincere OPINION, it's one thing.
It also depends how many MORE untruths are uttered, such as "Linux can't be installed by anyone", "There is no hardware support for Linux", "Linux is unusable", etc., buttressed by references to "Linux fanboys" and the like - all for someone who hasn't used Linux at all or at least in the last five years.
Whereas my usual response to that is to call the poster an idiot and a Microsoft shill - which is a RESPONSE to flamebait (if not to a troll, which is dumb on my part), as well as being flamebait itself.
Other suspicious comments include those Microsoft shills who claim their Windows 98 has been up for three years with never a crash, no infections despite being on DSL 24-7 with no firewall or AV, runs like lightning on their 133MHz Pentium I with 32MB of RAM, yada, yada. (I exaggerate only slightly here.)
Or their company site has never been compromised, no server has ever had to be rebooted for a year, and all the MCSE sys admin does is eat pizza all day because he has nothing to do. Oh, and all this cost SO MUCH LESS than Linux's TCO because of that splendid Microsoft engineering.
Most of the pro-Linux posts of that nature I've seen tend to be a hair more believable - especially when they compare their servers directly to the Windows ones ALSO in their company.
As for moderation in general, I couldn't care less. I browse at +1 and read the stupid stuff to see how stupid it is and the smart stuff for what I might learn. Anyone new to/. could do the same.
It does waste a hell of a lot of my time, though. Especially posting random pointless comments like this one.
I've always felt that IT staff should be seconded to operations departments for direct support - they get to know the real needs of the departments because they WORK there daily and can design and implement systems that are more likely to be accepted by the end users because "they" built it.
At the same time, they all should be required to adhere to corporate interoperability standards set by a central IT group that looks at IT operations of the entire corporation as a whole.
Of course, humans being primate hierarchical empire builders, this obviously rational scheme will never work.
I see it every day at City College of San Francisco where my boss is the only guy supporting the users of the Student end of the database and ITS is blithely flailing away trying to keep up with annual installs of the huge college COTS software at the recommendation of consultants who are feathering their own nest.
Centralization of SOME things in IT makes sense - servers and standards may be one of them. For others, like development and support, it doesn't.
That's one of the reasons Linux will win on this: Microsoft and everybody else will be charging for Web services - and Linux won't(since everything comes WITH Linux!) Of course, services will be available on Linux as well and for a fee, but anyone not wanting to use them can opt for free stuff loaded right on their system.
Linux and open source always stands for choice, and I believe this will continue no matter which way the industry as a whole swings.
Eventually there will be balance between the Sun mantra - "The Network IS the computer" - (which I've never agreed with on simple grammatical grounds if nothing else) and the rich client (or multiple rich clients as PDAs get more powerful or more varied personal digital devices appear.)
Also, the alternative to bigger and bigger servers serving up services will be smaller and smaller and yet more powerful, easy to carry and embed, devices that may connect to those servers but can also do useful work independently.
I'm not worried about it going to far in any direction.
Of course, we abandoned it for exactly the same reasons we'll abandon it AGAIN in the future:
Because the PTB that ran the mainframe were incompetent assholes who couldn't support our computing needs properly from a centralized position.
And Microsoft is EXACTLY the worst ITS department anybody could have. And Sun and the UNIX vendors aren't far behind.
So, yes, most people will use thin clients and complain about network response time - just like every terminal user used to do on an overloaded mainframe.
The smart ones will run their own rich client PCs on the side.
It's not going to happen soon. The buildout to allow the Internet to have enough bandwidth to do EVERYTHING over the Net will take another ten years - maybe twenty. These idiots can't even make getting your email or accessing a Web site reliable yet - how the hell are they going to make mission-critical Web services reliable?
The main problem with the thin client solution has always been that if the server goes down, everybody goes dead. And the server ALWAYS goes down. This is unacceptable to any right-thinking CIO - and even more so to the people who are actually doing the work.
Of course, if you have proper system design, with failover and redundancy, this is less of an issue.
According to recent trade media reports, thin clients are now on the upswing simply because of Windows - no need to patch ten thousand thin clients with every new security hole.
Naturally, Linux is going to win this one, too, since you won't need to patch the thin client server (as often, that is - Linux isn't perfect) either...:-)
I know it all works on security IDs, not text names. Should have thought of that myself, but the tech had been doing swaps regularly, so it didn't occur to me.
Yesterday, I got on by re-adding the machine to the domain. Apparently, one of the college's consultants modified our AD setup so that you can no longer swap machines out, you have to delete them and re-add them.
This makes sense to me for exactly the reasons you cite - it would be too easy to swap in an insecure machine.
OTOH, what are the odds someone is going to attach a spoof machine to the wire (wireless - like on a ship - is another matter)? That's what physical security is for (of course, that isn't perfect in any office either). And again, if you have the domain admin password, which is not that hard to get using various exploits, you could simply add the new machine anyway - as I did. So I don't see requiring deleting and re-adding a machine much of a security enhancement - you're essentially just replacing one security ID with a new one - you still don't REALLY know who's on the other end...
Unless you use something stronger than the admin password the tech actually gave me...:-) He told me to shred it afterward - yeah, right...why would any self-respecting geek give up an admin password he's acquired? You never know when it might come in handy.
The next time I send a threatening letter to some government official, I'll be sure to use the printer I bought at CompUSA, which I paid for with a check bearing my name, address and phone number.
And also the printer paper I use will be purchased at Staples, and I'll be sure to request their spam by leaving my name, address and phone number attached to the order.
And, all my ink cartridges used will be purchased online from PrintPal.com, using my ATM/Visa card.
Oh, and I'll make sure my photo gets taken by the security cameras at the exact instant I buy the stuff.
When are cops going to realize that they are only capable of catching morons? Because they are morons.
Of course, they caught me after robbing a bank - but that was because I was a moron at the time...:-) To paraphrase the Hitler Youth member in "Our Man Flint": "I'm a much smarter person NOW!"
This product looks interesting - and seems more mature than the Levanta one.
Although, while the Web site goes into much more detail on it, they still don't tell you exactly how it works any more than the Levanta one does. Which is not surprising since it's a proprietary product.
Given a choice between the two, I'd probably be more interested in this one. And certainly not the Altiris one which requires Windows all through it.
My point was that the company isn't going to tell everybody every detail of proprietary technology ON THEIR FREAKIN' WEB SITE (or even in their marketing brochures.)
Some/. nerdboys have no clue how business works and it shows in clueless comments like the OP's.
They tell you all you need to know about their software on the Web site - it does THIS and THIS and (supposedly if you believe the case studies) it WORKS. Whether it does or not, and how much of a pain it is to actually get it to work, you have to talk to them to find that out. Every other Web site I've ever seen does exactly the same thing - unless the product is so simple they CAN tell you how it works in one page.
How do you tell somebody how an OS virtual provisioning system works? Exactly what they do. Anybody who can't figure out that it uses some sort of configuration rule knowledgebase, etc. shouldn't bother being interested in the system. You get the implementation and operating details when you are a serious customer prospect.
Granted, I prefer some of the other Web sites mentioned by posters - they go into much more detail than this one does - but they still don't tell you exactly how it works any more than I did by saying "configuration rule knowledgebase."
But appliances are big these days. The appliance is just a box they can feature on their Web site. The software is the important thing in this product. The rest of the site barely mentions the box.
They have several case studies and a white paper available for download (once you agree to be spammed by them). Apparently it's worked for some companies.
Still no technical details, but this is proprietary software, not OSS, so you aren't going to get any.
Altiris® Server Management Suite(TM) System Requirements
Altiris® Server Management Suite(TM) requires that you install and configure the Altiris Notification Server(TM).
Notification Server Minimum Requirements
* Processor--Pentium* lll 800 MHz or faster
* Memory--1 GB RAM
* Hard drive--20 GB LOOK HERE-> * Operating system--Windows* Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server SP2 or later LOOK HERE-> * Database--Microsoft* SQL Server 2000 SP3 restricted to less than 50 percent of available memory. Note: MSDE 2000 recommended for evaluation purposes only. LOOK HERE-> * Browser--Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later LOOK HERE-> * Package servers (remote distribution points)--Windows NT* or Windows 2000/XP/2003 and a large hard drive LOOK HERE-> * File system--NTFS LOOK HERE-> * Services--Microsoft Windows Internet Information Services (IIS) LOOK HERE-> * Services--Microsoft.NET Framework* 1.1
LOOK HERE->Supported Windows Platforms
* Windows NT Server 4.0
* Windows 2000 Server
* Windows Server 2003
Supported UNIX/Linux Platforms LOOK HERE->Note: Not all Server Management Suite features are supported on all platforms.
What part of "patented technology" didn't you understand?
They aren't going to tell you all the technical details of a proprietary product they're selling, obviously. This isn't an OSS play.
I just downloaded their documents (you have to register and give them an address and email that you WILL be spammed with - they say so.) They don't explain the details either.
Clearly the software product is essentially a virtualizing version control system for Linux systems - you can set up an OS image, make changes to it, roll back those changes, inventory everything, deploy it, etc. - all done in virtual. They even claim to be able to manage Linux systems that are already virtual on IBM mainframes.
If they can do what they say, I'd say the product will be very valuable for large Linux server farm operations. Whether it's any better than any other such product I wouldn't know since I'm not familiar with what's out there for large server farm management.
Slashdot Mirror
"Windows doesn't ship with system-crashing spyware"
You forgot to add - YET.
Remember, Microsoft is buying Claria and has already modified its antispyware tool to downgrade Claria from "Quarantine" to "Ignore."
Also, one could say that the tons of Windows system software that insist on phoning home or listening for pointless services constitutes "spyware" in some sense.
"The drivers are run at kernel level for speed reason as user mode would give a major performance hit."
I can see that with the video drivers.
What about everything else?
Do I need my sound card to run at kernel speed?
The hard disk driver?
Even the NIC card?
I don't think so. The CPU is spending most of its time idle on most machines, so why do drivers for SLOW HARDWARE have to be running at kernel speed?
Because some designer thought it was a good idea back in the 286 days?
Modern OS's do not allow user space to control the hardware. Why allow drivers to take control of the system totally away from the OS?
The biggest annoyance I have with Windows (and even with Linux to a lesser degree) is how it can go wool-gathering for several minutes when some app is trying to do something with hardware that isn't responding? Even Task Manager isn't responsive.
On most mainframe OS, no matter what the hardware is doing (because it's being controlled by an external controller, mostly), the OS can be woke up with a couple keystrokes. This needs to be done on PCs. The point of a preemptive OS is that it can regain control of the system on its terms - which means it's responsive to the USER, not the hardware. Which keeps the USER in control.
Putting drivers outside the OS's control is just dumb design - let alone letting any moron at any hardware company write one and then install it at kernel level. That's just plain idiocy.
"It'd have to be impossible to modify executables."
So? Your point?
Unless you meant it'd have to be impossible to INSTALL NEW executables - in which case you're partly right.
I DON'T WANT to modify executables. I WANT them to run WITHOUT possibility of modification by a virus.
That's the whole point of so-called "trusted computing" - if you believe the proponents of that concept, anyway (I don't.)
And actually if the system can crash even when running software as the administrator, it's still flawed. The administrator should not be able to do anything that will CORRUPT the system - other than tell it to shutdown directly, of course - which is NOT corruption. (And not including the obvious braindead acts like deleting system software from the hard disk - or taking a hammer to the hard disk.)
Uhm, last I looked, the problem was that Microsoft's system design ALLOWS and ENCOURAGES spyware.
Not to mention downgrading Claria to "IGNORE".
I'll grant the original complaint, however, that Windows doesn't crash these days AS OFTEN as it used to.
It's still a fucking POS in many other respects.
Mod: -3, Flamebait.
'Saying "I like Windows because it's more secure and robust" isn't flamebait, no matter how untrue we all believe the comment to be.'
/. could do the same.
Depends on the context. If the original story is about Windows, it's appropriate, even if in response to one of my posts condemning that fucking POS. If the original story is about Linux, it may be less so. As long as it's presented as a sincere OPINION, it's one thing.
It also depends how many MORE untruths are uttered, such as "Linux can't be installed by anyone", "There is no hardware support for Linux", "Linux is unusable", etc., buttressed by references to "Linux fanboys" and the like - all for someone who hasn't used Linux at all or at least in the last five years.
Whereas my usual response to that is to call the poster an idiot and a Microsoft shill - which is a RESPONSE to flamebait (if not to a troll, which is dumb on my part), as well as being flamebait itself.
Other suspicious comments include those Microsoft shills who claim their Windows 98 has been up for three years with never a crash, no infections despite being on DSL 24-7 with no firewall or AV, runs like lightning on their 133MHz Pentium I with 32MB of RAM, yada, yada. (I exaggerate only slightly here.)
Or their company site has never been compromised, no server has ever had to be rebooted for a year, and all the MCSE sys admin does is eat pizza all day because he has nothing to do. Oh, and all this cost SO MUCH LESS than Linux's TCO because of that splendid Microsoft engineering.
Most of the pro-Linux posts of that nature I've seen tend to be a hair more believable - especially when they compare their servers directly to the Windows ones ALSO in their company.
As for moderation in general, I couldn't care less. I browse at +1 and read the stupid stuff to see how stupid it is and the smart stuff for what I might learn. Anyone new to
It does waste a hell of a lot of my time, though. Especially posting random pointless comments like this one.
Supposedly - IF you run Task Manager from PowerPrompt which starts up a shell with System privilege.
Hard to find a downloadable copy of PowerPrompt though, you really have to search Google for it.
Great tool for trashing spyware that's protected by Windows itself.
They AREN'T 1337 - they know what they're doing.
Everything I've read by the "1337" has usually been out-of-date by about ten years and lame when it wasn't.
Which is why the book is safe to publish because the 1337 will never understand it.
for his identity to be stolen?
So he sold it on eBay.
New procedure:
1) Get born.
2) Grow up.
3) Get official documents proving^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hallowing you to exist.
4) Sell existence on eBay.
5) PROFIT!!!
You forgot Ariel Sharon - and he doesn't even live in D.C. - and the guys at AIPAC, a couple of whom may be looking at jail time for espionage.
Need to add George H.W. Bush, James Baker, their cronies at the Carlyle Group, and the Saudi royal family (including the bin Ladens), too.
As long as they can find their guns - and not drop them - they don't care.
Of course, they can't HIT anything with their guns, but that's another story.
I've always felt that IT staff should be seconded to operations departments for direct support - they get to know the real needs of the departments because they WORK there daily and can design and implement systems that are more likely to be accepted by the end users because "they" built it.
At the same time, they all should be required to adhere to corporate interoperability standards set by a central IT group that looks at IT operations of the entire corporation as a whole.
Of course, humans being primate hierarchical empire builders, this obviously rational scheme will never work.
I see it every day at City College of San Francisco where my boss is the only guy supporting the users of the Student end of the database and ITS is blithely flailing away trying to keep up with annual installs of the huge college COTS software at the recommendation of consultants who are feathering their own nest.
Centralization of SOME things in IT makes sense - servers and standards may be one of them. For others, like development and support, it doesn't.
That's one of the reasons Linux will win on this: Microsoft and everybody else will be charging for Web services - and Linux won't(since everything comes WITH Linux!) Of course, services will be available on Linux as well and for a fee, but anyone not wanting to use them can opt for free stuff loaded right on their system.
Linux and open source always stands for choice, and I believe this will continue no matter which way the industry as a whole swings.
Eventually there will be balance between the Sun mantra - "The Network IS the computer" - (which I've never agreed with on simple grammatical grounds if nothing else) and the rich client (or multiple rich clients as PDAs get more powerful or more varied personal digital devices appear.)
Also, the alternative to bigger and bigger servers serving up services will be smaller and smaller and yet more powerful, easy to carry and embed, devices that may connect to those servers but can also do useful work independently.
I'm not worried about it going to far in any direction.
'Nuff said.
Of course, we abandoned it for exactly the same reasons we'll abandon it AGAIN in the future:
Because the PTB that ran the mainframe were incompetent assholes who couldn't support our computing needs properly from a centralized position.
And Microsoft is EXACTLY the worst ITS department anybody could have. And Sun and the UNIX vendors aren't far behind.
So, yes, most people will use thin clients and complain about network response time - just like every terminal user used to do on an overloaded mainframe.
The smart ones will run their own rich client PCs on the side.
It's not going to happen soon. The buildout to allow the Internet to have enough bandwidth to do EVERYTHING over the Net will take another ten years - maybe twenty. These idiots can't even make getting your email or accessing a Web site reliable yet - how the hell are they going to make mission-critical Web services reliable?
I agree.
The main problem with the thin client solution has always been that if the server goes down, everybody goes dead. And the server ALWAYS goes down. This is unacceptable to any right-thinking CIO - and even more so to the people who are actually doing the work.
Of course, if you have proper system design, with failover and redundancy, this is less of an issue.
According to recent trade media reports, thin clients are now on the upswing simply because of Windows - no need to patch ten thousand thin clients with every new security hole.
Naturally, Linux is going to win this one, too, since you won't need to patch the thin client server (as often, that is - Linux isn't perfect) either...:-)
I know it all works on security IDs, not text names. Should have thought of that myself, but the tech had been doing swaps regularly, so it didn't occur to me.
Yesterday, I got on by re-adding the machine to the domain. Apparently, one of the college's consultants modified our AD setup so that you can no longer swap machines out, you have to delete them and re-add them.
This makes sense to me for exactly the reasons you cite - it would be too easy to swap in an insecure machine.
OTOH, what are the odds someone is going to attach a spoof machine to the wire (wireless - like on a ship - is another matter)? That's what physical security is for (of course, that isn't perfect in any office either). And again, if you have the domain admin password, which is not that hard to get using various exploits, you could simply add the new machine anyway - as I did. So I don't see requiring deleting and re-adding a machine much of a security enhancement - you're essentially just replacing one security ID with a new one - you still don't REALLY know who's on the other end...
Unless you use something stronger than the admin password the tech actually gave me...:-) He told me to shred it afterward - yeah, right...why would any self-respecting geek give up an admin password he's acquired? You never know when it might come in handy.
The next time I send a threatening letter to some government official, I'll be sure to use the printer I bought at CompUSA, which I paid for with a check bearing my name, address and phone number.
And also the printer paper I use will be purchased at Staples, and I'll be sure to request their spam by leaving my name, address and phone number attached to the order.
And, all my ink cartridges used will be purchased online from PrintPal.com, using my ATM/Visa card.
Oh, and I'll make sure my photo gets taken by the security cameras at the exact instant I buy the stuff.
When are cops going to realize that they are only capable of catching morons? Because they are morons.
Of course, they caught me after robbing a bank - but that was because I was a moron at the time...:-) To paraphrase the Hitler Youth member in "Our Man Flint": "I'm a much smarter person NOW!"
to superglue some foam?
What's wrong with this picture?
Give me a billion dollars - I'll invent a better shuttle in time for Christmas.
AND take out Saddam at the same time.
Oh, wait, that's already been done. Okay, well, Osama is still out there, right? I'll take him out.
Throw in a date with Andrea Corr and I'll add Bill Gates to the list.
Throw in a date with Angelina Jolie and I'll add every neoconservative in the country to the list.
Throw in another hundred million and I'll invent conceptual processing - however, no time frame on that one.
Yeah! That's what I'M talking about!
And somebody said nerd babes aren't hot! (Well, actually they said nerds aren't hot...never mind.)
This product looks interesting - and seems more mature than the Levanta one.
Although, while the Web site goes into much more detail on it, they still don't tell you exactly how it works any more than the Levanta one does. Which is not surprising since it's a proprietary product.
Given a choice between the two, I'd probably be more interested in this one. And certainly not the Altiris one which requires Windows all through it.
I know what a patent is and what it entails.
/. nerdboys have no clue how business works and it shows in clueless comments like the OP's.
My point was that the company isn't going to tell everybody every detail of proprietary technology ON THEIR FREAKIN' WEB SITE (or even in their marketing brochures.)
Some
They tell you all you need to know about their software on the Web site - it does THIS and THIS and (supposedly if you believe the case studies) it WORKS. Whether it does or not, and how much of a pain it is to actually get it to work, you have to talk to them to find that out. Every other Web site I've ever seen does exactly the same thing - unless the product is so simple they CAN tell you how it works in one page.
How do you tell somebody how an OS virtual provisioning system works? Exactly what they do. Anybody who can't figure out that it uses some sort of configuration rule knowledgebase, etc. shouldn't bother being interested in the system. You get the implementation and operating details when you are a serious customer prospect.
Granted, I prefer some of the other Web sites mentioned by posters - they go into much more detail than this one does - but they still don't tell you exactly how it works any more than I did by saying "configuration rule knowledgebase."
RTFWS.
They ARE selling the software separately as well.
But appliances are big these days. The appliance is just a box they can feature on their Web site. The software is the important thing in this product. The rest of the site barely mentions the box.
They have several case studies and a white paper available for download (once you agree to be spammed by them). Apparently it's worked for some companies.
Still no technical details, but this is proprietary software, not OSS, so you aren't going to get any.
Altiris® Server Management Suite(TM) System Requirements
.NET Framework* 1.1
Altiris® Server Management Suite(TM) requires that you install and configure the Altiris Notification Server(TM).
Notification Server Minimum Requirements
* Processor--Pentium* lll 800 MHz or faster
* Memory--1 GB RAM
* Hard drive--20 GB
LOOK HERE-> * Operating system--Windows* Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server SP2 or later
LOOK HERE-> * Database--Microsoft* SQL Server 2000 SP3 restricted to less than 50 percent of available memory. Note: MSDE 2000 recommended for evaluation purposes only.
LOOK HERE-> * Browser--Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later
LOOK HERE-> * Package servers (remote distribution points)--Windows NT* or Windows 2000/XP/2003 and a large hard drive
LOOK HERE-> * File system--NTFS
LOOK HERE-> * Services--Microsoft Windows Internet Information Services (IIS)
LOOK HERE-> * Services--Microsoft
LOOK HERE->Supported Windows Platforms
* Windows NT Server 4.0
* Windows 2000 Server
* Windows Server 2003
Supported UNIX/Linux Platforms
LOOK HERE->Note: Not all Server Management Suite features are supported on all platforms.
* AIX* 4.3,3, 5.1, 5.2
* HP-UX* 10.20, 11, 11i
* Red Hat* 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, Advanced Server 2.1
* Solaris* 7, 8, 9 (Sparc)
* SuSE* 8.0, 8.1, Enterprise Server 8
* UnitedLinux* 1.0
Right - I reaallly reaally want this to manage my Linux server farm...
What part of "patented technology" didn't you understand?
They aren't going to tell you all the technical details of a proprietary product they're selling, obviously. This isn't an OSS play.
I just downloaded their documents (you have to register and give them an address and email that you WILL be spammed with - they say so.) They don't explain the details either.
Clearly the software product is essentially a virtualizing version control system for Linux systems - you can set up an OS image, make changes to it, roll back those changes, inventory everything, deploy it, etc. - all done in virtual. They even claim to be able to manage Linux systems that are already virtual on IBM mainframes.
If they can do what they say, I'd say the product will be very valuable for large Linux server farm operations. Whether it's any better than any other such product I wouldn't know since I'm not familiar with what's out there for large server farm management.