"What kind of reaction can I expect from my cat and plant if I only feed them dehydrated water?"
Response: Dead cat. Dead plant. If you only consume one type of product and nothing else, you will ruin your body. You must have a well balanced diet; even with dehydrated water.
"On a Windows box, there would have been no peer review."
I doubt that even Microsoft lets security fixes be released without having other Microsoft programmers review all the relevant code. A more accurate comment might be:
"On a Windows box, there would have been no public peer review."
The backup and restore people don't seem to have been hurt by the fact that Microsoft's bundled a backup program in Windows NT since NT 3.1, they seem to be doing just fine.
Executive Software also seems to be doing fine selling defrag utilities, even though Microsoft includes a defrag utility in NT too.
If M$ continues in it's trend of bundled software, the AV software they bundle will be just good enough leaving lots of room for 3rd party utilities.
I suspect that the bottom line for this is that they want to be able to put virus updates on WindowsUpdate and get people to download them to their machines automatically - which doesn't necessarily happen with Symantec and McAfee.
Actually it was Ballmer explaining why M$ didn't license one of it's protocols - the protocol was so broken that documenting the protocol would immediately open the machine to exploitation.
But the question here is: What would/. do if Microsoft were to create an operating system and call it Winux. Say it's a version of Windows that has the ability to run Linux programs out-of-the-box.
And then the OSF (or Linus, or Red Hat) sued Microsoft to defend their highly valuable brand name of "Linux".
Would/. support the OSF side (or Linus or Red Hat), or would they support Microsoft?
That's because embedded is designed to run on a single box, running a single application. Think Point Of Sale terminal, or DVD player. It's tested in this ONE configuration, by the OEM.
The retail version has to run on everyones computer, and has to do everything else that Windows does, EXCEPT for the stuff that was left out.
M$ doesn't have the money or time to test all the possible combinations and to verify all the possible things that doesn't work. For Embedded, it's the OEM's money and the OEM's time.
This one doesn't require that you run as root. All it does is to walk through the files on your machine looking for address books and opens them.
Well, last I heard, on most Linux systems, people have the rights to read their address books, right? And they have the rights to send email, right? And they have the rights to run executable programs, right? So this worm would be JUST as bad on a Linux system.
Privilege separation does NOT help this problem.
The ONLY thing that helps this problem is an email client (like M$ Outlook) that prohibits you from even saving executable attachments to disk.
Oh, that and hitting users upside the head with a REALLY BIG clue stick.
First off, the WMA specification is available on Micro$oft's web site - M$ allows you to license it for free: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/crea te/licensing.aspx
I don't think they can make many changes to it without breaking the world.
W.r.t. Microsoft breaking Quicktime. If QT's anything like Real, every time that Real complained that Microsoft mysteriosly disabled Real, it turned out that it was because Real ignored the documentation (On at least one occasion that Rob Glaser mentioned in testimony to Congress, it turned out that Real was using an undocumented netscape plugin mechanism instead of using the documented mechanism, and Real misused the mechanism - they didn't follow Netscapes rules for the use of the registry key).
I can't speak to whether M$ broke QT purposely, but EVERY time Real whined about M$ breaking them it turned out that they had screwed up themselves.
There are at least 3 different tablet PC form factors on the market today, there's no reason to believe that this device is any different.
There may be some with larger screens and some with smaller screens - imagine one the size of a cell phone for instance - not big enough for watching videos but just fine for showing off pictures of the kids and listening for music.
That's likely to be the case. But many of Marshall Brain's updates and patches would have been covered in the same manner. This entire article is about the downtime required for a Windows PC - downtime from apps, from motherboard firmware updates, from printer driver updates, AND from windows. So the original topic (11 hours of downtime in the month of december) ALSO conflates patches from various sources.
He doesn't pick every patch, but he complains about the NUMBER of patches that his auto-alerter complains about.
Many of the products he's got installed are open source binary releases with bug-fix-of-the-week changes (most of which are on the order of iBelch v5.4.1), many of them are from commercial products.
My father has 5 Mac's in his house, and he was complaining over Christmas about the number of updates and patches he recieves for them - he gets somewhere around 3-4 per day, about half of them requiring a reboot.
Now he uses some kind of update alerter to tell him whenever the 5 bazillion random apps he has installed on the machines has an update so that partly explains it, but don't believe that just because it's a Mac that your experience would be any different.
3Com's 3+Open was based on Microsoft's Lan Manager product. 3Com's contribution to 3+Open was the network transport and drivers for a bunch of network cards. The later enhanced it to add an x.400 mail transport and a bunch of other stuff.
The "net xxx" commands all come from Lan Manager originally, NOT from 3Com.
1) Antitrust people in Europe are forcing Microsoft to license this stuff.
2) Embedded device manufacturers want LFN's on their cameras and in order to prevent the embedded manufacturers invent their own, M$ is simply licensing the long file name extensions to FAT to prevent them from doing this.
The issue in these patents (AFAICT) is the method of encoding the long file names in the filesytem while keeping compatibility with the on-disk format for directories (to allow applications that directly read the filesytem to continue to work).
IMHO this is utterly non trivial.
If they were patenting the extension of FAT12 to FAT16 or FAT16 to FAT32 that would be a trivial extension but that's not what M$ is doing in this case.
Although WHY on earth they're doing it is beyond me - it's not like they need to squeeze even MORE money out of the computer industry.
NAS works because you build a dedicated network between the NAS device and the server. And NAS doesn't use the CIFS protocol afaik, instead it uses some variant of iSCSI, and thus behaves like a local disk even though there's a network between the host and the disk.
But the discussion here was to offload the storage to a random Linux box on the lan using CIFS and Samba for the protocol and server, and using the native NT networking client on the Oracle box.
The CIFS locking mechanism is 100% as robust as the local locking mechanism, IF it's running on a system that supports a locking mechanism that's as robust as NT's.
However, historically, locks on *nix have been advisory, not manditory, I don't know if Samba has a way of preventing one user at the console from modifying the contents of a locked region on a file but if they don't that opens the door for database integrity problems.
Running databases (and both Oracle and Exchange are database applications) on a network mapped drive is a horrendously bad idea.
Database apps rely heavily on the fact that when a write completes locally the data that was written has been committed to the destination disk. If this part of the contract is not upheld, then database corruption can occur. I can't speak for Samba 3.0 (or NT server) but there are downlevel CIFS servers that can't guarantee that a write doesn't complete until after the data has been physically secured to disk.
In addition, network links are notoriously unstable. Transient network events occur that can cause connections to disconnect spontaneously (it doesn't happen often, but it DOES happen). When errors occur on a local file, the file write (or more likely read) fails, and the app can deal with it. When the same errors occur over a network, the file handle used for the database is invalidated.
The reason for this is that since the connection is dropped, the file is closed on the server, and all locks on the file are invalidated).
Once the file is closed on the server there's nothing that prevents another application from coming in and altering the contents of the file and thus making the contents of the file on disk be inconsistant with the contents of the database from Oracle's point-of-view. And as a result, database corruption occurs.
There are mitigation techniques that can be used in the network filesystem on the client side to attempt to auto-reopen the file, but to my knowledge the windows client doesn't do them (because the potential for getting it wrong outweighs the benefits of auto-reopening the files).
Needless to say, neither Oracle or Exchange deals very well with their database files being summarily closed out from under them (they puke royally actually). Which means that a transient network event (the single router between the Exchange Server and the file server failing) will cause your email database to be lost.
Not a pretty picture. There's a REALLY good reason that both Oracle and Exchange server refuse to allow their files to be opened on networked drives. Believe it or not the guys that wrote the database apps really do know what they're doing.
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My favorite comment from the site FAQ:
"What kind of reaction can I expect from my cat and plant if I only feed them dehydrated water?"
Response: Dead cat. Dead plant. If you only consume one type of product and nothing else, you will ruin your body. You must have a well balanced diet; even with dehydrated water.
My wife's 5/6 grade class couldn't believe that it was a hoax when they went to http://www.buydehydratedwater.com so they ended up ordering some :)
It's sad what people will believe.
Umm.
"On a Windows box, there would have been no peer review."
I doubt that even Microsoft lets security fixes be released without having other Microsoft programmers review all the relevant code. A more accurate comment might be:
"On a Windows box, there would have been no public peer review."
Some dingdong installed the "coolswitch" powertoy on that machine thinking it would be neat.
It ain't out-of-the-box windows.
Microsoft doesn't pay royalties on products licensed inside Windows. Period.
They pay a one-time licensing fee, but that's it. There are no per-copy royalties paid - otherwise it would show up on Microsoft's 10q forms.
The backup and restore people don't seem to have been hurt by the fact that Microsoft's bundled a backup program in Windows NT since NT 3.1, they seem to be doing just fine.
Executive Software also seems to be doing fine selling defrag utilities, even though Microsoft includes a defrag utility in NT too.
If M$ continues in it's trend of bundled software, the AV software they bundle will be just good enough leaving lots of room for 3rd party utilities.
I suspect that the bottom line for this is that they want to be able to put virus updates on WindowsUpdate and get people to download them to their machines automatically - which doesn't necessarily happen with Symantec and McAfee.
Actually it was Ballmer explaining why M$ didn't license one of it's protocols - the protocol was so broken that documenting the protocol would immediately open the machine to exploitation.
But the question here is: What would /. do if Microsoft were to create an operating system and call it Winux. Say it's a version of Windows that has the ability to run Linux programs out-of-the-box.
/. support the OSF side (or Linus or Red Hat), or would they support Microsoft?
And then the OSF (or Linus, or Red Hat) sued Microsoft to defend their highly valuable brand name of "Linux".
Would
That's because embedded is designed to run on a single box, running a single application. Think Point Of Sale terminal, or DVD player. It's tested in this ONE configuration, by the OEM.
The retail version has to run on everyones computer, and has to do everything else that Windows does, EXCEPT for the stuff that was left out.
M$ doesn't have the money or time to test all the possible combinations and to verify all the possible things that doesn't work. For Embedded, it's the OEM's money and the OEM's time.
I shouldn't dignify thsi AC troll posting with a response but...
References please? Where has anyone said that Microsoft modified it's products to help the chinese government attack dissidents?
This one doesn't require that you run as root. All it does is to walk through the files on your machine looking for address books and opens them.
Well, last I heard, on most Linux systems, people have the rights to read their address books, right? And they have the rights to send email, right? And they have the rights to run executable programs, right? So this worm would be JUST as bad on a Linux system.
Privilege separation does NOT help this problem.
The ONLY thing that helps this problem is an email client (like M$ Outlook) that prohibits you from even saving executable attachments to disk.
Oh, that and hitting users upside the head with a REALLY BIG clue stick.
First off, the WMA specification is available on Micro$oft's web site - M$ allows you to license it for free: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/crea te/licensing.aspx
I don't think they can make many changes to it without breaking the world.
W.r.t. Microsoft breaking Quicktime. If QT's anything like Real, every time that Real complained that Microsoft mysteriosly disabled Real, it turned out that it was because Real ignored the documentation (On at least one occasion that Rob Glaser mentioned in testimony to Congress, it turned out that Real was using an undocumented netscape plugin mechanism instead of using the documented mechanism, and Real misused the mechanism - they didn't follow Netscapes rules for the use of the registry key).
I can't speak to whether M$ broke QT purposely, but EVERY time Real whined about M$ breaking them it turned out that they had screwed up themselves.
The picture's only one possible form factor.
There are at least 3 different tablet PC form factors on the market today, there's no reason to believe that this device is any different.
There may be some with larger screens and some with smaller screens - imagine one the size of a cell phone for instance - not big enough for watching videos but just fine for showing off pictures of the kids and listening for music.
That's likely to be the case. But many of Marshall Brain's updates and patches would have been covered in the same manner. This entire article is about the downtime required for a Windows PC - downtime from apps, from motherboard firmware updates, from printer driver updates, AND from windows. So the original topic (11 hours of downtime in the month of december) ALSO conflates patches from various sources.
He doesn't pick every patch, but he complains about the NUMBER of patches that his auto-alerter complains about.
Many of the products he's got installed are open source binary releases with bug-fix-of-the-week changes (most of which are on the order of iBelch v5.4.1), many of them are from commercial products.
My father has 5 Mac's in his house, and he was complaining over Christmas about the number of updates and patches he recieves for them - he gets somewhere around 3-4 per day, about half of them requiring a reboot.
Now he uses some kind of update alerter to tell him whenever the 5 bazillion random apps he has installed on the machines has an update so that partly explains it, but don't believe that just because it's a Mac that your experience would be any different.
3Com's 3+Open was based on Microsoft's Lan Manager product. 3Com's contribution to 3+Open was the network transport and drivers for a bunch of network cards. The later enhanced it to add an x.400 mail transport and a bunch of other stuff.
The "net xxx" commands all come from Lan Manager originally, NOT from 3Com.
CE==Consumer Electronics.
More likely is one of the two following:
1) Antitrust people in Europe are forcing Microsoft to license this stuff.
2) Embedded device manufacturers want LFN's on their cameras and in order to prevent the embedded manufacturers invent their own, M$ is simply licensing the long file name extensions to FAT to prevent them from doing this.
It was call 5, not call 3, and it's still in NT (under NTVDM).
.COM programs which are raw 16 bit images and are limited to 64K of code but...
Of course it only works for
A quarter up to a max of $250,000.
Which isn't likely to be that honorous for a serious CE manufacturer.
And likely it's only if they're supporting long filenames in the CE device.
The issue in these patents (AFAICT) is the method of encoding the long file names in the filesytem while keeping compatibility with the on-disk format for directories (to allow applications that directly read the filesytem to continue to work).
IMHO this is utterly non trivial.
If they were patenting the extension of FAT12 to FAT16 or FAT16 to FAT32 that would be a trivial extension but that's not what M$ is doing in this case.
Although WHY on earth they're doing it is beyond me - it's not like they need to squeeze even MORE money out of the computer industry.
NAS works because you build a dedicated network between the NAS device and the server. And NAS doesn't use the CIFS protocol afaik, instead it uses some variant of iSCSI, and thus behaves like a local disk even though there's a network between the host and the disk.
But the discussion here was to offload the storage to a random Linux box on the lan using CIFS and Samba for the protocol and server, and using the native NT networking client on the Oracle box.
The CIFS locking mechanism is 100% as robust as the local locking mechanism, IF it's running on a system that supports a locking mechanism that's as robust as NT's.
However, historically, locks on *nix have been advisory, not manditory, I don't know if Samba has a way of preventing one user at the console from modifying the contents of a locked region on a file but if they don't that opens the door for database integrity problems.
Running databases (and both Oracle and Exchange are database applications) on a network mapped drive is a horrendously bad idea.
Database apps rely heavily on the fact that when a write completes locally the data that was written has been committed to the destination disk. If this part of the contract is not upheld, then database corruption can occur. I can't speak for Samba 3.0 (or NT server) but there are downlevel CIFS servers that can't guarantee that a write doesn't complete until after the data has been physically secured to disk.
In addition, network links are notoriously unstable. Transient network events occur that can cause connections to disconnect spontaneously (it doesn't happen often, but it DOES happen). When errors occur on a local file, the file write (or more likely read) fails, and the app can deal with it. When the same errors occur over a network, the file handle used for the database is invalidated.
The reason for this is that since the connection is dropped, the file is closed on the server, and all locks on the file are invalidated).
Once the file is closed on the server there's nothing that prevents another application from coming in and altering the contents of the file and thus making the contents of the file on disk be inconsistant with the contents of the database from Oracle's point-of-view. And as a result, database corruption occurs.
There are mitigation techniques that can be used in the network filesystem on the client side to attempt to auto-reopen the file, but to my knowledge the windows client doesn't do them (because the potential for getting it wrong outweighs the benefits of auto-reopening the files).
Needless to say, neither Oracle or Exchange deals very well with their database files being summarily closed out from under them (they puke royally actually). Which means that a transient network event (the single router between the Exchange Server and the file server failing) will cause your email database to be lost.
Not a pretty picture. There's a REALLY good reason that both Oracle and Exchange server refuse to allow their files to be opened on networked drives. Believe it or not the guys that wrote the database apps really do know what they're doing.
How many remotely exploitable holes has the NT kernel had in it's lifetime (10 years or so)?
Don't compare apples and oranges.