would be one who would want to virtualize the home version. Anyone doing development may need to do this. There are many legitimate reason - ease of debugging is one. Ease of determining how someone 0wn3d a machine is another.
Here is what the story 'forgets' to mention. You can run it in a VM for development purposes. You just can't run it as a MAIN OS in a VM.
Make sense? MSDN subscribers have been running it in MS's Own VM software for over a year now, and YES it is ALLOWED.
People need to find better things to do on slow news days. How about another article on the OSX exploits, or how insecure Oracle is compared to MSSQL?
Watching MS over the years, they have had good moments, and bad moments, done good things and done things that make your skin crawl...
The sad part of this is the 'business' model that Ballmer and his crew use as an Ideal are at the heart of almost every failed and every skin crawling activity MS has done.
MS was a good company at various times after the past 30 years, but if you notice those fleeting moments, Ballmer and his 'ideals' were the recessive thought mechanism in the company at those times. The 'older' Gates ideals and people emulating him are a lot less likely to hae ever pulled a lot of the crap MS has done in the past 15 years.
This new Linux scare from Ballmer is just another mark in the 'oh crap he did not say that' box. I'm sure there are technologies in Linux that come from MS, even if you take distributions that read FAT32 drives, but on the same note, MS has also taken a lot from the *nix community and it would be so petty to drive the market into this type of war.
Ballmer's words remind me of Oracle's CEO (Ellison) a few years back, at every event or launch, instead of telling us how great their software was, he spent most of the time complaining about MS,and yet MS's products were slammin them in the market because they just worked better. If he or his people would have just spent more time making their products 'better' then could of actually been on stage showing us how much better they were, rather than only pitching how awful MS was.
Maybe ol' Steve is a nice guy, but he is just not helping MS. MS needs to put back in power 'idealists' that believe in 'consumers first' thought and not how they can squeeze the extra nickels out of their business models.
Even look at Vista, in a lot of ways it is a revolutionary OS if you look at the intelligence it implements and the architecture, yet marketing and the 'business' people don't get the genius from the development teams, and will have trouble selling it.
This is evident with the marketing and business people creating five freaking versions of Vista for consumers. It creates more confusion and is less profitable and could hurt the 'standard windows' base because of the differences. It would have been better for MS to have just added $20 to the cost and do only one version. In fact the Vista release like XP is in contradiction to the 'design' ideals of the NT group in having a shared code base to 'reduce confusion'. (Of course the code base is still shared, but the confusion is artificially added by the business and marketing people.)
DLT is one of the two-dozen useless resource-hogging services I disable
You are saving yourself 1 process and 12K so that your shortcuts don't stay updated. Brilliant...
Just because something is implemented as a service, does not mean it is resource intensive. If people understood the NT kernel architecture a bit more, they would also accept why things like the DLT features are ran as a service and not jammed into the kernel for FS tracking as some OSes would do to get the same functionality.
Just like you can't depend on any COM or RPC features beyond the most basic when programming for Windows, as your client will have diabled whatever service you needed
Again, if people are dumb enough to turn off key features of the OS, they probably can't be helped, even if they are happy they are freeing another 32K of RAM. You write your software and if the service is off, you tell the user they are a moron and to turn it back on. It is pretty simple actually.
Ok, I know that that when the term 'service' gets thrown around, especially in the world of Windows it sounds like a lot more than probably what people realize.
So it is true it is a service as it is implemented on Windows, but at 12K, I really don't think the word bloated would apply.
As for the user not wanting to take the shortcut/alias with them, this is a usability concept that is very subjective. I have a USB device that I have tons of shortcuts to data and folders located on servers both in house and across the world. (Both native FS shortcuts and NS shortcuts.) In my world, the Apple logic is backwards, but I am a bit more 'network' connected than most people, so I don't have to worry about the links being orphaned pretty much no matter where I am, even my car.
what I meant was that you can move or rename the targets they point to without breaking the link.
Not to be an ass, but even freaking Shortcuts in Windows (from Win2k and newer) don't break either, even if the shortcut points to a volume half way around the globe.
Look up NTFS's DLT features...
As for the whole Vista not supporting Symlinks, people really need to do a bit of homework here. Vista supports, three main types of reference mechanisms from Symlinks to the old Shortcuts. What people are talking about is Vista's implementation of Symlinks can fail if the NTFS volume is accessed from an older version of Windows.
If anyone here actually even looked at a freaking Vista install, they would see MS has even used Symlinks in the default installation even - \Documents and Settings is a link to \Users - etc...
I get tired of this, if Windows doesn't do this trick or that trick it isn't worthy... Well lets see OSX or Linux handle multiple OS subsystems on a client/server kernel - then I'll be impressed and consider them 'worthy'. (Geesh)
I could say really critical things about the Linux kernel, the BSD kernel, or even question some of the 'accepted' OSS concepts people hold quite dear.
Yet the only time my posts get modded down is if I say anything that is non-supportive of Apple.
Keep modding the post down without one counter fact or argument, you are only proving my point about the fanatic mindset...
But maybe I am the strange one, I personally like to stick to facts, technology, and strange things like science.
Re:This is getting old...
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
I'm sorry the Apple apologists jumped on your post.
If anyone had facts to refute anything I said, they would have responded to my post. Apple controls not only their systems, but the marketing and mindset of their users to a cult level.
Sadly, old time techs and *nix users no longer fight back at Apple, and so many have been fooled into the Unix core of OSX as meaning something beyond Apple taking advantage of the word of a lot of good people in the OSS and *nix movement.
Take care and don't let the trolling make a bad day for you.
Incorrect facts. Bad assumptions. Pure 'idealistic' bias.
The licensing of the 'discounted' OEM copies of Windows was something that the monopoly suit again MS changed dramatically.
However with that said, companies were providing 'exclusive' discount deals since IBM was first dealing with software back in the 70s, and most companies STILL continue to so to this day. Go ask an OEM why they only offer WordPerfect as their Office Suite, it is because they get a discount from Corel to do so. PERIOD.
I don't see any articles telling the world why PCs suck because some manufacturers only offer Corel WordPerfect and that this is why Mac are superior because they can buy MS Office and aren't forced to chose from retailer to retailer. (Quite Insane...)
The sad part is, Apple FULLY controls the hardware as shipped in addition to OSX, yet when it comes to reliability it doesn't even best Linux, BSD, or Windows where OEMs are dealing with 1000x the different components and configurations.
This is where people should be going, wow, why can't Apple get the reliability status of even freaking crappy Windows that has to install on an infinite amount of hardware and configurations? This is the real story.
As for the MS licenses being the 'problem' with PCs, last I checked most manufactures easily will sell a computer without and OS, and some even offer *nix alternatives - yes even Dell.
However it isn't the MS licensing that 'forces' manufacturers to 'bundle' Windows, it is the simple cost equation that when you ship a COMPUTER without an OS, you have no baseline to support the Hardware. So for 'most' consumers it is easier to ship an OS that provides a baseline for support. If all PC OEMs provided tons of distributions or OS choices it would be a support nightmare for them and their support cost would MORE than override the cost of the MS Windows License that they can use to baseline the system and provide support to their users.
When Apple starts selling their hardware with 5 Linux distributions, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and even offers Windows as a choice in addition to OSX, then this will be a story.
Until then, the story avoids the facts and writes out of pure 'idealistic' views that are self-serving at best.
After reading the article, apparently the only thing wrong with the PC market is that people are not bright enough to bow down to Apple and admit how perfect and wonderful they are and everything they do is. Basically calling all non-OSX desktop users idiots.
And even though there are a lot of idiots using computers, this is the wrong crowd to make that claim to. I think the majority of the *nix crowd at SlashDot should be more than a little outraged at this undertone and presumption.
The only thing truly wrong with the PC market is ignorance, and this article is a good demonstration of how ample it apparently is.
This might be slightly unrelated, buy my father has a Windows 98 machine that he runs some basic software on, and it suddenly became worthless when Microsoft dropped support for it early. As a result, he can't find any anti-virus companies that still support it, so he's cut it off from the web for fear of it being rendered useless by viruses. If Microsoft were to drop XP support early (and you can't suggest it's an impossibility), and you had to reformat, Microsoft might be able to force an upgrade by not supporting an activation. Buying a corporate version would insure against that. While I don't think the grandparent post articulated their point very well, I don't think they're the troll you're making them out to be.
My advice for the great grandparent: Unless everything has to be squeaky clean, use Linux. As long as a piece of media doesn't have to phone home to get encryption keys, the DRM will be broken and you'll have greater freedom using your device on Linux than you would with XP or Vista.
So do you install a 1998 version of Linux for your father in this instance?
There is no reason anyone should be 'happy' with Win98, and no reason MS should continue to support it, especially when you consider it is a complete different architecture and fundamentally any retroactive patches for it have to be built around the DOS/Win9x model instead of NT. You don't see Apple offering support for System 8 or 9 do you? Apple doesn't even fully support early versions of OSX, and they are les than 5 years old.
So what happens when MS stops supporting WindowsXP? (Which will be several years from now, considering SP3 isn't even on the table until a late 2007 or 2008 release). At that point, any computer still running XP, even the 200mhz system like at my grandparents house that is 10 years old, I could probably hack up the 100-200 bucks to upgrade their mainboard and Video or even buy a new bare bones system from Dell or Compaq for 300 bucks at Walmart and easily run Vista on it, and even get a copy of Vista with the computer purchase. This is not a lot of money, computers are not the 1000-3000 investment they were 10-15 years ago, even for one that meets the 'top end' Vista specifications.
How can anyone expect a computer to be a life long appliance? Even a VCR dies after 10 years usually, and most people then go out and buy their first DVD player. It is how technology works, and computers are NO different.
As for you comment about Linux is DRM free. This isn't 100% accurate nor even a good way to view Linux. In one way there is no active DRM in most distributions, but you also can't take advantage of any DRM content it lacks support for. Go to cinemanow.com and rent a movie on Linux without having any DRM restriction in place. It just won't happen. (Just like if you don't have the digital box from your cable company you are not going to get Video on Demand... A better word for DRM would be 'controlled access content')
I am in no way a fan of DRM, but there are business models that just WOULD NOT exist if DRM didn't offer content providers protection. The only DRM service I have been a fan of is audible.com, and before them, it was impossible to just download the latest audio book. Their DRM also works well, but has traveled with me over the years not restricting my access to my audio book library. If I only used Linux, I would not even have the chance of using them without also having a 'licensed' Windows VM running somewhere.
So here is the problem if OSS completely rejects all DRM, they will once again be left out of any new content that is based on it. This is really bad thinking. Linux should take the MS approach and 'allow' DRM if the companies won't allow their content to be distributed no matter what without it, while also trying to avoid DRM at all costs. Windows doesn't DRM anything nor does MS, as they actually help users run from it, but if a company won't let their audio book play or movie play without it, the DRM hooks are there so the user can '
If Vista didnt play HD content at all and publicly denounced the MPAA/RIAA they would easily be able to win the argument on the side of consumer friendliness. But you see its all about protecting your content
More likely, if Vista didn't put the ability to play HD DRM content in, the monopoly police (this time being shoved by the MPAA/RIAA and others) would find a way to demonstrate that MS is using its Desktop presence to circumvent their business models and probably get MS into even more hot water.
This is one area that works against consumers, as the control of what MS does with its OSes has been put into political hands, and it just isn't about what they do, but 'who' they do it to.
If you can write a game to run under Windows w/ DirectX 10 - you can provide a compatibility layer for it through Wine - the only question will be the performance.
This is not what I am saying. One reason DirectX10 is tied to Vista is the WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model).
Unlike any other Video driver technology, and past the DirectX10 features, DirectX10 not only uses but also relies on the WDDM in Vista that introduces new features that DirectX10 EXPECTS to be there. One of them is the WDDM's ability to share system RAM with the GPU and also to multi-task the GPU. The sharing of the RAM is the most important as Vista's WDDM, even with older DirectX 9-7 games, prioritize and place things normally only put in the GPU RAM into System RAM if they are not speed related items, yet the game sees them as part of the GPU RAM.
This is actually a very complex process, and DirectX 10 assumes and works with the WDDM, in other words DirectX10 'knows' that this is happening and is further optimized and designed to work with the WDDM based on this. Games designed around DirectX10 should also expect this to be happening and be built to tell the WDDM what to load into what RAM, etc.
So it is a lot more than just emulating the DirectX features or APIs when you are dealing with DirectX10.
Why didn't the entertainment empires force this DRM crap on OSX in the same way, they should be small fry compared to Microsoft.
With regard to Music, OSX already has this. It is called iTunes and the Apple Music Store. OSX is very heavy into DRM, the only real difference here is Apple IMPOSES the DRM on THEMSELVES and they ONLY ALLOW THEMSELVES to sell the songs to their customers. (Which in my book is far and above just DRM, it is borderline consumer lockin that is fraud - since they DRM the OS, the software, the hardware they sell (iPod) and even the music DRM format themselves are Apple creations.)
If OSX wants to play HD movies, they will have to have the same DRM in hardware than Vista does, or they will NOT be able to play HD movies that are DRM protected. PERIOD. The difference here? OSX doesn't YET support HD Movies, so with the next Apple tax of $129 upgrade, you will get HD capabilities in OSX and also all the DRM fun that comes with it.
See here is where the FUD and articles like this are harmful.
If you buy music from an online store, and I don't care if you are using OSX, WindowsXP, or Vista, it is going to have DRM.
If you are using CDs or songs you created, this means nothing to you, as Vista nor OSX nor WindowsXP give a crap.
So here is some advice, if you are into personal mixing, don't buy single tracks online, they are all going to be DRMed... However, if you do, you do realize you can burn them to an Audio CD, and then re-rip them back to the computer, and they will be DRM free? *wink
Yes. In fact, it might be worth paying for the $500 entry into the corporate version, just so they can't cut you off of their activation scheme, forcing you to upgrade, if you ever need to reformat your drive. It's pretty much that bad.
Um, pushing some FUD yourself?
Vista's WGA and DRM are virtually no more intrusive than WindowsXP, and even with the EULA crap, MS has revised the EULA to be as forgiving or even more forgiving than WindowsXP.
Vista is not going to lock you out. Even with WindowsXP, we had customers that had activated a single copy over 20 times on various hardware (illegally), and MS would still issue them a new activation when they called and never raised an eye.
All the stories of MS forcing Windows to quit working is false. Even on people that had very noticeably cracked or hacked corporate versions of XP, all WGA did was annoy the hell out of them with pop ups telling them the computer wasn't legal. Vista will go one step further and only allow a Safe mode.
However if you are buying a computer with an OEM or Retail Vista copy license, you are MS's new best friend and they would rather cut off their nose than to even accidentally screw with you. The absolute worst thing that could happen is you wouldn't be able to activate it online if you do reinstall it several times, and then you just end up with the voice automation system or even a person, and they will give you a new activation.
Now if you are running a known hacked version, sure they will put Vista into safe mode and make you buy a copy or contact them, and they don't even prosecute people, they just ask you buy it, or report who sold you the hacked copy. (And if you do the later, they give you Vista for free even in case you really did get ripped off.)
Trust me on this...
So can we leave the FUD alone for awhile, this is really annoying.
I hope you are right; however, I have a bit of concern for this happening. DirectX 10 not only opens up the paradox of the pixel/vertex shader pipelines, but is also draws on a new device driver model that pushes GPUs to multi-task and share GPU RAM seamlessly with the System RAM.
If DirectX 10 wasn't tied to the WDDM, there would be a better shot, however for now I think the best we can expect for quite some time is DirectX9. However, give open source a few years to catch up to the multi-tasking GPU driver models, and then it might be possible.
So here we are again, and again the same ignorance and FUD is flying...
Out of all the DRM in Vista, nothing is required, nor even used by MS themselves with the exception of the WGA.
So rant on about the WGA, as I am not a fan of it either.
The rest of the stuff is known or existed in Windows for over 6 years and also exists in OSX.
1.) Music DRM - Already exists in older versions of Windows, it is only used if the online store requires it to be used. Apple iTunes is also DRM, but unlike MS, MS doesn't use the DRM technology in their OS to force you to buy the music from MS as Apple does. If people are POed at DRM, why does Apple get a free pass, when they not only implement the DRM technology but are also the ones requiring it for their own profit in the music industry?
2) HD DRM - Again this is something that has been known for a long time, and if the content provider turns on DRM, I don't care what OS you are using, you will either be subjected to DRM, low quality Video, or not able to play it at all. Vista at least allows compliant HD systems the ability to play this crap, just as the HD players already on the market ALSO HAVE IMPLEMENTED! So we can complain about MS, but they did nothing more than make it so Vista can play HD DRM content, they did NOT restrict anything whatsoever. The finger needs to be pointed at any content providers that use DRM. The only way DRM HD content is going to play on any OS other than Vista is in a low quality analog mode, period. (Unless there is a quite an elaborate hack on the horizon, that by passes several Hardware layers of encryption.) Also, since Intel is the author of the HD DRM crap, should we be angry at them along with the content providers? To follow logic, to be mad at MS for letting Vista play DRM HD Content, then we also should be mad at Sony and Toshiba that made HD and Blu HDDVD players which ALSO SHIP with DRM locking mechanisms, as ALL CONSUMERS players have this crap Intel stuff installed.
3) TPC - Well, everyone though MS was using the (again Intel) TPC for applications, content and 100s of other FUD stories... As Vista ships, the ONLY place TPC is used, is for a BitLocker Drive, and it is only used to store the drive's encryption. However, TPC isn't even required for bitlocker, as long as your computer can boot to a USB drive, MS can store the encryption key needed on the USB Dongle and not need TPC even for bitlocker whatsoever. So instead of TPC being used to lock people out of applications or anything else as the rumor mills were wanting people to believe, Vista only uses it to store encryption information for a volume level encryption technology.
4) WGA - Yep it sucks that MS is using this crap. I know why they are doing it, but I don't fully agree. I understand the mass OEM level copying of the late 90s that prompted the first activation generation with WindowsXP, and sure it hurt both consumers and MS. However by Microsoft using this system, it makes users feel like MS is trying to control them, when it is more the duplication pirate companies out there that this gives the axe to. Also if the OEM or consumers are legit, this doesn't hurt them, especially as MS has backed down on all the EULA crap that had surfaced last month. If you own a real copy you can pretty much do what you want with it.
I won't defend WGA though, MS should know better that the pirates will still get past whatever they need to, and this only annoys the end users, even though I know good people at MS that think they are protecting users with the WGA... Even if they are misguided.
So with another round of the big Vista DRM Scare, the only DRM MS is using is the WGA, which is also in WindowsXP. The rest of the DRM in Vista has always been there, exists in other Oses like OSX and is up to the content providers to screw over customers with or not, MS is nothing more than the company that makes the player to use the Toshiba/Sony analogy...
Well, Microsoft made Vista, and they made Zune, so why should you have to resort to hacks to get it working? Grandma won't know how to run an application in "Windows XP compatibility mode". Think of the poor users; not everyone is a geek.
Let's see - consider 99% of anyone running Vista is still running RC2... Vista RTM won't even be in the hands of developers of MSDN users until Friday... The Public won't have access to it until December at the earliest (CompUSA deal) The vast majority of PC and public will not have Vista until Jan 30th, 2007.
So considering the driver changes that are planned by almost EVERY company in the world between now and January, this is not very surprising...
This also goes to prove that MS divisions do not get 'inside' information or work so closely together as the FUD peeps would like everyone to believe. The Hardware divisions at MS get the same level and timing of access to the OSes as ANY OTHER hardware vendor.
So they may not be Apple where everything can be propritary and for Apple's eyes only and where they have no hardware companies but themselves to work with, but again, isn't that a good thing and reason why Apple was hated for years?
If main benefit of a Windows Server is its ability to run Apache, then why pay the cost of a Windows license at all? In order to sell Windows, Microsoft has to offer more than its lower priced competitors. If the best argument Microsoft can put forward is, "It's runs everything Linux can, but its more expensive!", then I can't see it encouraging many people to choose Windows over a less expensive open source OS.
This isn't always true... You are missing a couple things here. You can buy the Web version of Windows 2003 server cheaper than a supported Linux distrobution.
Windows also does have advantages, not only could you run both Apache and IIS and offer ASP and Apache if you need it for a particular feature. The reverse is not true.
You also again are discounting the ease of use for a Windows Server installation, which is a big corporate selling point. Budget level IT staff can maintain a Windows installations much easier than most *nix solutions.
As for Microsoft not holding a 'majority' market share, it is a valid argument, but it is more complex than what you present. Cost is one consideration, as there are a lot of mom and pop sites that are using free non-supported *nix distributions. But if you look at the mainstream buisness outside of the tech industry, like the fortune 500, Microsoft is in the majority.
Also as most people understand, there are times that a full MS server is just not needed, especially in the small scale markets. I wouldn't recommend a client buy $1500 of MS server software if they are just doing a web site and have no plans for anyting but running PHPNuke and PHPbb. This would be crazy, and would be screwing my clients. There are the borderline clients, that could go either way with MS Web Server and a free non-supported *nix solution, there never is a clear choice for everyone of what is the best solution.
In most cases if the company has the resources or are just starting development for a Web solution, they would be crazy to not consider a Windows Server, just for the development abilities available alone. But again, this is not the mom and pop operations, nor would it apply to everyone.
I believe in the free market and the open source world, don't for a second think I don't. But to just easily dismiss Windows with 'mythical' claims of its shortcomings is nonesense and does nothing to help anyone, esepcailly if your 'ideals' prevent you from giving your clients/users the best advice or solutions possible, even if it means using MS Server products.
I gave up using windows 98 in 2003, you say the NT architecture is better? I'm not going to spend £180 finding out if that is so,
I wouldn't expect you to just jump to a new OS based on what someone in a forum says.
However a lot of people in here make a LOT of comments about Windows, when they have little experience with a modern version of Windows and have little to any technical understanding of the Windows architecture.
So from this a lot of incorrect assumptions are propagated about Windows that are 10 year old complaints that haven't existed in Windows for years and years.
If anyone wants to be credible in the IT world, there are many ways to keep tabs on all OSes... Even just reading the wikipedia articles on Windows,BSD,OSX,Linux are a great start to understanding that that Win98 is a far cry from WinXP, just like OSX is a far cry from System 9.
Another method to keep up to date on OSes, is to take advantage of trial versions and just keep them in a VM or a separate install that you can periodically wipe without having to pay MS a dime. (OSX is a bit harder, although projects like PearPC and others make even using OSX a non-Apple exclusive thing for low budget IT people.
As I said, I wouldn't expect you to abandon an OS that you love. That would be very wrong. However for people to make 'catty' claims that Linux is far superior and can do more than other OSes, they should at least know a bit more about the other OSes and just not 'assume' the other OSes haven't evolved since they stopped using them.
OSX and Windows2K/XP/Vista are all very good examples of this. You can't paint a Win98 brush on them, when the entire architecture is different, just like the OSX architecture is completely different than the System 9 architecture.
If you are an IT professional, you would be doing yourself a dis-service by not knowing more about the other OSes. And if you are a developer in the Open Source world, if you don't pay attention to what Apple and Microsoft are doing, you are missing out on a lot of good ideas that they companies have accomplished. People that stopped looking at their work, are assuming it is all crap because Win98 or System 9 sucked, and by doing this, they are missing the opportunity to take ideas these companies have developed or shifts in computing and using this concepts in the Open Source world.
Take care, and don't give up your OS, but if you are in the business, take time to at least read up on or do a free trial install of the OSes so you understand the good and the bad. It will make your work/experience on your favorite OS better in the long run, truly.
I put my/home,/media and/games directories on a separate partition.
Last I knew, on windows, there is no easy way to keep user configs and programs on partitions separate from the OS.
I just wanted to point out something that is also missed by this. This is very 'old school' in terms of thinking. Assuming that application/OS/Data have to be abstracted to separate volumes/partitions.
Window will do what you want, but that is not the point I want to make.
Separating out OS/Applications/Data is not a modern concept, even though there are specific circumstances where one might want to do this. However, it is the exception, or should be, not the rule.
When you get down to a modern OS FS, and I will NTFS for an example here as it meets the features of pretty much all the *nix solutions. If you have a physical HD and are making separate partiions, to abstract the Data/Applications/OS, in a way you are only fooling yourself. Marking a HD with multiple partitions for a 'single' OS install, is truly not any different than using a good folder structure. You can even internally map the folder so UNC or drive letters if that is your goal.
Folder structures are the modern concept of what we did 15 years old with multiple HD partitions. Folders can be set to isolate from the other areas via security, as well as functionality.
The multi-partion concepts, even though they are still used quite a bit in the *nix world, are only a mechanism that either fools the user or the OS. When you get down to it, there is very little difference between a root folder and partition.
To address the migration or data/application movement that you describe is something that is hard on Windows is no longer the case, for quite a while, and with the new Vista tools, it is a thing of the past. Take a look at the Applicaiton migration toolkit, or even the Vista Transfer tools. They can take not only the user data, but even application used by the user and move them to various OS installations quite easily. And it does all of this by just using folder separation, as \\Volume1\OS, \\Volume1\Program, and \\Volume1\Users are already isolated folder concepts in Windows. In addition to pulling the information from the appropriate folders, since a 'similar' user/data/program structure is maintained in the registry, it is also something these tools can easily read and migrate.
I know the whole multi-partition that was drilled in a lot of people's head is hard for them to get past, and sure there are OS distributions that 'count' on using this old mindeset. However in modern practical terms, there truly is no reason for the abstract separations of partions on one physical media, when a folder does what most people are looking for.
There are exceptions like using multi-OSes on one drive, or using a bit level encryption partition, but these are usually not in the scope of why users try to use logical partitions to separate data when folders are just as effective and more flexible.
1.) It is harder to 'break' a Windows installation than what you realize. If you are running Server, you would have a backup of the installation, like any good IT person. If this was a desktop senerio, like XP or Vista, you just boot into safe mode and restore the system back to a date before the problem. The last of these solutions is about five clicks and is something simple enough that you could walk any user through over the phone. It is also something you can't do on Linux.
2.) Moving Windows to another HD is not hard at all, we do this all the time, and I think if you ask even in the SlashDot crowd, most everyone knows of SEVERAL simple and easy ways to move a Windows installation. You can easily even flip Windows drivers to the generic defaults and move the Windows installation to a new computer, let alone just changing a HD.
3.) Have you ever noticed something called Remote Desktop in Windows? Have you noticed that Windows has a Telnet and FTP Host? Do you also realize, you can run a SSH host on Windows? Also with Vista, not only do you have these tools available, but using IPv6, you don't even have to remember your IP address and can just ask for you computer at home by name.
4.) "Windows lacks the commandline power of *nix..." Hmmm. This makes me ask, have you even used Windows in the last 10 years? Use a remote command shell (or local command prompt) you can do anything from the command line using the inherent tools or via the WMI. You might want to also take a look at Monad, the new command line shell technology from MS. It is a new pardigm in command line interfaces, and there is nothing on *nix like it yet.
You also run into problems when you want to use non-Microsoft languages. Whilst Apache is flexible enough to adapt to any scenario, IIS is limited to a subset of problems.
Ok, even with.NET you don't have to use MS languages, but given it is a MS Sandbox.
However, I would have to say, what about PHP, Perl? What about MYSQL? These all run quite well on a Windows server in large scale environments. Also if you will note, many reviews show PHP is faster on IIS and Windows than other solutions...
So I don't see how you can by any stretch say MS Server doesn't work well with non-MS products.
Problems only occur when you start to push the envelope, to do something more advanced than just serving up pages, such as URL rewriting, or reverse proxies to legacy applications.
I think you are biting off a bit more here in your assumption than what you realize.
Considering this thread is about Windows and Linux, focusing only on IIS vs Apache is not very effective, as Windows does Apache quite well. It is also not a good argument because IIS does offer a lot of abilities with not only the ASP and.NET but even the ISAPI and CGI abilities. And in this argument IIS offers more features than what you can get on any *nix, when you add the MS solutions to the mix, especially ASP, AJAX,.NET, Sharepoint, etc.
As for the 'odd situations' or the non-MS situations, this also doesn't hold up as a valid argument. From a personal point of view, we have clients with some of the most high ranking usage sites on the internet that are using MS Servers and yet also serving information and pages from quite 'legacy' systems like from COBOL to even 1990 Sybase data.
Also you seem to skip over Windows does *nix quite well when looking for solutions. MS has made Windows Server the 'me too' when it comes to features and finding product solutions. Even if you can't find a solution that compiles for Win32/64, you just use the Unix subsystem of Windows and run the same standard applications any *nix could offer.
I'm not so sure about that. These days it's rather easy to install a Linux distribution on a server, as many distributions have a number of preset install settings to choose from. Put in the boot CD, select "install web server", then after it's finished use a web browser to access webadmin, so that you can customize Apache without touching a command line.
Then setup DNS, Server Applications, MYSQL etc etc... There is no out of the box solution that fits most users. So the difference here is that with Windows the admin sets a policy that configures the server automatically, or the admin does a few clicks to configure everything and can be done before most *nix admins find the first couple of configuration files they need to change on their particular distribution.
I truly hate to put a negative mark in the *nix box here, but Windows is far easier to configure in a Server environment - especially one that requires a lot of features to be setup. And this not only allows the level of expertise to be lower, but it also means faster installations for experienced IT people.
The 'ease of use' is an area throughout the *nix and open source world that usually is left as a last thing to do and doesn't always get implemented.
So the *nix solution works well, but the code to make it easy to setup or configure is often left out of the product because the 'experience' of the user is assumed to be higher. However as everyone here has seen, a lot of unexperienced users are trying *nix and Open Source solutions and either fail or have bad installations because they didn't know to go install the extra part of the GD library or that for their type of solution they need to configure Apache to balance memory and the cache better.
So this has become a major difference and problem with the 'experience' assumption. It is also a problem preventing these soltuions in many environments because the steep learning curve and small companies wanting products that even their non-geek people can make adjustments to if needed in a pinch.
their site that their goal in creating 3Sharp was "to use the robustness, flexibility, and sheer native capabilities of the Microsoft communication and collaboration technologies to enhance the business of our customers."'"
So let me get this right, the company is bad because they use MS products while testing MS products? Hmm...
So how does SlashDot suggest a company test MS products without using them?
Ok, just because a company USES MS products does not mean they are biased. They could be, but they also could not be.
Our company uses Linux and OSX, so if we write a review comparing the two products, are we to be automatically discredited by both Apple and Open Source users then? Or could maybe we have a good understanding of each and write a complete review because we aren't idiots that don't know how to use the other OSes?
Slashdot Mirror
would be one who would want to virtualize the home version. Anyone doing development may need to do this. There are many legitimate reason - ease of debugging is one. Ease of determining how someone 0wn3d a machine is another.
Here is what the story 'forgets' to mention. You can run it in a VM for development purposes. You just can't run it as a MAIN OS in a VM.
Make sense? MSDN subscribers have been running it in MS's Own VM software for over a year now, and YES it is ALLOWED.
People need to find better things to do on slow news days. How about another article on the OSX exploits, or how insecure Oracle is compared to MSSQL?
According to the Bugzilla link, this bug is also present in pre 2.0 releases of Firefox, and IE 6/7.
They say it exists in IE 6/7, so they don't look like the only fool.
So how do they explain the fact that it really 'doesn't exist' in IE 6/7, and doesn't this make them look even more foolish?
And no I won't defend IE6 or even IE7. But keep the facts where they are; this is not an IE exploit.
Watching MS over the years, they have had good moments, and bad moments, done good things and done things that make your skin crawl...
The sad part of this is the 'business' model that Ballmer and his crew use as an Ideal are at the heart of almost every failed and every skin crawling activity MS has done.
MS was a good company at various times after the past 30 years, but if you notice those fleeting moments, Ballmer and his 'ideals' were the recessive thought mechanism in the company at those times. The 'older' Gates ideals and people emulating him are a lot less likely to hae ever pulled a lot of the crap MS has done in the past 15 years.
This new Linux scare from Ballmer is just another mark in the 'oh crap he did not say that' box. I'm sure there are technologies in Linux that come from MS, even if you take distributions that read FAT32 drives, but on the same note, MS has also taken a lot from the *nix community and it would be so petty to drive the market into this type of war.
Ballmer's words remind me of Oracle's CEO (Ellison) a few years back, at every event or launch, instead of telling us how great their software was, he spent most of the time complaining about MS,and yet MS's products were slammin them in the market because they just worked better. If he or his people would have just spent more time making their products 'better' then could of actually been on stage showing us how much better they were, rather than only pitching how awful MS was.
Maybe ol' Steve is a nice guy, but he is just not helping MS. MS needs to put back in power 'idealists' that believe in 'consumers first' thought and not how they can squeeze the extra nickels out of their business models.
Even look at Vista, in a lot of ways it is a revolutionary OS if you look at the intelligence it implements and the architecture, yet marketing and the 'business' people don't get the genius from the development teams, and will have trouble selling it.
This is evident with the marketing and business people creating five freaking versions of Vista for consumers. It creates more confusion and is less profitable and could hurt the 'standard windows' base because of the differences. It would have been better for MS to have just added $20 to the cost and do only one version. In fact the Vista release like XP is in contradiction to the 'design' ideals of the NT group in having a shared code base to 'reduce confusion'. (Of course the code base is still shared, but the confusion is artificially added by the business and marketing people.)
My two cents for today...
DLT is one of the two-dozen useless resource-hogging services I disable
You are saving yourself 1 process and 12K so that your shortcuts don't stay updated. Brilliant...
Just because something is implemented as a service, does not mean it is resource intensive. If people understood the NT kernel architecture a bit more, they would also accept why things like the DLT features are ran as a service and not jammed into the kernel for FS tracking as some OSes would do to get the same functionality.
Just like you can't depend on any COM or RPC features beyond the most basic when programming for Windows, as your client will have diabled whatever service you needed
Again, if people are dumb enough to turn off key features of the OS, they probably can't be helped, even if they are happy they are freeing another 32K of RAM. You write your software and if the service is off, you tell the user they are a moron and to turn it back on. It is pretty simple actually.
Ok, I know that that when the term 'service' gets thrown around, especially in the world of Windows it sounds like a lot more than probably what people realize.
So it is true it is a service as it is implemented on Windows, but at 12K, I really don't think the word bloated would apply.
As for the user not wanting to take the shortcut/alias with them, this is a usability concept that is very subjective. I have a USB device that I have tons of shortcuts to data and folders located on servers both in house and across the world. (Both native FS shortcuts and NS shortcuts.) In my world, the Apple logic is backwards, but I am a bit more 'network' connected than most people, so I don't have to worry about the links being orphaned pretty much no matter where I am, even my car.
I agree, but your post, like my post, complete invalidates the article in reference and the 'assumptions' made in the article.
what I meant was that you can move or rename the targets they point to without breaking the link.
Not to be an ass, but even freaking Shortcuts in Windows (from Win2k and newer) don't break either, even if the shortcut points to a volume half way around the globe.
Look up NTFS's DLT features...
As for the whole Vista not supporting Symlinks, people really need to do a bit of homework here. Vista supports, three main types of reference mechanisms from Symlinks to the old Shortcuts. What people are talking about is Vista's implementation of Symlinks can fail if the NTFS volume is accessed from an older version of Windows.
If anyone here actually even looked at a freaking Vista install, they would see MS has even used Symlinks in the default installation even - \Documents and Settings is a link to \Users - etc...
I get tired of this, if Windows doesn't do this trick or that trick it isn't worthy... Well lets see OSX or Linux handle multiple OS subsystems on a client/server kernel - then I'll be impressed and consider them 'worthy'. (Geesh)
Flamebait funny...
I could say really critical things about the Linux kernel, the BSD kernel, or even question some of the 'accepted' OSS concepts people hold quite dear.
Yet the only time my posts get modded down is if I say anything that is non-supportive of Apple.
Keep modding the post down without one counter fact or argument, you are only proving my point about the fanatic mindset...
Is Steve Jobs really that good looking or what is it I am missing about the blind following?
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70072-0.html
But maybe I am the strange one, I personally like to stick to facts, technology, and strange things like science.
I'm sorry the Apple apologists jumped on your post.
If anyone had facts to refute anything I said, they would have responded to my post. Apple controls not only their systems, but the marketing and mindset of their users to a cult level.
Sadly, old time techs and *nix users no longer fight back at Apple, and so many have been fooled into the Unix core of OSX as meaning something beyond Apple taking advantage of the word of a lot of good people in the OSS and *nix movement.
Take care and don't let the trolling make a bad day for you.
This is truly getting old.
Incorrect facts.
Bad assumptions.
Pure 'idealistic' bias.
The licensing of the 'discounted' OEM copies of Windows was something that the monopoly suit again MS changed dramatically.
However with that said, companies were providing 'exclusive' discount deals since IBM was first dealing with software back in the 70s, and most companies STILL continue to so to this day. Go ask an OEM why they only offer WordPerfect as their Office Suite, it is because they get a discount from Corel to do so. PERIOD.
I don't see any articles telling the world why PCs suck because some manufacturers only offer Corel WordPerfect and that this is why Mac are superior because they can buy MS Office and aren't forced to chose from retailer to retailer. (Quite Insane...)
The sad part is, Apple FULLY controls the hardware as shipped in addition to OSX, yet when it comes to reliability it doesn't even best Linux, BSD, or Windows where OEMs are dealing with 1000x the different components and configurations.
This is where people should be going, wow, why can't Apple get the reliability status of even freaking crappy Windows that has to install on an infinite amount of hardware and configurations? This is the real story.
As for the MS licenses being the 'problem' with PCs, last I checked most manufactures easily will sell a computer without and OS, and some even offer *nix alternatives - yes even Dell.
However it isn't the MS licensing that 'forces' manufacturers to 'bundle' Windows, it is the simple cost equation that when you ship a COMPUTER without an OS, you have no baseline to support the Hardware. So for 'most' consumers it is easier to ship an OS that provides a baseline for support. If all PC OEMs provided tons of distributions or OS choices it would be a support nightmare for them and their support cost would MORE than override the cost of the MS Windows License that they can use to baseline the system and provide support to their users.
When Apple starts selling their hardware with 5 Linux distributions, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and even offers Windows as a choice in addition to OSX, then this will be a story.
Until then, the story avoids the facts and writes out of pure 'idealistic' views that are self-serving at best.
After reading the article, apparently the only thing wrong with the PC market is that people are not bright enough to bow down to Apple and admit how perfect and wonderful they are and everything they do is. Basically calling all non-OSX desktop users idiots.
And even though there are a lot of idiots using computers, this is the wrong crowd to make that claim to. I think the majority of the *nix crowd at SlashDot should be more than a little outraged at this undertone and presumption.
The only thing truly wrong with the PC market is ignorance, and this article is a good demonstration of how ample it apparently is.
This might be slightly unrelated, buy my father has a Windows 98 machine that he runs some basic software on, and it suddenly became worthless when Microsoft dropped support for it early. As a result, he can't find any anti-virus companies that still support it, so he's cut it off from the web for fear of it being rendered useless by viruses. If Microsoft were to drop XP support early (and you can't suggest it's an impossibility), and you had to reformat, Microsoft might be able to force an upgrade by not supporting an activation. Buying a corporate version would insure against that.
While I don't think the grandparent post articulated their point very well, I don't think they're the troll you're making them out to be.
My advice for the great grandparent: Unless everything has to be squeaky clean, use Linux. As long as a piece of media doesn't have to phone home to get encryption keys, the DRM will be broken and you'll have greater freedom using your device on Linux than you would with XP or Vista.
So do you install a 1998 version of Linux for your father in this instance?
There is no reason anyone should be 'happy' with Win98, and no reason MS should continue to support it, especially when you consider it is a complete different architecture and fundamentally any retroactive patches for it have to be built around the DOS/Win9x model instead of NT. You don't see Apple offering support for System 8 or 9 do you? Apple doesn't even fully support early versions of OSX, and they are les than 5 years old.
So what happens when MS stops supporting WindowsXP? (Which will be several years from now, considering SP3 isn't even on the table until a late 2007 or 2008 release). At that point, any computer still running XP, even the 200mhz system like at my grandparents house that is 10 years old, I could probably hack up the 100-200 bucks to upgrade their mainboard and Video or even buy a new bare bones system from Dell or Compaq for 300 bucks at Walmart and easily run Vista on it, and even get a copy of Vista with the computer purchase. This is not a lot of money, computers are not the 1000-3000 investment they were 10-15 years ago, even for one that meets the 'top end' Vista specifications.
How can anyone expect a computer to be a life long appliance? Even a VCR dies after 10 years usually, and most people then go out and buy their first DVD player. It is how technology works, and computers are NO different.
As for you comment about Linux is DRM free. This isn't 100% accurate nor even a good way to view Linux. In one way there is no active DRM in most distributions, but you also can't take advantage of any DRM content it lacks support for. Go to cinemanow.com and rent a movie on Linux without having any DRM restriction in place. It just won't happen. (Just like if you don't have the digital box from your cable company you are not going to get Video on Demand... A better word for DRM would be 'controlled access content')
I am in no way a fan of DRM, but there are business models that just WOULD NOT exist if DRM didn't offer content providers protection. The only DRM service I have been a fan of is audible.com, and before them, it was impossible to just download the latest audio book. Their DRM also works well, but has traveled with me over the years not restricting my access to my audio book library. If I only used Linux, I would not even have the chance of using them without also having a 'licensed' Windows VM running somewhere.
So here is the problem if OSS completely rejects all DRM, they will once again be left out of any new content that is based on it. This is really bad thinking. Linux should take the MS approach and 'allow' DRM if the companies won't allow their content to be distributed no matter what without it, while also trying to avoid DRM at all costs. Windows doesn't DRM anything nor does MS, as they actually help users run from it, but if a company won't let their audio book play or movie play without it, the DRM hooks are there so the user can '
If Vista didnt play HD content at all and publicly denounced the MPAA/RIAA they would easily be able to win the argument on the side of consumer friendliness. But you see its all about protecting your content
More likely, if Vista didn't put the ability to play HD DRM content in, the monopoly police (this time being shoved by the MPAA/RIAA and others) would find a way to demonstrate that MS is using its Desktop presence to circumvent their business models and probably get MS into even more hot water.
This is one area that works against consumers, as the control of what MS does with its OSes has been put into political hands, and it just isn't about what they do, but 'who' they do it to.
If you can write a game to run under Windows w/ DirectX 10 - you can provide a compatibility layer for it through Wine - the only question will be the performance.
This is not what I am saying. One reason DirectX10 is tied to Vista is the WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model).
Unlike any other Video driver technology, and past the DirectX10 features, DirectX10 not only uses but also relies on the WDDM in Vista that introduces new features that DirectX10 EXPECTS to be there. One of them is the WDDM's ability to share system RAM with the GPU and also to multi-task the GPU. The sharing of the RAM is the most important as Vista's WDDM, even with older DirectX 9-7 games, prioritize and place things normally only put in the GPU RAM into System RAM if they are not speed related items, yet the game sees them as part of the GPU RAM.
This is actually a very complex process, and DirectX 10 assumes and works with the WDDM, in other words DirectX10 'knows' that this is happening and is further optimized and designed to work with the WDDM based on this. Games designed around DirectX10 should also expect this to be happening and be built to tell the WDDM what to load into what RAM, etc.
So it is a lot more than just emulating the DirectX features or APIs when you are dealing with DirectX10.
Check on MS's site on DirectX10 or even read here on Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D
Take care...
Why didn't the entertainment empires force this DRM crap on OSX in the same way, they should be small fry compared to Microsoft.
With regard to Music, OSX already has this. It is called iTunes and the Apple Music Store. OSX is very heavy into DRM, the only real difference here is Apple IMPOSES the DRM on THEMSELVES and they ONLY ALLOW THEMSELVES to sell the songs to their customers. (Which in my book is far and above just DRM, it is borderline consumer lockin that is fraud - since they DRM the OS, the software, the hardware they sell (iPod) and even the music DRM format themselves are Apple creations.)
If OSX wants to play HD movies, they will have to have the same DRM in hardware than Vista does, or they will NOT be able to play HD movies that are DRM protected. PERIOD. The difference here? OSX doesn't YET support HD Movies, so with the next Apple tax of $129 upgrade, you will get HD capabilities in OSX and also all the DRM fun that comes with it.
See here is where the FUD and articles like this are harmful.
If you buy music from an online store, and I don't care if you are using OSX, WindowsXP, or Vista, it is going to have DRM.
If you are using CDs or songs you created, this means nothing to you, as Vista nor OSX nor WindowsXP give a crap.
So here is some advice, if you are into personal mixing, don't buy single tracks online, they are all going to be DRMed... However, if you do, you do realize you can burn them to an Audio CD, and then re-rip them back to the computer, and they will be DRM free? *wink
Take care.
Yes. In fact, it might be worth paying for the $500 entry into the corporate version, just so they can't cut you off of their activation scheme, forcing you to upgrade, if you ever need to reformat your drive. It's pretty much that bad.
Um, pushing some FUD yourself?
Vista's WGA and DRM are virtually no more intrusive than WindowsXP, and even with the EULA crap, MS has revised the EULA to be as forgiving or even more forgiving than WindowsXP.
Vista is not going to lock you out. Even with WindowsXP, we had customers that had activated a single copy over 20 times on various hardware (illegally), and MS would still issue them a new activation when they called and never raised an eye.
All the stories of MS forcing Windows to quit working is false. Even on people that had very noticeably cracked or hacked corporate versions of XP, all WGA did was annoy the hell out of them with pop ups telling them the computer wasn't legal. Vista will go one step further and only allow a Safe mode.
However if you are buying a computer with an OEM or Retail Vista copy license, you are MS's new best friend and they would rather cut off their nose than to even accidentally screw with you. The absolute worst thing that could happen is you wouldn't be able to activate it online if you do reinstall it several times, and then you just end up with the voice automation system or even a person, and they will give you a new activation.
Now if you are running a known hacked version, sure they will put Vista into safe mode and make you buy a copy or contact them, and they don't even prosecute people, they just ask you buy it, or report who sold you the hacked copy. (And if you do the later, they give you Vista for free even in case you really did get ripped off.)
Trust me on this...
So can we leave the FUD alone for awhile, this is really annoying.
dx10 mainstream WINE may support it well
I hope you are right; however, I have a bit of concern for this happening. DirectX 10 not only opens up the paradox of the pixel/vertex shader pipelines, but is also draws on a new device driver model that pushes GPUs to multi-task and share GPU RAM seamlessly with the System RAM.
If DirectX 10 wasn't tied to the WDDM, there would be a better shot, however for now I think the best we can expect for quite some time is DirectX9. However, give open source a few years to catch up to the multi-tasking GPU driver models, and then it might be possible.
So here we are again, and again the same ignorance and FUD is flying...
Out of all the DRM in Vista, nothing is required, nor even used by MS themselves with the exception of the WGA.
So rant on about the WGA, as I am not a fan of it either.
The rest of the stuff is known or existed in Windows for over 6 years and also exists in OSX.
1.) Music DRM - Already exists in older versions of Windows, it is only used if the online store requires it to be used. Apple iTunes is also DRM, but unlike MS, MS doesn't use the DRM technology in their OS to force you to buy the music from MS as Apple does. If people are POed at DRM, why does Apple get a free pass, when they not only implement the DRM technology but are also the ones requiring it for their own profit in the music industry?
2) HD DRM - Again this is something that has been known for a long time, and if the content provider turns on DRM, I don't care what OS you are using, you will either be subjected to DRM, low quality Video, or not able to play it at all. Vista at least allows compliant HD systems the ability to play this crap, just as the HD players already on the market ALSO HAVE IMPLEMENTED! So we can complain about MS, but they did nothing more than make it so Vista can play HD DRM content, they did NOT restrict anything whatsoever. The finger needs to be pointed at any content providers that use DRM. The only way DRM HD content is going to play on any OS other than Vista is in a low quality analog mode, period. (Unless there is a quite an elaborate hack on the horizon, that by passes several Hardware layers of encryption.) Also, since Intel is the author of the HD DRM crap, should we be angry at them along with the content providers? To follow logic, to be mad at MS for letting Vista play DRM HD Content, then we also should be mad at Sony and Toshiba that made HD and Blu HDDVD players which ALSO SHIP with DRM locking mechanisms, as ALL CONSUMERS players have this crap Intel stuff installed.
3) TPC - Well, everyone though MS was using the (again Intel) TPC for applications, content and 100s of other FUD stories... As Vista ships, the ONLY place TPC is used, is for a BitLocker Drive, and it is only used to store the drive's encryption. However, TPC isn't even required for bitlocker, as long as your computer can boot to a USB drive, MS can store the encryption key needed on the USB Dongle and not need TPC even for bitlocker whatsoever. So instead of TPC being used to lock people out of applications or anything else as the rumor mills were wanting people to believe, Vista only uses it to store encryption information for a volume level encryption technology.
4) WGA - Yep it sucks that MS is using this crap. I know why they are doing it, but I don't fully agree. I understand the mass OEM level copying of the late 90s that prompted the first activation generation with WindowsXP, and sure it hurt both consumers and MS. However by Microsoft using this system, it makes users feel like MS is trying to control them, when it is more the duplication pirate companies out there that this gives the axe to. Also if the OEM or consumers are legit, this doesn't hurt them, especially as MS has backed down on all the EULA crap that had surfaced last month. If you own a real copy you can pretty much do what you want with it.
I won't defend WGA though, MS should know better that the pirates will still get past whatever they need to, and this only annoys the end users, even though I know good people at MS that think they are protecting users with the WGA... Even if they are misguided.
So with another round of the big Vista DRM Scare, the only DRM MS is using is the WGA, which is also in WindowsXP. The rest of the DRM in Vista has always been there, exists in other Oses like OSX and is up to the content providers to screw over customers with or not, MS is nothing more than the company that makes the player to use the Toshiba/Sony analogy...
Well, Microsoft made Vista, and they made Zune, so why should you have to resort to hacks to get it working? Grandma won't know how to run an application in "Windows XP compatibility mode". Think of the poor users; not everyone is a geek.
Let's see - consider 99% of anyone running Vista is still running RC2...
Vista RTM won't even be in the hands of developers of MSDN users until Friday...
The Public won't have access to it until December at the earliest (CompUSA deal)
The vast majority of PC and public will not have Vista until Jan 30th, 2007.
So considering the driver changes that are planned by almost EVERY company in the world between now and January, this is not very surprising...
This also goes to prove that MS divisions do not get 'inside' information or work so closely together as the FUD peeps would like everyone to believe. The Hardware divisions at MS get the same level and timing of access to the OSes as ANY OTHER hardware vendor.
So they may not be Apple where everything can be propritary and for Apple's eyes only and where they have no hardware companies but themselves to work with, but again, isn't that a good thing and reason why Apple was hated for years?
If main benefit of a Windows Server is its ability to run Apache, then why pay the cost of a Windows license at all? In order to sell Windows, Microsoft has to offer more than its lower priced competitors. If the best argument Microsoft can put forward is, "It's runs everything Linux can, but its more expensive!", then I can't see it encouraging many people to choose Windows over a less expensive open source OS.
This isn't always true... You are missing a couple things here. You can buy the Web version of Windows 2003 server cheaper than a supported Linux distrobution.
Windows also does have advantages, not only could you run both Apache and IIS and offer ASP and Apache if you need it for a particular feature. The reverse is not true.
You also again are discounting the ease of use for a Windows Server installation, which is a big corporate selling point. Budget level IT staff can maintain a Windows installations much easier than most *nix solutions.
As for Microsoft not holding a 'majority' market share, it is a valid argument, but it is more complex than what you present. Cost is one consideration, as there are a lot of mom and pop sites that are using free non-supported *nix distributions. But if you look at the mainstream buisness outside of the tech industry, like the fortune 500, Microsoft is in the majority.
Also as most people understand, there are times that a full MS server is just not needed, especially in the small scale markets. I wouldn't recommend a client buy $1500 of MS server software if they are just doing a web site and have no plans for anyting but running PHPNuke and PHPbb. This would be crazy, and would be screwing my clients. There are the borderline clients, that could go either way with MS Web Server and a free non-supported *nix solution, there never is a clear choice for everyone of what is the best solution.
In most cases if the company has the resources or are just starting development for a Web solution, they would be crazy to not consider a Windows Server, just for the development abilities available alone. But again, this is not the mom and pop operations, nor would it apply to everyone.
I believe in the free market and the open source world, don't for a second think I don't. But to just easily dismiss Windows with 'mythical' claims of its shortcomings is nonesense and does nothing to help anyone, esepcailly if your 'ideals' prevent you from giving your clients/users the best advice or solutions possible, even if it means using MS Server products.
I gave up using windows 98 in 2003, you say the NT architecture is better? I'm not going to spend £180 finding out if that is so,
I wouldn't expect you to just jump to a new OS based on what someone in a forum says.
However a lot of people in here make a LOT of comments about Windows, when they have little experience with a modern version of Windows and have little to any technical understanding of the Windows architecture.
So from this a lot of incorrect assumptions are propagated about Windows that are 10 year old complaints that haven't existed in Windows for years and years.
If anyone wants to be credible in the IT world, there are many ways to keep tabs on all OSes... Even just reading the wikipedia articles on Windows,BSD,OSX,Linux are a great start to understanding that that Win98 is a far cry from WinXP, just like OSX is a far cry from System 9.
Another method to keep up to date on OSes, is to take advantage of trial versions and just keep them in a VM or a separate install that you can periodically wipe without having to pay MS a dime. (OSX is a bit harder, although projects like PearPC and others make even using OSX a non-Apple exclusive thing for low budget IT people.
As I said, I wouldn't expect you to abandon an OS that you love. That would be very wrong. However for people to make 'catty' claims that Linux is far superior and can do more than other OSes, they should at least know a bit more about the other OSes and just not 'assume' the other OSes haven't evolved since they stopped using them.
OSX and Windows2K/XP/Vista are all very good examples of this. You can't paint a Win98 brush on them, when the entire architecture is different, just like the OSX architecture is completely different than the System 9 architecture.
If you are an IT professional, you would be doing yourself a dis-service by not knowing more about the other OSes. And if you are a developer in the Open Source world, if you don't pay attention to what Apple and Microsoft are doing, you are missing out on a lot of good ideas that they companies have accomplished. People that stopped looking at their work, are assuming it is all crap because Win98 or System 9 sucked, and by doing this, they are missing the opportunity to take ideas these companies have developed or shifts in computing and using this concepts in the Open Source world.
Take care, and don't give up your OS, but if you are in the business, take time to at least read up on or do a free trial install of the OSes so you understand the good and the bad. It will make your work/experience on your favorite OS better in the long run, truly.
Take Care.
I put my /home, /media and /games directories on a separate partition.
Last I knew, on windows, there is no easy way to keep user configs and programs on partitions separate from the OS.
I just wanted to point out something that is also missed by this. This is very 'old school' in terms of thinking. Assuming that application/OS/Data have to be abstracted to separate volumes/partitions.
Window will do what you want, but that is not the point I want to make.
Separating out OS/Applications/Data is not a modern concept, even though there are specific circumstances where one might want to do this. However, it is the exception, or should be, not the rule.
When you get down to a modern OS FS, and I will NTFS for an example here as it meets the features of pretty much all the *nix solutions. If you have a physical HD and are making separate partiions, to abstract the Data/Applications/OS, in a way you are only fooling yourself. Marking a HD with multiple partitions for a 'single' OS install, is truly not any different than using a good folder structure. You can even internally map the folder so UNC or drive letters if that is your goal.
Folder structures are the modern concept of what we did 15 years old with multiple HD partitions. Folders can be set to isolate from the other areas via security, as well as functionality.
The multi-partion concepts, even though they are still used quite a bit in the *nix world, are only a mechanism that either fools the user or the OS. When you get down to it, there is very little difference between a root folder and partition.
To address the migration or data/application movement that you describe is something that is hard on Windows is no longer the case, for quite a while, and with the new Vista tools, it is a thing of the past. Take a look at the Applicaiton migration toolkit, or even the Vista Transfer tools. They can take not only the user data, but even application used by the user and move them to various OS installations quite easily. And it does all of this by just using folder separation, as \\Volume1\OS, \\Volume1\Program, and \\Volume1\Users are already isolated folder concepts in Windows. In addition to pulling the information from the appropriate folders, since a 'similar' user/data/program structure is maintained in the registry, it is also something these tools can easily read and migrate.
I know the whole multi-partition that was drilled in a lot of people's head is hard for them to get past, and sure there are OS distributions that 'count' on using this old mindeset. However in modern practical terms, there truly is no reason for the abstract separations of partions on one physical media, when a folder does what most people are looking for.
There are exceptions like using multi-OSes on one drive, or using a bit level encryption partition, but these are usually not in the scope of why users try to use logical partitions to separate data when folders are just as effective and more flexible.
Take care.
1.) It is harder to 'break' a Windows installation than what you realize. If you are running Server, you would have a backup of the installation, like any good IT person. If this was a desktop senerio, like XP or Vista, you just boot into safe mode and restore the system back to a date before the problem. The last of these solutions is about five clicks and is something simple enough that you could walk any user through over the phone. It is also something you can't do on Linux.
2.) Moving Windows to another HD is not hard at all, we do this all the time, and I think if you ask even in the SlashDot crowd, most everyone knows of SEVERAL simple and easy ways to move a Windows installation. You can easily even flip Windows drivers to the generic defaults and move the Windows installation to a new computer, let alone just changing a HD.
3.) Have you ever noticed something called Remote Desktop in Windows? Have you noticed that Windows has a Telnet and FTP Host? Do you also realize, you can run a SSH host on Windows? Also with Vista, not only do you have these tools available, but using IPv6, you don't even have to remember your IP address and can just ask for you computer at home by name.
4.) "Windows lacks the commandline power of *nix..." Hmmm. This makes me ask, have you even used Windows in the last 10 years? Use a remote command shell (or local command prompt) you can do anything from the command line using the inherent tools or via the WMI. You might want to also take a look at Monad, the new command line shell technology from MS. It is a new pardigm in command line interfaces, and there is nothing on *nix like it yet.
You also run into problems when you want to use non-Microsoft languages. Whilst Apache is flexible enough to adapt to any scenario, IIS is limited to a subset of problems.
.NET you don't have to use MS languages, but given it is a MS Sandbox.
.NET but even the ISAPI and CGI abilities. And in this argument IIS offers more features than what you can get on any *nix, when you add the MS solutions to the mix, especially ASP, AJAX, .NET, Sharepoint, etc.
Ok, even with
However, I would have to say, what about PHP, Perl? What about MYSQL? These all run quite well on a Windows server in large scale environments. Also if you will note, many reviews show PHP is faster on IIS and Windows than other solutions...
So I don't see how you can by any stretch say MS Server doesn't work well with non-MS products.
Problems only occur when you start to push the envelope, to do something more advanced than just serving up pages, such as URL rewriting, or reverse proxies to legacy applications.
I think you are biting off a bit more here in your assumption than what you realize.
Considering this thread is about Windows and Linux, focusing only on IIS vs Apache is not very effective, as Windows does Apache quite well. It is also not a good argument because IIS does offer a lot of abilities with not only the ASP and
As for the 'odd situations' or the non-MS situations, this also doesn't hold up as a valid argument. From a personal point of view, we have clients with some of the most high ranking usage sites on the internet that are using MS Servers and yet also serving information and pages from quite 'legacy' systems like from COBOL to even 1990 Sybase data.
Also you seem to skip over Windows does *nix quite well when looking for solutions. MS has made Windows Server the 'me too' when it comes to features and finding product solutions. Even if you can't find a solution that compiles for Win32/64, you just use the Unix subsystem of Windows and run the same standard applications any *nix could offer.
I'm not so sure about that. These days it's rather easy to install a Linux distribution on a server, as many distributions have a number of preset install settings to choose from. Put in the boot CD, select "install web server", then after it's finished use a web browser to access webadmin, so that you can customize Apache without touching a command line.
Then setup DNS, Server Applications, MYSQL etc etc... There is no out of the box solution that fits most users. So the difference here is that with Windows the admin sets a policy that configures the server automatically, or the admin does a few clicks to configure everything and can be done before most *nix admins find the first couple of configuration files they need to change on their particular distribution.
I truly hate to put a negative mark in the *nix box here, but Windows is far easier to configure in a Server environment - especially one that requires a lot of features to be setup. And this not only allows the level of expertise to be lower, but it also means faster installations for experienced IT people.
The 'ease of use' is an area throughout the *nix and open source world that usually is left as a last thing to do and doesn't always get implemented.
So the *nix solution works well, but the code to make it easy to setup or configure is often left out of the product because the 'experience' of the user is assumed to be higher. However as everyone here has seen, a lot of unexperienced users are trying *nix and Open Source solutions and either fail or have bad installations because they didn't know to go install the extra part of the GD library or that for their type of solution they need to configure Apache to balance memory and the cache better.
So this has become a major difference and problem with the 'experience' assumption. It is also a problem preventing these soltuions in many environments because the steep learning curve and small companies wanting products that even their non-geek people can make adjustments to if needed in a pinch.
Take Care...
their site that their goal in creating 3Sharp was "to use the robustness, flexibility, and sheer native capabilities of the Microsoft communication and collaboration technologies to enhance the business of our customers."'"
So let me get this right, the company is bad because they use MS products while testing MS products? Hmm...
So how does SlashDot suggest a company test MS products without using them?
Ok, just because a company USES MS products does not mean they are biased. They could be, but they also could not be.
Our company uses Linux and OSX, so if we write a review comparing the two products, are we to be automatically discredited by both Apple and Open Source users then? Or could maybe we have a good understanding of each and write a complete review because we aren't idiots that don't know how to use the other OSes?
(Sorry for the sarcasm, but Geesh...)