I personally dread the day when people take up guns against their elected government. First because the term "elected", by picking up guns your saying that you know better than the voters, which to me, is tyrannical. Its part of the stupid modern "tea party" line of bullshit, democracy is fine until people vote for people I don't like.
Elections only work when the elected actually listen to the people electing them, and not corporations, etc.
The sad part is, that both the Republicans and the Democrats have gotten to the point where neither are really paying attention to the people, listening mostly to whoever gives them the most money for their re-election campaigns, during which both candidates spew a bunch of promises which after getting elected they turn around and break nearly all of, blaming the other party as a result even though they were the ones that made the compromise on their promise.
Sadly too, most in Congress have never know a job outside of politics. It's all they do, and all they will do until they retire - or in some cases die. They have no interest in doing anything else.
This could probably be mostly fixed by putting in term limits on Congress; since it would force a faster turnover of who could be elected or re-elected. But unless the people get behind it, and vote it in as a Constitutional Amendment (requiring 3/4ths of the States to pass) it'll never happen - it's just not in the elected official's interest to do so. (Yes, the people could pass do it - you just have to get it on the different ballots before the people; alternatively, the State Congresses could do it, or the Federal Congress could do it; but the later two have no interest in doing so.)
...and get a split-key keyboard. it'll force you to use the right hands/fingers for typing, and you'll be fully touch-typing before you know it.
Personally I recommend either of these (despite their maker):
I've often wondered what makes a product "separate". It's a distinction that's forever being debated on the LKML. Is VMWare in violation of Linux Kernel's GPL License? What about ATI's binary driver? What about somebody who sells hardware with a Linux kernel?
According to Linus Torvalds - no they do not. He even somewhat encourages it. See LKML archives for details.
So do these technical distinctions mean anything at all? Not in the least. And thus, the terms of the GPL would easily and happily apply to the entire product, no matter how technically distinct the pieces.
And sure, you have your opinions on each of these examples, but each of these examples have their own gotchas that would make sense to a significant portion of the population, especially the non-technical part(s) of humanity.
The GPL bows to the author of the work in such cases. Linus Torvalds says pretty much go-ahead; but Nokia/Trolltech say ask the FSF.
Unfortunately it is a pretty muddy area; but that is part of the freedom sorta...even though it does make it pretty hairy all around.
Yes, I see. In order to use an open source tool securely, I have to force all my clients to use the Windows tool TortoiseSVN, because the default tool for UNIX and Linux is so badly written. I do like TortoiseSVN, it is a well designed tool.
The SVN command-line is available on Windows too. Also, all SVN clients use the libraries provided by SVN, used by the SVN command-line etc. So they all treat it equally in the same way. If one client stores it encrypted they all will. But you need a new enough version as several others have said.
Unfortunately, I suggest you take a look at any sites that use "svn://" access to their Subversion repository. Those typically use plaintext passwords stored on the server in repo/conf/passwd. So it's not just client security that the Subversion authors mishandle, it's server side security as well.
If you're that concerned, then don't use the svn:// protocol - use WebDAV instead. Then it uses the native Apache Authentication system; and with htaccess you get encrypted passwords.
The Apache2/WebDAV is also the more robust version in many ways, and requires less system "hacks" to keep it running right especially with multiple users.
Then they have a compatibility set somehow as the older drivers would not be able to operate in Kernel Mode as they would expect, which was part of XPDM. The Win2k driver model won't work, nor will NT4's. So the point still stands.
Even in Windows 95 there were registry settings to change the behavior of whether the kernel would use all the physical memory before swapping pages to disk. It actually did quite well to improve performance unless you used a dial-up modem with Outlook.
That said, Windows has historically always kept physical RAM usage low and paging to disk high. However, if I recall correctly they may have changed that for Windows 7 - using more of the physical RAM before paging to disk. That is probably what is being observed in the reports, so it's likely a very unfair comparison of apples and oranges.
Unfortunately, many of these errors are _not_ subtle. Let's take Subversion as an example. It is filled with mishandling of user passwords, by storing them in plaintext in the svnserve "passwd" file or in the user's home directory. Given that it also provides password based SSH access, and stores those passwords in plaintext, it's clear that it was written by and is maintained by people who simply _do not care_ about security. Similarly, if you read the code, you will see numerous "case" statements that have no exception handling: they simply ignore cases that the programmer didn't think of.
Please upgrade your installed version of SVN.
Yes, at one point that was true, but it hasn't been for a long time. If I recall correctly, SVN 1.3 or 1.4 started using encrypted passwords on Windows, and as others have stated that data has always been stored in your home directory. SVN on Windows doesn't even use the registry (though the CollabNet installer does add some registry entries if you use it, but they are minimal and only useful for locating the installed versions).
Which OS new is using 5 year old drivers, windows 7 does not like XP drivers.
Most Windows 2000/XP drivers work in Windows 7. This is how non-Aero capable graphics drivers work in Windows Vista and Windows 7; they use the same driver interface as in Windows XP.
I'm pretty sure all Video and Sound drivers will from WinXP SP3 and earlier will not work with Windows Vista and later.
Why? Because Microsoft redesigned those systems for Windows Vista - they now operate primarily in user-space, and Windows 7 uses the same architecture being based on the same kernel as Vista. (Yes, Microsoft is using a similar architecture now to X for the Video Drivers.)
But peripherals that traditionally used a serial port, for the most part, still use a serial port. The camera is the only exception I know of.
Well, you also have scanners (though they were typically SCSI), external modems (who has a modem now?!), Computer-Enhanced Sewing Machines, and then there was the specialized equipment - like the Vistar Datacom MT 2000 that I worked with for asset tracking a few years back.
And of course, those specialized devices have very low turn-over, and don't get upgraded very much.
Either way, the computer industry itself has left serial behind, while the peripheral industries continue to use it. Thus the USBSerial device industry is doing quite well.
You don't get as many ports on a laptop, because nobody would use them anyhow, because nobody uses peripherals with a laptop anyway, because carrying them around everywhere would kind of defeat the whole portability thing, which is the main point of a laptop.
Actually there are a few industries (e.g. trucking) where serial ports on equipment are very common place - so you do need them on portable devices. Unfortunately, the computer industry is more or less ignoring those industries so you have to get the converters instead.
Even if you did move to USB on the newer equipment, it'd still be years before the serial ports disappeared simply b/c of the slow turnover of the equipment.
So yes, there are good uses for RS-232/422 that don't defeat the purpose of portability.
And, FYI, USB was suppose to be the serial port killer, and the computer industry is treating it as such - so they've been dropping it more and more.
Linux has already been ported to ARM, Windows has not.
Windows Mobile/WinCE/etc. have all been ported to ARM, which Microsoft provides support for.
In fact, you even get the source code so that you can port it to the architecture of your choice; but then you have to support it yourself. That's the catch.
Linux, OTOH, is supported on dozens of processor architectures from the ARM to the Itanium to the Cell, whether you want an 8-bit processor or 256-bit processor. Windows can't do that.
RS-232 might be absent from a lot of consumer motherboards
Yeah? Can you actually name a recent non-Apple desktop or workstation motherboard that doesn't have it?
It is actually very hard to find an RS-232 port on newer computers now. Almost all manufacturers have dropped them from laptops at the very least, if not their desktops as well.
Typically if you want to work with a serial port you now have to get a USB to Serial port interface.
RS-232/422/etc have gone away.
BTW - neither my Lenovo T61P nor my wife's HP laptop have a serial port of any kind on them. My 2003 era Dell D600 does, but most of the Dell's don't today (or even a few years ago).
Design decisions must still be thought about, developed, reviewed, revised. All of the documents must still be created and edited. All of them still need to be reviewed and re-edited. All of them still need to be relooked at and revised when the client makes "small" changes. For any decent-sized job, the people involved must be kept informed, given tasks, those tasks must be organized and coordinated, e-mails must be read and answered, comments and suggestions responded to, decisions made and defended, and so on.
Your imagination is right. Everything that you mention needs to be done. The thing that SharePoint did was provide a central repository. It took the information out of various "silos" (I hate that term but it fits the scenario) and centralized it. It provided a single reference point to documents that were previously spread across file shares, locked into AutoCAD, sitting in Exchange, etc. Instead of bringing all of the documentation together at the end of the project, or having chunks of it sitting in various departments that then needed to be tracked down, the information was all in one place. The entire process of "giving people tasks" and "keeping them informed" is the purpose of SharePoint.
You mean like the vastly superior Subversion? or CVS? or GIT?
Sharepoint, LiveLink, etc. are very poor document management systems. Revision Control Software like Subversion, GIT, and even CVS are far better and provide at least as good management functionality for layouts. Subversion would even let you get the a full database as the back-end if you like.
Actually, I had to dive into this a little in fall of 2009. Starting with Win7
and Windows Server 2008 by default Windows will phone home to validate your
license every week. You can configure this somewhat, but it becomes problematic
if you do not have an Internet connection - then Windows invalidates your valid
license when it can't reach the Microsoft servers. The only way to disable this
functionality is with a volume license - and even then, you have to go through
special steps via the command-line to get it to validate once and be done.
I'm confused. You saying "I have no use for PowerShell" is the same as a Windows admin saying "I have no use for bash".
Not quite.
It's your own personal preference, even though PowerShell is as powerful and useful as bash, if not more so. Just because you're not as proficient in it doesn't make it any less powerful. And just because it works on objects doesn't mean you lose "good text processing", since you can use any of the gnu tools with it as well.
Actually you cannot use the GNU tools with it - namely because of how the output comes out, and also because the aliased a lot of the GNU tools (ls, etc.) to cmd-lets in PowerShell. True, you can unalias, but it still doesn't solve the format issue.
PowerShell is "powerful" in its own way; but it still is very lacking.
You're trying to administer Windows systems as if they were Linux systems, and of course that's not going to work, just as trying to administer Linux systems as if they Windows or MacOS won't work.
Didn't say that - just gave one example in Unix/Linux world that has no Windows analogue.
Nothing GUI is required these days.. Anything you can do from a GUI can be done from a command line.
And if you really really insist, there's always cygwin with bash, or SFU with bash, and the complete set of tools.
SFU is a poor excuse of Unix/Linux/etc. support. But then again, so is the POSIX support in Windows. (Yes, it's there. But Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make sure it doesn't have the performance that the Win32 API has.)
CygWin is okay - yes, it has the tools; but it still pitiful as far as integration goes.
End result: neither are a solution. And neither addresses administration - just user/program environment. So as far as this discussion goes, they are moot.
You really failed to answer my question though, you instead chose to answer "The tools to administer Windows without re-learning my Unix knowledge just aren't there".
Actually no. I (i) compared the scripting capabilities, and (ii) gave you one example that has no Windows analogue. Didn't say how - or what tools were used.
You can argue proficiency with the first. But the second directly answers your question.
Regarding the apps themselves, it's true that many require registry settings, but those are the apps, and there are dozens of ways to solve that problem.
Then please name a few.
Just because you don't like push servers doesn't mean they don't work.
This has nothing to do with push servers. I was simply qualifying them as not being close to comparison to the example given. The example given requires zero installation on the client systems - everything needed comes along for the ride. Zero interaction on the user's part, and zero extra configuration or lost time on the user's part. Even with the "quiet install" option some apps provide, it's still not a comparison.
And mounting your/usr partition on a network drive is probably one of the stupidest ways to construct your network. If the network is down, nobody can run their apps. If the network is down, or having issues, things crash. If you're going to do that, why not just run everying on a terminal server? It's a lot less work.
That's also not a comparison. The equivalent would be running a network-booted Linux/Unix/BSD system that then does what I said - which also provides even better security than the Windows Terminal Server AND better performance. Sorry, you still don't get the credit.
Also, Terminal Server takes a lot more bandwidth than mounting a network drive remotely - especially with Microsoft's very inefficient version.
Can you give an example of these tools that aren't there?
I do quite extensive scripting on Windows; but I still can't match the scripting support under a standard Bash shell - and I have no use for PowerShell. The GNU Win32 port of the Linux tool set works somewhat okay, but still has limitations that are not there under a better shell.
Windows Scripting Host (WSH) is okay as well, but still very lacking. Some things are relatively hard to do (like reading the registry), which PowerShell does seem to address but at the expense of good text processing (since PowerShell works on Objects not text streams).
Then you get into the various replication technologies - rsync, SSH, etc. Windows either lacks the functionality, severely hinders it, or makes poor substitutions.
Microsoft tends to focus everything around a GUI. But there is far more to running a system than just clicking a couple buttons here and there.
For example, try managing the installed applications from a central location on a Windows system - and I don't mean controlling through a Push Installer, I mean install once run everywhere. Try the following:
Install application to a common folder on one system.
Have 30 different users start the application on 30 different system and expect it to work.
This typically works very easily on Unix/Linux/BSD systems - that common folder is mapped as/usr from a central server - with the required libraries, configurations, etc. also mapped under it. The admin installs it on one system, and it is immediately replicated out to all joining systems without any further installation.
Further, in the case of a problem the admin can fix it once on that same system and have it immediately available everywhere else too.
Comparatively, Windows programs tend to use the registry, and even programs like Microsoft Office require settings in the Registry that are put there only by the Installer, and don't forget about Licensing - they typically don't have any way to license software to support that kind of setup as each system has to have its license key available on that system (typically via a number of registry settings, making it hard to track down).
Sure you can set up roaming profiles, which really just means that the user's registry (HKCU) gets saved onto a server so its accessible from multiple machines - but those all have to be nearly identical in software installations, and it doesn't upgrade to well (you end up with different copies for Windows XP vs. Windows Vista vs. Windows 7 as they are not necessarily compatible with the actual settings).
So yes, it is very easy for a single person to administer thousands of computers using Linux/Unix/BSD - a couple drive maps (/usr,/home), and you are pretty much done. And if you want, you can send the individual computer logs (via syslog) to a central location.
A windows admin with a clue can maintain just as many Windows machines as a unix admin can with unix machines these days.
The tools are there... I currently have about 40 Windows 2003/2008 servers under my control and they need very little maintenance. I've previously had a similar number of linux boxes to maintain, and really, its much of a muchness.
So a Windows admin can easily administer a few thousand servers by themselves? Not the last I heard.
The typicalUnix/Linux/BSD admin administers thousands of servers by themselves.
The typicalWindows admin administers < 100 servers by themselves.
Even with all the scripting in Windows now (PowerShell, WSH) and.NET - the tools for a Windows admin to be able to administer as many systems as a Unix/Linux/BSD admin are just not there. The systems are too instable and need too much personal attention at the very least - even if the tools overall were there.
Since we fixed our power situation and run Exchange on an ESX cluster, its solid. It only ever reboots when we tell it to.
One company I worked at had a massive Exchange install with some very good exchange admins. Yet, the system still went down on updates (not terribly bad though since they usually had the update tested on a separate test network first), and in one instance (that I am aware of) was down for several days (a week if i recall correctly) - this at a company that did a lot of business with people where communication was key. No email? Proposals were likely hard to get out to the client, or you might not learn about the billion dollar proposal until a little too late, etc.
Honestly, see exchange for what it really is: a resource hungry, expensive, proprietary, bloated piece of crap that requires at least one admin per server to properly maintain.
Compare it with many of the alternatives, which may require one admin per hundred or thousand servers.
More relevant with regards to Exchange vs Gmail - how do you manage your data retention policy, backups, disaster recovery, etc with gmail? Hope and pray that Google maintain their free service to a standard your business expects?
Google doesn't just have a free Gmail service. You can also have a pay-for account (or business account) that has more guarantees per service.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if you could host it on-site with the Google Appliance or other Google Services - see Google's Enterprise site for details, which btw also mentions email backups/security/etc.
Put Windows CD in computer. Turn on. Click "next". After the install is done, Windows Update starts automatically, and grabs most of the specific drivers.
Assuming it has the base set of drivers to start with and that the computer is configured to boot CDs before the hard drive.
Granted, most cheap computers are probably easily covered. but that doesn't mean their network cards are, or modems, or other things. For example, it's pretty difficult to get a WinModem working in Windows without manufacturer provided drivers. Too many built-in network cards suffer from non-standard drives too.
And don't forget that WinXP until SP2 didn't come with SATA drivers either. So if your hard drive is now a SATA drive, but you only have a recovery disk for WinXP original, you'd be out of luck in using it.
That's where the vendor disks come in - they provide support for how they shipped the system to you, even if the drivers were not part of the standard Windows media.
So I'd still have to say that the average person cannot so easily re-install Windows without a vendor disk - especially when so much of the Windows-oriented hardware does depend on vendor specific drivers that Microsoft doesn't provide.
The big names in networking (AT&T, Charter, etc.) are going to sue Google on antitrust grounds because it is easier to hire lawyers than to upgrade failing and obsolete networks.
Perhaps they will. But consider: this is not a profit engine for Google, in much the same way that Android isn't a profit engine. Google says this service is to test new high-bandwidth technologies, and I don't doubt that's true, but it's probably also true that they're just trying to upset this market because the established cable companies are a threat to their other businesses, both because of their slowness to raise the bandwidth bar and because of their marriages to legacy content distribution.
Because of this, Google probably doesn't care whether they own this service or not. I bet if the big networking dinosaurs sued Google, Google could settle with them by agreeing to spin off the fiber Internet company, yet still accomplish all of the original project goals. It would be like if Google had to cut Android free - it would still satisfy Google's main goal of creating an open platform that's more friendly to their mobile web services than Apple's or Microsoft's is likely to be.
And at the same time it would end up exposing the carriers for what they really are, and it would end up being a big PR problem for all of them.
That might not be a bad idea.../me calls for a Boston CD Party!
As an environmentalist I want to strongly object to dumping plastic in the oceans.
If you want a publicity stunt then dumping the CDs by the doorstep to the department
of justice might be a better idea. Sadly these days that will probably get you
under trial as a terrorist.
Slashdot Mirror
Elections only work when the elected actually listen to the people electing them, and not corporations, etc.
The sad part is, that both the Republicans and the Democrats have gotten to the point where neither are really paying attention to the people, listening mostly to whoever gives them the most money for their re-election campaigns, during which both candidates spew a bunch of promises which after getting elected they turn around and break nearly all of, blaming the other party as a result even though they were the ones that made the compromise on their promise.
Sadly too, most in Congress have never know a job outside of politics. It's all they do, and all they will do until they retire - or in some cases die. They have no interest in doing anything else.
This could probably be mostly fixed by putting in term limits on Congress; since it would force a faster turnover of who could be elected or re-elected. But unless the people get behind it, and vote it in as a Constitutional Amendment (requiring 3/4ths of the States to pass) it'll never happen - it's just not in the elected official's interest to do so. (Yes, the people could pass do it - you just have to get it on the different ballots before the people; alternatively, the State Congresses could do it, or the Federal Congress could do it; but the later two have no interest in doing so.)
I've often wondered what makes a product "separate". It's a distinction that's forever being debated on the LKML. Is VMWare in violation of Linux Kernel's GPL License? What about ATI's binary driver? What about somebody who sells hardware with a Linux kernel?
According to Linus Torvalds - no they do not. He even somewhat encourages it. See LKML archives for details.
So do these technical distinctions mean anything at all? Not in the least. And thus, the terms of the GPL would easily and happily apply to the entire product, no matter how technically distinct the pieces.
And sure, you have your opinions on each of these examples, but each of these examples have their own gotchas that would make sense to a significant portion of the population, especially the non-technical part(s) of humanity.
The GPL bows to the author of the work in such cases. Linus Torvalds says pretty much go-ahead; but Nokia/Trolltech say ask the FSF.
Unfortunately it is a pretty muddy area; but that is part of the freedom sorta...even though it does make it pretty hairy all around.
Yes, I see. In order to use an open source tool securely, I have to force all my clients to use the Windows tool TortoiseSVN, because the default tool for UNIX and Linux is so badly written. I do like TortoiseSVN, it is a well designed tool.
The SVN command-line is available on Windows too. Also, all SVN clients use the libraries provided by SVN, used by the SVN command-line etc. So they all treat it equally in the same way. If one client stores it encrypted they all will. But you need a new enough version as several others have said.
Unfortunately, I suggest you take a look at any sites that use "svn://" access to their Subversion repository. Those typically use plaintext passwords stored on the server in repo/conf/passwd. So it's not just client security that the Subversion authors mishandle, it's server side security as well.
If you're that concerned, then don't use the svn:// protocol - use WebDAV instead. Then it uses the native Apache Authentication system; and with htaccess you get encrypted passwords.
The Apache2/WebDAV is also the more robust version in many ways, and requires less system "hacks" to keep it running right especially with multiple users.
Then they have a compatibility set somehow as the older drivers would not be able to operate in Kernel Mode as they would expect, which was part of XPDM. The Win2k driver model won't work, nor will NT4's. So the point still stands.
Even in Windows 95 there were registry settings to change the behavior of whether the kernel would use all the physical memory before swapping pages to disk. It actually did quite well to improve performance unless you used a dial-up modem with Outlook.
That said, Windows has historically always kept physical RAM usage low and paging to disk high. However, if I recall correctly they may have changed that for Windows 7 - using more of the physical RAM before paging to disk. That is probably what is being observed in the reports, so it's likely a very unfair comparison of apples and oranges.
Please upgrade your installed version of SVN.
Yes, at one point that was true, but it hasn't been for a long time. If I recall correctly, SVN 1.3 or 1.4 started using encrypted passwords on Windows, and as others have stated that data has always been stored in your home directory. SVN on Windows doesn't even use the registry (though the CollabNet installer does add some registry entries if you use it, but they are minimal and only useful for locating the installed versions).
Most Windows 2000/XP drivers work in Windows 7. This is how non-Aero capable graphics drivers work in Windows Vista and Windows 7; they use the same driver interface as in Windows XP.
I'm pretty sure all Video and Sound drivers will from WinXP SP3 and earlier will not work with Windows Vista and later. Why? Because Microsoft redesigned those systems for Windows Vista - they now operate primarily in user-space, and Windows 7 uses the same architecture being based on the same kernel as Vista. (Yes, Microsoft is using a similar architecture now to X for the Video Drivers.)
But peripherals that traditionally used a serial port, for the most part, still use a serial port. The camera is the only exception I know of.
Well, you also have scanners (though they were typically SCSI), external modems (who has a modem now?!), Computer-Enhanced Sewing Machines, and then there was the specialized equipment - like the Vistar Datacom MT 2000 that I worked with for asset tracking a few years back.
And of course, those specialized devices have very low turn-over, and don't get upgraded very much.
Either way, the computer industry itself has left serial behind, while the peripheral industries continue to use it. Thus the USBSerial device industry is doing quite well.
You don't get as many ports on a laptop, because nobody would use them anyhow, because nobody uses peripherals with a laptop anyway, because carrying them around everywhere would kind of defeat the whole portability thing, which is the main point of a laptop.
Actually there are a few industries (e.g. trucking) where serial ports on equipment are very common place - so you do need them on portable devices. Unfortunately, the computer industry is more or less ignoring those industries so you have to get the converters instead.
Even if you did move to USB on the newer equipment, it'd still be years before the serial ports disappeared simply b/c of the slow turnover of the equipment.
So yes, there are good uses for RS-232/422 that don't defeat the purpose of portability.
And, FYI, USB was suppose to be the serial port killer, and the computer industry is treating it as such - so they've been dropping it more and more.
Windows Mobile/WinCE/etc. have all been ported to ARM, which Microsoft provides support for.
In fact, you even get the source code so that you can port it to the architecture of your choice; but then you have to support it yourself. That's the catch.
Linux, OTOH, is supported on dozens of processor architectures from the ARM to the Itanium to the Cell, whether you want an 8-bit processor or 256-bit processor. Windows can't do that.
RS-232 might be absent from a lot of consumer motherboards
Yeah? Can you actually name a recent non-Apple desktop or workstation motherboard that doesn't have it?
It is actually very hard to find an RS-232 port on newer computers now. Almost all manufacturers have dropped them from laptops at the very least, if not their desktops as well.
Typically if you want to work with a serial port you now have to get a USB to Serial port interface.
RS-232/422/etc have gone away.
BTW - neither my Lenovo T61P nor my wife's HP laptop have a serial port of any kind on them. My 2003 era Dell D600 does, but most of the Dell's don't today (or even a few years ago).
Design decisions must still be thought about, developed, reviewed, revised. All of the documents must still be created and edited. All of them still need to be reviewed and re-edited. All of them still need to be relooked at and revised when the client makes "small" changes. For any decent-sized job, the people involved must be kept informed, given tasks, those tasks must be organized and coordinated, e-mails must be read and answered, comments and suggestions responded to, decisions made and defended, and so on.
Your imagination is right. Everything that you mention needs to be done. The thing that SharePoint did was provide a central repository. It took the information out of various "silos" (I hate that term but it fits the scenario) and centralized it. It provided a single reference point to documents that were previously spread across file shares, locked into AutoCAD, sitting in Exchange, etc. Instead of bringing all of the documentation together at the end of the project, or having chunks of it sitting in various departments that then needed to be tracked down, the information was all in one place. The entire process of "giving people tasks" and "keeping them informed" is the purpose of SharePoint.
You mean like the vastly superior Subversion? or CVS? or GIT?
Sharepoint, LiveLink, etc. are very poor document management systems. Revision Control Software like Subversion, GIT, and even CVS are far better and provide at least as good management functionality for layouts. Subversion would even let you get the a full database as the back-end if you like.
Actually, I had to dive into this a little in fall of 2009. Starting with Win7 and Windows Server 2008 by default Windows will phone home to validate your license every week. You can configure this somewhat, but it becomes problematic if you do not have an Internet connection - then Windows invalidates your valid license when it can't reach the Microsoft servers. The only way to disable this functionality is with a volume license - and even then, you have to go through special steps via the command-line to get it to validate once and be done.
More information available here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979805.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303276.aspx
I'm confused. You saying "I have no use for PowerShell" is the same as a Windows admin saying "I have no use for bash".
Not quite.
It's your own personal preference, even though PowerShell is as powerful and useful as bash, if not more so. Just because you're not as proficient in it doesn't make it any less powerful. And just because it works on objects doesn't mean you lose "good text processing", since you can use any of the gnu tools with it as well.
Actually you cannot use the GNU tools with it - namely because of how the output comes out, and also because the aliased a lot of the GNU tools (ls, etc.) to cmd-lets in PowerShell. True, you can unalias, but it still doesn't solve the format issue.
PowerShell is "powerful" in its own way; but it still is very lacking.
You're trying to administer Windows systems as if they were Linux systems, and of course that's not going to work, just as trying to administer Linux systems as if they Windows or MacOS won't work.
Didn't say that - just gave one example in Unix/Linux world that has no Windows analogue.
Nothing GUI is required these days.. Anything you can do from a GUI can be done from a command line.
And if you really really insist, there's always cygwin with bash, or SFU with bash, and the complete set of tools.
SFU is a poor excuse of Unix/Linux/etc. support. But then again, so is the POSIX support in Windows. (Yes, it's there. But Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make sure it doesn't have the performance that the Win32 API has.)
CygWin is okay - yes, it has the tools; but it still pitiful as far as integration goes.
End result: neither are a solution. And neither addresses administration - just user/program environment. So as far as this discussion goes, they are moot.
You really failed to answer my question though, you instead chose to answer "The tools to administer Windows without re-learning my Unix knowledge just aren't there".
Actually no. I (i) compared the scripting capabilities, and (ii) gave you one example that has no Windows analogue. Didn't say how - or what tools were used.
You can argue proficiency with the first. But the second directly answers your question.
Regarding the apps themselves, it's true that many require registry settings, but those are the apps, and there are dozens of ways to solve that problem.
Then please name a few.
Just because you don't like push servers doesn't mean they don't work.
This has nothing to do with push servers. I was simply qualifying them as not being close to comparison to the example given. The example given requires zero installation on the client systems - everything needed comes along for the ride. Zero interaction on the user's part, and zero extra configuration or lost time on the user's part. Even with the "quiet install" option some apps provide, it's still not a comparison.
And mounting your /usr partition on a network drive is probably one of the stupidest ways to construct your network. If the network is down, nobody can run their apps. If the network is down, or having issues, things crash. If you're going to do that, why not just run everying on a terminal server? It's a lot less work.
That's also not a comparison. The equivalent would be running a network-booted Linux/Unix/BSD system that then does what I said - which also provides even better security than the Windows Terminal Server AND better performance. Sorry, you still don't get the credit.
Also, Terminal Server takes a lot more bandwidth than mounting a network drive remotely - especially with Microsoft's very inefficient version.
I do quite extensive scripting on Windows; but I still can't match the scripting support under a standard Bash shell - and I have no use for PowerShell. The GNU Win32 port of the Linux tool set works somewhat okay, but still has limitations that are not there under a better shell.
Windows Scripting Host (WSH) is okay as well, but still very lacking. Some things are relatively hard to do (like reading the registry), which PowerShell does seem to address but at the expense of good text processing (since PowerShell works on Objects not text streams).
Then you get into the various replication technologies - rsync, SSH, etc. Windows either lacks the functionality, severely hinders it, or makes poor substitutions.
Microsoft tends to focus everything around a GUI. But there is far more to running a system than just clicking a couple buttons here and there.
For example, try managing the installed applications from a central location on a Windows system - and I don't mean controlling through a Push Installer, I mean install once run everywhere. Try the following:
This typically works very easily on Unix/Linux/BSD systems - that common folder is mapped as /usr from a central server - with the required libraries, configurations, etc. also mapped under it. The admin installs it on one system, and it is immediately replicated out to all joining systems without any further installation.
/home), and you are pretty much done. And if you want, you can send the individual computer logs (via syslog) to a central location.
Further, in the case of a problem the admin can fix it once on that same system and have it immediately available everywhere else too.
Comparatively, Windows programs tend to use the registry, and even programs like Microsoft Office require settings in the Registry that are put there only by the Installer, and don't forget about Licensing - they typically don't have any way to license software to support that kind of setup as each system has to have its license key available on that system (typically via a number of registry settings, making it hard to track down).
Sure you can set up roaming profiles, which really just means that the user's registry (HKCU) gets saved onto a server so its accessible from multiple machines - but those all have to be nearly identical in software installations, and it doesn't upgrade to well (you end up with different copies for Windows XP vs. Windows Vista vs. Windows 7 as they are not necessarily compatible with the actual settings).
So yes, it is very easy for a single person to administer thousands of computers using Linux/Unix/BSD - a couple drive maps (/usr,
There can be only one!
Resistance is futile.
So a Windows admin can easily administer a few thousand servers by themselves? Not the last I heard.
.NET - the tools for a Windows admin to be able to administer as many systems as a Unix/Linux/BSD admin are just not there. The systems are too instable and need too much personal attention at the very least - even if the tools overall were there.
The typicalUnix/Linux/BSD admin administers thousands of servers by themselves.
The typicalWindows admin administers < 100 servers by themselves.
Even with all the scripting in Windows now (PowerShell, WSH) and
Shitty admin / shitty exchange (or substitute "product" for exchange) implementation = shitty results.
Since we fixed our power situation and run Exchange on an ESX cluster, its solid. It only ever reboots when we tell it to.
One company I worked at had a massive Exchange install with some very good exchange admins. Yet, the system still went down on updates (not terribly bad though since they usually had the update tested on a separate test network first), and in one instance (that I am aware of) was down for several days (a week if i recall correctly) - this at a company that did a lot of business with people where communication was key. No email? Proposals were likely hard to get out to the client, or you might not learn about the billion dollar proposal until a little too late, etc.
Honestly, see exchange for what it really is: a resource hungry, expensive, proprietary, bloated piece of crap that requires at least one admin per server to properly maintain.
Compare it with many of the alternatives, which may require one admin per hundred or thousand servers.
More relevant with regards to Exchange vs Gmail - how do you manage your data retention policy, backups, disaster recovery, etc with gmail? Hope and pray that Google maintain their free service to a standard your business expects?
Google doesn't just have a free Gmail service. You can also have a pay-for account (or business account) that has more guarantees per service.
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if you could host it on-site with the Google Appliance or other Google Services - see Google's Enterprise site for details, which btw also mentions email backups/security/etc.
If you noticed I explicitly called those out as being some of the greatest offenders.
Also, even if a motherboard has an ethernet card built in, you typically get better performance in desktops with dedicated cards.
... with the damned "I'm a" bullshit? It's getting really old.
I'm a PC! Well I'm a Mac!
And back there you have Linux who is insecure and just has to jump onto the bandwagon.
Only video I've seen had Linux as some hot chick, not insecure at all...you'll probably be able to find it on YouTube.
Put Windows CD in computer. Turn on. Click "next". After the install is done, Windows Update starts automatically, and grabs most of the specific drivers.
Assuming it has the base set of drivers to start with and that the computer is configured to boot CDs before the hard drive.
Granted, most cheap computers are probably easily covered. but that doesn't mean their network cards are, or modems, or other things. For example, it's pretty difficult to get a WinModem working in Windows without manufacturer provided drivers. Too many built-in network cards suffer from non-standard drives too.
And don't forget that WinXP until SP2 didn't come with SATA drivers either. So if your hard drive is now a SATA drive, but you only have a recovery disk for WinXP original, you'd be out of luck in using it.
That's where the vendor disks come in - they provide support for how they shipped the system to you, even if the drivers were not part of the standard Windows media.
So I'd still have to say that the average person cannot so easily re-install Windows without a vendor disk - especially when so much of the Windows-oriented hardware does depend on vendor specific drivers that Microsoft doesn't provide.
The big names in networking (AT&T, Charter, etc.) are going to sue Google on antitrust grounds because it is easier to hire lawyers than to upgrade failing and obsolete networks.
Perhaps they will. But consider: this is not a profit engine for Google, in much the same way that Android isn't a profit engine. Google says this service is to test new high-bandwidth technologies, and I don't doubt that's true, but it's probably also true that they're just trying to upset this market because the established cable companies are a threat to their other businesses, both because of their slowness to raise the bandwidth bar and because of their marriages to legacy content distribution.
Because of this, Google probably doesn't care whether they own this service or not. I bet if the big networking dinosaurs sued Google, Google could settle with them by agreeing to spin off the fiber Internet company, yet still accomplish all of the original project goals. It would be like if Google had to cut Android free - it would still satisfy Google's main goal of creating an open platform that's more friendly to their mobile web services than Apple's or Microsoft's is likely to be.
And at the same time it would end up exposing the carriers for what they really are, and it would end up being a big PR problem for all of them.
As an environmentalist I want to strongly object to dumping plastic in the oceans. If you want a publicity stunt then dumping the CDs by the doorstep to the department of justice might be a better idea. Sadly these days that will probably get you under trial as a terrorist.
Or how about on the artist's doorstep?
How is the application suppose to know that the user did not want it overpadded?
If layout produces a window bigger than the screen, reduce the padding until it fits.
That's not the job of the application. That's the job of the Windows Manager and the user. The user still may want it to be overpadded.