The original poster was [mostly] right
on
Pirate DNS?
·
· Score: 5
First of all: It's 13 root servers, not 12
$ dig . ns |grep NS |grep -v \; |wc -l 13
NSI is really split into two beasts, the registrY and the registRAR.
The registRAR is the people who auction off old domain names.
The registrY is the people who maintain the gTLD servers, and only two of the root servers.
The root servers are maintained by:
A: NSI B: ISI.EDU (California) C: PSInet D: UMD E: NASA F: ISC/NOMINUM G: DOD/DISA H: ARL (ARMY) I: Univ Stockholm J: NSI K: London (LINX) M: Tokyo University
Currently, the COM/NET/ORG are hosted on only a few root servers, namely, A, E, F, and G. There is currently a transition of moving COM/NET/ORG off of the root servers, onto gTLD servers.
All of the gtld servers are administrated by the NSI RegistrY.
And although the A server was once the master of the Root servers, it is no longer. The root servers use a stealth-primary (that would be one that you don't see) for distributing the root zone.
...And NSI does not control policy regarding the root servers, IANA does. If IANA told NSI to stop hosting all of the gtld servers by a certain date, NSI would cry, scream, kick ans wail (maybe even sue), but NSI would eventually have to give it up.
NSI does not control each of the root servers. If NSI told the root server operators to do a certain thing, like "All root servers must run NT", each individual root server operator could individually refuse to cooperate. (And I certainly hope that they would, NT is evil incarnate).
And while you're criticizing NSI, maybe you should look at the response time for the COM zone on all of the servers NSI administers. Depending on your connectivity, I haven't ever seen anything more than 100 ms -- Way better than the sucky E and G root servers, which regularly respond after 4000 ms. NSI is throwing a lot of money into making the gTLD servers more responsive, and accurate.
the plan at NSI is to standardize on ONE PLATFORM --
Yes, that would be incredibly stupid.
The statement you made is just plain wrong. NetSOL doesn't have any control over the root servers. Each individual operation that administers each root server is responsible for the decision on what hardware, and with what OS that Root Server will run. NetSOL has no say in the matter. Period.
We know about the dangers of homogeneity. (I wish PHBs would understand that when they start crowing, "NT EVERYWHERE!" (don't get me started).
We know about the Irish Potato famine.
The root server community is NOT a bunch of idiots, you know.
If you wonder what makes a root server tick, go read RFC 2010
or if it a corpoarte agreement... specially since netSOl was bought by versign.
Rampant Speculation Crushing...
They went with the IBM because they did a bake-off, and Sun LOST. Sun came in dead last. There is a reason the suck-ass operating system is called "Slowlaris" (don't get me started).
Our Root server (not NSI, one of the others) is a dual-processor Sun 450 with 4 Gigs of RAM.
Bind 9 does load balancing between two or more processors, bind 8... well... doesn't. Running top on the root server while it's running, and you see CPU3 with high utilization, and cpu 1 with like 1% (only from top and the shell)
I don't really see the point of going multiple processors until they use Bind 9.
FWIW, the 'A' server really isn't the master of the root domain anymore, since ICANN has control over what goes in, and what stays out of the root zone.
As for the single point of failure, if A blows up, destroyed by fire, destroyed by quake, etc., the others just simply will have to pick up the load of the missing 'A'.
If the mechanism of downloading the zones fails, we have a while (a few weeks) to make up our minds about what to do before bad things happen -- like internet not working anymore.
And I know at least one Root Server Operator (well, me...) who checks out slashdot daily. I bet more do.
For the dummies or impatient: To translate: 1. Go to shell 2. type this command: tr a-mn-zA-MN-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M pick through the secret message to reveal the answer.
I remember playing Pac-Man, and being amazed at the level of effort required to make it to level four. Two Hundred levels! That guy must be a god of achievement.
I can't help but wondering how he went potty, especially since he was on video tape the whole time.
I wonder if it's possible to make the perfect game in Gauntlet?
Technically speaking, I have to wholeheartedly agree that PGP is superior to PGP in just about every way. Unfortunately, there is one mighty drawback:
It's not reverse compatible with the old pgp 2.62 keysets out there. That sucks.
(also the fact that/usr/local/bin/gpg is setuid root, but that's minor)
Here's what it looked like when I tried to import my pgp 2.6.2 key. (id 'xxx'ed to protect the innocent)
gpg (GnuPG) 0.9.8; Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NOWARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the file COPYING for details.
gpg: key xxx: unsupported public key algorithm gpg: key xxxx: no valid user ids gpg: this may be caused by a missing self-signature gpg: Total number processed: 1 gpg: w/o user IDs: 1
Forgive the flame-fest, but I can't resist this troll:
Take a look at the second law of thermodynamics. " Entorpy in a system increases over time." it is obviously apparent that humans are very structured beings, and to hold the second law of thermodynamics sacred
Weak, weak, weak.
Along your line of logic:
Ice is a higher state of order than water.
Water has more entropy than ice.
You can not decrease entropy, as it is always increasing
Therefore, water can not become ice because entropy is always increasing.
This of course stupid.
The second law of thermodynamics argument is so wrongly used it makes me sick to my stomach each time I hear a creationist use it. It only proves how they don't try to understand the physics.
Water of course, CAN turn into ice, the extra heat energy is lost -- radiated -- the energy is elsewhere. When you look at the TOTAL system, i.e. all of the energy, every erg and calorie, that the entropy is increased.
The earth is not in a closed system. It' getting energy from the sun every day. The law of entropy doesn't apply here.
Another very basic scientific law states that living tissue can not spawn from non living matter.
Sounds positively victorian-era to me.
There's a REASON biologists across the globe don't debate creationism versus evolutionism anymore. The debate is settled. Everyone has gone home. The scientists may debatbe about the rate and the methods of evolution, but not the concepts brought forth by Darwin.
All right creationist. Answer me this: (p.s. you lose if you say some stupid thing like "Cause God made it that way") Without evolution, how can you explain:
Why do snakes have hip bones?
Why do whales have hip bones?
Why do chimpanzees have 99% shared genetic material with humans?
Why does a mosquito have significantly less in common with humans?
Why do dolphins and whales have more genetic material in common with humans than do fish?
Explain how fossils of primitive creatures seem to always be in stratum layers below more advanced creatures.
Explain all those dinosaurs, and why they're gone now.
Explain biotechnology, and tell me how it could have come this far without a deep understanding about biology -- when you say they are all wrong because the Bible says they are.
Explain myxomatosis outbreaks in Australia, and why there are still rabbits, despite the deadliness of the disease.
Explain Archeopterix
Explain Homo Habilius
Explain Homo Erectus
Explain Homo Neanderthalus
Explain why penicillin isn't so great for everything anymore.
Explain how some scientists predicted the demise of penicillin efficacy before the symptoms of bacterial resistance were observed.
Overall, I'm unmoved by your arguments. The theory of evolution has completely revolutionized the entire field. You saying that it's not true is analagous of you telling a geographer that the world is still flat, or a physicist that relativity is a crock.
Biotechnology will move on without you. You can continue to sit with your fingers in your ears shouting 'NOT TRUE! NOT TRUE!' while you choose your path ignorance and unenlightenment
But the tar that comes with Slowlaris regularly reminds me of the advantage of going GNU. It's the first thing I do to a Solaris system, is replace/bin/tar with GNU's tar.
I can't say the same. I know lots of people who prefer NT.
They prefer NT mostly because they've only heard of Linux, and not tried it out for themselves.
Of course, there are those who are so firmly entrenched in Microsoftness that they will never like anything else. Such is the price of zealotry.
It goes both ways, ya know.
I'll finally agree by saing that for the people who have used both NT and Linux, I can say that I have never seen those same people prefer NT. It's usually because they feel empowered by Linux, and not by NT.
Hah! You obviously don't have the most critical job requirement of Sys-adminning: Looking really busy.
"Mr. Sysadmin, my 'elm' keeps beeping when I read this email message!"
"Too bad, you should have been using 'pine' instead. Use a mailer that actually knows how to handle attachments!"
"Mr. Sysadmin, how do I delete a line in 'vi'?"
"Who cares! Everyone should be using EMACS or pico"
"Mr. Sysadmin, the Internet connectivity is slow again"
"I'm working on it" (I call some stupid help desk and they ignore it for 3 hours before they realize they unplugged one of their ATM lines -- *again*. ATM really stands for 'a' 't'errible 'm'istake.)
"Mr. Sysadmin, I need some help with this..."
"CAN'T YOU SEE I'M BUSY?" (I'm really re-compiling GIMP so I can doodle all day long and look busy).
> That's how MSN is run... over a THOUSAND > Pentium Pro NT servers on a *scheduled* > reboot regimen (24 hours I think).
Is this REALLY TRUE? I find it remarkably hard to believe. I mean, I know MS NT is bad, but MS guys scheduling reboots is kind of like Microsoft admiting that their servers are unstable.
I've heard about a US Post Office NT server that had to be rebooted once per hour. I also find this difficult to believe, but the story teller I believe, and the source I trust.
I just talked to all of the InterNIC guys at the IETF, just two days before NSI pulled this stunt. Either NSI is really good at keeping their techie guys ignorant of upcoming policies, or the techies are really good at keeping their mouths shut.
StarControl 2 was really one of the best games ever.
I loved the plot, the humor, the ZatFotPik (they were awesome, the dialog was great)
I wish there was a Linux version. I wonder if I could get it to run under the Dosemu...
When the makers of StarCon2 sent out a survey asking about what we as starcon2 fans wanted in the new version, I begged them to keep the technology low, and the game playability high, humor high, plot high.
They took my advice and shoved it in the trashcan. Starcon3 really sucked ass.
Someone needs to analyze that game (SC2) and make another game with all of the good features, and none of the bullshit that comes with most games these days.
Well, I have to say I'm agnostic about the whole thing, but I'll take a stab at explaining just WHY these LINUX zealots are so freaked out about this.
Microsoft repeatedly demonstrates that its motives are to do nothing other than:
Advance its present cashflow
Advance its future cashflow
If that means destroying the competition, then they'll do it. If anyone challenges them, they:
Dump zillions into building + marketing the new competing product (quality issues aside)
-or- Dump zillions into purchasing the company that would challenge them.
Quite frankly, We don't trust Microsoft. We can't trust Microsoft. Each time they do something, they only do it to better themselves, or to re-position their overwhelming market dominance, or to re-inforce their desktop monopoly. We can hardly blame them. This is capitalism, after all.
But we would be stupid to think that Microsoft is doing anything other than helping themselves. We can't trust Microsoft to do something good for the Linux community. Their record is awful.
For a company with such a demonstratably poor track record, making a deal with Microsoft is like making a deal with the devil.
On the other hand, I'm a big believer in "It's the apps, stupid!", and if the one thing appears -- that one thing that is keeping my boss from replacing all those Wintel boxes with something running Linux, then this could be good for Linux.
Face it. We've heard Microsoft play down Linux for a long time. "Ach, that Linux stuff. It' cheap free hackerware. How good could something free be? Microsoft is quality technology"
This rumor of a new product could be their way of thinking that Linux is a real operating system now. That's pretty cool.
Linus Torvalds dreams of world domination. Bill Gates dreams of a stable OS.
C2 is an extremely ugly business. I personally would not volunteer to work on any machines that are C2 level compilant -- cause you can't do anything on them. I've unfortunately had the most distasteful duty of making a proprietary UNIX operating system C2 compliant. It was darned hard to do that -AND- have the system do anything useful.
Linux would probably be C2 level if (and not to bust on Linux -- I like it a lot, but C2 is ridiculous):
1) The code was proprietary, and evil hacker scum couldn't look at the code because the best security is by obscurity. 2) The permissions on all files were set to 700 3) Shadow passwords were enabled 4) All files were owned by root 5) No floppy drive 6) No Internet connection 7) No Network card 8) No third-party "hackerware" 9) turn the computer off 10) solder the power switch into the off position.
Next time somebody brags about their system being "C2" compliant, think "Ah, you poor dumb bastard"
I work for what some would call a shark-tank (I'm a government contractor).
At one of my contracts, we went in to replace NT boxes running simple web services (we were replacing them with Sparcs running Sol 2.51)
It would be too generous for me to say that the NT system was too unstable. Those poor bastards who set up the system had to install a watcher. It would ping all of their NT boxes (about two dozen) until one of them failed. The watcher program activated a modem, and dialed out to a pager when one of the systems failed.
Then one of the poor bastards would come scurrying down into the server room -- and reboot the NT box. Those dudes would be paged twice a day. I know, I sat at the desk next to the modem. I held back a huge belly laugh each time the modem dialed out.
I feel sorry for you NT people, I really do.
NT zealots: You won't be taken seriously by the Unix/Linux crowd until your OS stops crashing once a day.
The winntmag.com site should think about investing in that watcher program -- or better yet -- install a reliable OS for the webserver.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all: It's 13 root servers, not 12
$ dig . ns |grep NS |grep -v \; |wc -l13
NSI is really split into two beasts, the registrY and the registRAR.
The registRAR is the people who auction off old domain names.
The registrY is the people who maintain the gTLD servers, and only two of the root servers.
The root servers are maintained by:
A: NSIB: ISI.EDU (California)
C: PSInet
D: UMD
E: NASA
F: ISC/NOMINUM
G: DOD/DISA
H: ARL (ARMY)
I: Univ Stockholm
J: NSI
K: London (LINX)
M: Tokyo University
Currently, the COM/NET/ORG are hosted on only a few root servers, namely, A, E, F, and G. There is currently a transition of moving COM/NET/ORG off of the root servers, onto gTLD servers.
These servers:
$ dig com. ns |grep NS |grep GTLD
(snipped)
K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
H.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
All of the gtld servers are administrated by the NSI RegistrY.
And although the A server was once the master of the Root servers, it is no longer. The root servers use a stealth-primary (that would be one that you don't see) for distributing the root zone.
...And NSI does not control policy regarding the root servers, IANA does. If IANA told NSI to stop hosting all of the gtld servers by a certain date, NSI would cry, scream, kick ans wail (maybe even sue), but NSI would eventually have to give it up.
NSI does not control each of the root servers. If NSI told the root server operators to do a certain thing, like "All root servers must run NT", each individual root server operator could individually refuse to cooperate. (And I certainly hope that they would, NT is evil incarnate).
And while you're criticizing NSI, maybe you should look at the response time for the COM zone on all of the servers NSI administers. Depending on your connectivity, I haven't ever seen anything more than 100 ms -- Way better than the sucky E and G root servers, which regularly respond after 4000 ms. NSI is throwing a lot of money into making the gTLD servers more responsive, and accurate.
the plan at NSI is to standardize on ONE PLATFORM --
Yes, that would be incredibly stupid.
The statement you made is just plain wrong. NetSOL doesn't have any control over the root servers. Each individual operation that administers each root server is responsible for the decision on what hardware, and with what OS that Root Server will run. NetSOL has no say in the matter. Period.
We know about the dangers of homogeneity. (I wish PHBs would understand that when they start crowing, "NT EVERYWHERE!" (don't get me started).
We know about the Irish Potato famine.
The root server community is NOT a bunch of idiots, you know.
If you wonder what makes a root server tick, go read RFC 2010
or if it a corpoarte agreement... specially since netSOl was bought by versign.
Rampant Speculation Crushing...
They went with the IBM because they did a bake-off, and Sun LOST. Sun came in dead last. There is a reason the suck-ass operating system is called "Slowlaris" (don't get me started).
...AND...they did the bake-off before the buyout.
I don't know offhand if they tested linux.
Our Root server (not NSI, one of the others) is a dual-processor Sun 450 with 4 Gigs of RAM.
Bind 9 does load balancing between two or more processors, bind 8... well... doesn't. Running top on the root server while it's running, and you see CPU3 with high utilization, and cpu 1 with like 1% (only from top and the shell)
I don't really see the point of going multiple processors until they use Bind 9.
FWIW, the 'A' server really isn't the master of the root domain anymore, since ICANN has control over what goes in, and what stays out of the root zone.
As for the single point of failure, if A blows up, destroyed by fire, destroyed by quake, etc., the others just simply will have to pick up the load of the missing 'A'.
If the mechanism of downloading the zones fails, we have a while (a few weeks) to make up our minds about what to do before bad things happen -- like internet not working anymore.
And I know at least one Root Server Operator (well, me...) who checks out slashdot daily. I bet more do.
I was wondering about your airplane accident during the early 80s. From what I hear, it caused head trauma and memory recall problems.
After that, do you still fly? Have you developed a fear of flying, or did you get right back into it?
I'm a pilot, too. But I find soaring much more fun and interesting. (You can come soar with me anytime) http://www.ssl.umd.edu/skyline/
For the dummies or impatient: To translate: 1. Go to shell 2. type this command: tr a-mn-zA-MN-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M pick through the secret message to reveal the answer.
The key I have is in fact self signed, it's just that GPG didn't recognize the format, and did a guess that it wasn't self-signed.. :)
I guess that could be considered an unstable failure mode.
I remember playing Pac-Man, and being amazed at the level of effort required to make it to level four. Two Hundred levels! That guy must be a god of achievement.
I can't help but wondering how he went potty, especially since he was on video tape the whole time.
I wonder if it's possible to make the perfect game in Gauntlet?
Elf... your life force is running out
Technically speaking, I have to wholeheartedly agree that PGP is superior to PGP in just about every way. Unfortunately, there is one mighty drawback:
It's not reverse compatible with the old pgp 2.62 keysets out there. That sucks.
(also the fact that /usr/local/bin/gpg is setuid root, but that's minor)
Here's what it looked like when I tried to import my pgp 2.6.2 key. (id 'xxx'ed to protect the innocent)
gpg (GnuPG) 0.9.8; Copyright (C) 1999 FreeSoftware Foundation, Inc.
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NOWARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to
redistribute it under certain conditions. See
the file COPYING for details.
gpg: key xxx: unsupported public key algorithm
gpg: key xxxx: no valid user ids
gpg: this may be caused by a missing
self-signature
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: w/o user IDs: 1
Forgive the flame-fest, but I can't resist this troll:
Weak, weak, weak.
Along your line of logic:
Ice is a higher state of order than water.
Water has more entropy than ice.
You can not decrease entropy, as it is always increasing
Therefore, water can not become ice because entropy is always increasing.
This of course stupid.
The second law of thermodynamics argument is so wrongly used it makes me sick to my stomach each time I hear a creationist use it. It only proves how they don't try to understand the physics.
Water of course, CAN turn into ice, the extra heat energy is lost -- radiated -- the energy is elsewhere. When you look at the TOTAL system, i.e. all of the energy, every erg and calorie, that the entropy is increased.
The earth is not in a closed system. It' getting energy from the sun every day. The law of entropy doesn't apply here.
Another very basic scientific law states that living tissue can not spawn from non living matter.
Sounds positively victorian-era to me.
There's a REASON biologists across the globe don't debate creationism versus evolutionism anymore. The debate is settled. Everyone has gone home. The scientists may debatbe about the rate and the methods of evolution, but not the concepts brought forth by Darwin.
All right creationist. Answer me this: (p.s. you lose if you say some stupid thing like "Cause God made it that way") Without evolution, how can you explain:
Why do snakes have hip bones?
Why do whales have hip bones?
Why do chimpanzees have 99% shared genetic material with humans?
Why does a mosquito have significantly less in common with humans?
Why do dolphins and whales have more genetic material in common with humans than do fish?
Explain how fossils of primitive creatures seem to always be in stratum layers below more advanced creatures.
Explain all those dinosaurs, and why they're gone now.
Explain biotechnology, and tell me how it could have come this far without a deep understanding about biology -- when you say they are all wrong because the Bible says they are.
Explain myxomatosis outbreaks in Australia, and why there are still rabbits, despite the deadliness of the disease.
Explain Archeopterix
Explain Homo Habilius
Explain Homo Erectus
Explain Homo Neanderthalus
Explain why penicillin isn't so great for everything anymore.
Explain how some scientists predicted the demise of penicillin efficacy before the symptoms of bacterial resistance were observed.
Overall, I'm unmoved by your arguments. The theory of evolution has completely revolutionized the entire field. You saying that it's not true is analagous of you telling a geographer that the world is still flat, or a physicist that relativity is a crock.
Biotechnology will move on without you. You can continue to sit with your fingers in your ears shouting 'NOT TRUE! NOT TRUE!' while you choose your path ignorance and unenlightenment
In order for you to maintain these theories of government cover-ups, government conspiracies, black helicopters, etc...
... you would have to have a really incorrect perception of the capabilities of the individuals working for the US government.
I find them all to be so completely incompetent, that I find it implausible that they could exhibit such control over the US.
I've read that to make a web site REALLY secure,
you should chroot your webdir, kind of like you do with anonymous FTP.
Is there any truth to this? I just think it would be a big pain in the ass to copy over all of those perl directories and libraries... eek.
But the tar that comes with Slowlaris regularly reminds me of the advantage of going GNU. It's the first thing I do to a Solaris system, is replace /bin/tar with GNU's tar.
telnet://your.pop.host:110
> Everyoen I know prefers linux to NT any day.
I can't say the same. I know lots of people who prefer NT.
They prefer NT mostly because they've only heard of Linux, and not tried it out for themselves.
Of course, there are those who are so firmly entrenched in Microsoftness that they will never like anything else. Such is the price of zealotry.
It goes both ways, ya know.
I'll finally agree by saing that for the people who have used both NT and Linux, I can say that I have never seen those same people prefer NT. It's usually because they feel empowered by Linux, and not by NT.
(erm... just ignore my sig for now)
CDE is such a crummy GUI that I would much rather be stuck with CLI.
Which brings me to the point, I'm actually running KDE on Solaris, and it runs... well... relatively smoothly. At least it's not CDE.
Does anyone know about how well GNOME works in Solaris?
Hah! You obviously don't have the most critical job requirement of Sys-adminning: Looking really busy.
"Mr. Sysadmin, my 'elm' keeps beeping when I read this email message!"
"Too bad, you should have been using 'pine' instead. Use a mailer that actually knows how to handle attachments!"
"Mr. Sysadmin, how do I delete a line in 'vi'?"
"Who cares! Everyone should be using EMACS or pico"
"Mr. Sysadmin, the Internet connectivity is slow again"
"I'm working on it" (I call some stupid help desk and they ignore it for 3 hours before they realize they unplugged one of their ATM lines -- *again*. ATM really stands for 'a' 't'errible 'm'istake.)
"Mr. Sysadmin, I need some help with this..."
"CAN'T YOU SEE I'M BUSY?"
(I'm really re-compiling GIMP so I can doodle all day long and look busy).
> Pentium Pro NT servers on a *scheduled*
> reboot regimen (24 hours I think).
Is this REALLY TRUE? I find it remarkably hard to believe. I mean, I know MS NT is bad, but MS guys scheduling reboots is kind of like Microsoft admiting that their servers are unstable.
I've heard about a US Post Office NT server that had to be rebooted once per hour. I also find this difficult to believe, but the story teller I believe, and the source I trust.
I just talked to all of the InterNIC guys at the IETF, just two days before NSI pulled this stunt. Either NSI is really good at keeping their techie guys ignorant of upcoming policies, or the techies are really good at keeping their mouths shut.
Dude man, it's my sig. Chill out guys.
.sig.
(which reminds me to go to the preferences section to add the "--\n" at the beginning of my
The link sends me to a "forbidden" page.
Wah wah wahh......
StarControl 2 was really one of the best games ever.
I loved the plot, the humor, the ZatFotPik (they were awesome, the dialog was great)
I wish there was a Linux version. I wonder if I could get it to run under the Dosemu...
When the makers of StarCon2 sent out a survey asking about what we as starcon2 fans wanted in the new version, I begged them to keep the technology low, and the game playability high, humor high, plot high.
They took my advice and shoved it in the trashcan. Starcon3 really sucked ass.
Someone needs to analyze that game (SC2) and make another game with all of the good features, and none of the bullshit that comes with most games these days.
Well, I have to say I'm agnostic about the whole thing, but I'll take a stab at explaining just WHY these LINUX zealots are so freaked out about this.
Microsoft repeatedly demonstrates that its motives are to do nothing other than:
If that means destroying the competition, then they'll do it. If anyone challenges them, they:
Quite frankly, We don't trust Microsoft. We can't trust Microsoft. Each time they do something, they only do it to better themselves, or to re-position their overwhelming market dominance, or to re-inforce their desktop monopoly. We can hardly blame them. This is capitalism, after all.
But we would be stupid to think that Microsoft is doing anything other than helping themselves. We can't trust Microsoft to do something good for the Linux community. Their record is awful.
For a company with such a demonstratably poor track record, making a deal with Microsoft is like making a deal with the devil.
On the other hand, I'm a big believer in "It's the apps, stupid!", and if the one thing appears -- that one thing that is keeping my boss from replacing all those Wintel boxes with something running Linux, then this could be good for Linux.
Face it. We've heard Microsoft play down Linux for a long time. "Ach, that Linux stuff. It' cheap free hackerware. How good could something free be? Microsoft is quality technology"
This rumor of a new product could be their way of thinking that Linux is a real operating system now. That's pretty cool.
Linus Torvalds dreams of world domination. Bill Gates dreams of a stable OS.
C2 is an extremely ugly business. I personally would not volunteer to work on any machines that are C2 level compilant -- cause you can't do anything on them. I've unfortunately had the most distasteful duty of making a proprietary UNIX operating system C2 compliant. It was darned hard to do that -AND- have the system do anything useful.
Linux would probably be C2 level if (and not to bust on Linux -- I like it a lot, but C2 is ridiculous):
1) The code was proprietary, and evil hacker scum couldn't look at the code because the best security is by obscurity.
2) The permissions on all files were set to 700
3) Shadow passwords were enabled
4) All files were owned by root
5) No floppy drive
6) No Internet connection
7) No Network card
8) No third-party "hackerware"
9) turn the computer off
10) solder the power switch into the off position.
Next time somebody brags about their system being "C2" compliant, think "Ah, you poor dumb bastard"
I work for what some would call a shark-tank (I'm a government contractor).
At one of my contracts, we went in to replace NT boxes running simple web services (we were replacing them with Sparcs running Sol 2.51)
It would be too generous for me to say that the NT system was too unstable. Those poor bastards who set up the system had to install a watcher. It would ping all of their NT boxes (about two dozen) until one of them failed. The watcher program activated a modem, and dialed out to a pager when one of the systems failed.
Then one of the poor bastards would come scurrying down into the server room -- and reboot the NT box. Those dudes would be paged twice a day. I know, I sat at the desk next to the modem. I held back a huge belly laugh each time the modem dialed out.
I feel sorry for you NT people, I really do.
NT zealots: You won't be taken seriously by the Unix/Linux crowd until your OS stops crashing once a day.
The winntmag.com site should think about investing in that watcher program -- or better yet -- install a reliable OS for the webserver.