This isn't any big deal, other than it gives the slashdotters something else to exagerate and complain about. MS Office was released in several different versions as well (Standard, Small Biz, Professional, Premium,... student edition].
It's not a big deal. I'll tell now you know that although 8 versions of Windows are offered, only 2 version will primarily be sold. Homes will buy one version, while corporations and 'power users' may buy another. I have no clue why they are offering so many versions this time, the only thing I can think of is that it's worked well in the past so they are going to milk that cow again. No one is forcing us to buy all 8 versions, it's simply an option..... and sure that's not going to keep half the posters on this board from complaining tho.
From this, I get the feeling this has nothing to do with email content. If the feds are looking for someone, the body/subject of the email may be unimportant. After all, it could be encrypted in some fashion that the feds are unable to decrypt.
The headers are gold tho. The headers can help the feds trace down a suspected terrorist, here's an example.
1) Assume we have been tracking some terrorist in the US. We haven't arrested him because we are hoping he will lead us to a big fish. So, we install some monitoring software on his PC.
2) Eventually, he sets up a bogus hotmail account and then emails the big fish about his current email address.
3) The feds sit and wait for one of two options.
..Option 1) If possible, they monitor for that big fish to check his email. As soon as that account is logged into, we trace his IP and find out where he is. That of course depends on the email provider notifying us as soon as it's check. It could be most difficult if that ISP is not a US friendly ISP.
..Option 2) We wait for the small fish to start receiving emails to his bogus account. We can't read the body of the email (because it's encrypted), but we can look at the originating IP and trace it back to its source. It's slower than option 1, but hopefully the big fish will still be sitting behind his PC when we drop the bomb. Or if we are lucky, we capture him and then get him to decrypt the emails for us.
Another perk of knowing who the small fish is emailing, is that if the Big Fish's email host happens to be US Friendly, then we can monitor the big fish and see who else has been emailing him and then repeat the process again. It's possible that you could build up a fairly large matrix pretty quick.
I bet the guys at NTP are slapping their forehead, saying "DOH!", and thinking 'Ya know.. we probably should have settled for boatloads of money when he had the chance'.
Workstation is probably more widely used the GSX server. They are different Animals. Even tho GSX server may end up being free, we may install it to a single production server. However, we will also continue buying Workstation for testing. There are several people with Workstation installed to the laptops so they can create/run various VM's. On my laptop alone, I hav about 8 VM's that I use for testing (various OS, VPN softwares, script design, etc). I would never install GSX to my laptop.
1) These tech companies have no choice but to do business with China.
I never said that. Companies are free to do business with whoever they choose, the companies should simply obey the law.
2) There is no such thing as civil disobedience. A law is a law is a law, and if it says to throw live puppies in the mulcher then by God, that's what you do.
I find it odd that you get this from reading my posts. You are starting to concern me. There is such a thing as civil disobedience. I'm sure there's a wiki article on it. Google/MS aren't practicing civil disobedience, not does the referencing artcle even touch on that. My point is the Google/MS are obeying the law, and they shouldn't be punished for doing so.
3) Corporations have no responsibilities beyond their own bottom lines. Not to human decency, not to the environment, not to the quality of life of their customers or workers. The governments of the countries in which they do business are the corporations' only conscience.
A corporation's primary responsibilities include obeying the law. Human decency, the environment, and the quality of life of the coworkers are are controlled by the law. It is up to the company if they want to provide extra measures on top of that. For example, the law doesn't say you have to get a Christmas Bonus, but many companies do as a type of reward for their employees. Companies are allowed to do such things because it doesn't conflict with the law. Companies may not choose to ignore a land's law simply because some other company may disagree. Nor is it Google/MS responsibility to try and change the law in China, nor should others assume it is and try to punish Google/MS for not attempting to change another countries law. If you go off on that tangent, why to stop you from saying Google/MS are responsible for stopping the starvation in Ethiopia or the AIDS crisis in Africa. Heck, or what's to keep a chinese company from refusing to pay America taxes for their factory in America simply because the chinese back home don't think it's right to pay american taxes.
The law is the law. If you don't like it, then try to get some guys together and try to get it changed. Create a lobby group. Educate yourself on the issues.
Microsoft and Google do business in another country. They follow that countries laws, and that makes them the bad guy?
The law is the law. When doing business anywhere, you must obey the laws that that land, not just the laws you agree with.
And moreover, if you want to put pressure on a foreign body to change their laws.... wouldn't that be the job of politicians (talking to other politicians) and not the job of some corporation?
With EMC, you do pay a lot for the name, but you also get a lot for the price. We have an EMC at our data center that most of our servers run on. We also have a test 'SataBoy' (soon to be replaced by the SataBeast) hooked up to another server that we use for replication and a Disk-2-Disk-2-Tape solution. The Sataboy is much cheaper then the equivilant space on a sataboy, but you do lose a lot of features.
If you could create a product similar to what EMC offers at half the price, then we'd be interested. I don't see it happeing tho.. well, not unless you happen to work for NetApp, heh.
Oh.. and it's not a big deal if the big *ss EMC has one of it's 2,400 drive failing fairly often. The EMC 'phones home' on it's own to report the bad drive and dispatch a tech to swap the drive out for you. It's not like you have to check all 2,400 drives yourself.
The Xboxes are probably still sold at a lose. They don't make money off the Xbox, they make money from the games. If people just buy a cheap Xbox and then pirate the games as they download them to an internal drive, then are are losing quite a bit of money.
MS is trying to force the console to use used solely for the intention it was designed for. You can't really fault them for that. Now, if this updates disables feature that MS published, then you'd have a solid footing to complain.
... that's just my view tho.
NTP may have just lost a lot of money
on
Hopes Rise for RIM
·
· Score: 1
Now that RIM has a software workaround, I'm thinking that NTP may have just lost a lot of money. RIM may no longer have any reason to settle out of court with NTP, or at least they may cut the offer way back as a result.
I'm curious as to if this software will work on all BlackBerry models, or just the newer ones.
You found a vulnerability of which we were previously unaware? Here's a bigger check. Keep up the good work, valued one!
I think they tried this at NASA when Challenger blew up. "Find a defective O-Ring and get a reward for saving lived". Funny thing is, this actually caused defects to go UP. The more defects there are (or that you create on purpose), the more that can be found, and as a result the more rewards you can collect.
For those that don't approve of the ISP forcing QOS rules on you, do you also disagree with them using it to aid VOIP traffic? They use it to enhance the experince of their customers and ultimately their profits. They are a business, when it comes down to it, they can do what they please. If people actually did complain and jump ship, they would change it.
Even if they did use QOS to make Yahoo load quicker than Google, would any of you truly notice? Would you really notice if Google took 1.2 seconds to load instead of 1.0?
I've been using MS Office since the first version came out and I'm still waiting some basic features. For example there's still no news reader in Outlook?!?!?! Sure, Outlook Express has a built-in news reader but it doesn't have a calendar. I must be a lousy user, because I can't name a single thing that would've improved my Office usability since Office'97 was released.
Funny... Microsoft must have listened to the other slashdot users that b*tch because MS tends to add 'bloated' features to apps that don't need to be there. Perhaps they kept the newsreader out in an attempt to escape some complaints.
Personally, I love Office 2003. Outlook 2003 is a major improvement from earlier version. However, most improvements are only evident to corporate users.. and even then.. possible only corporate users running exchange. RPC over HTTP and Cached Mode are two options worth the upgrade for me. Being able to open two calenders in the same window pain is nice too (wasn't available in Outlook 2k w/o an add-on).
PowerPoint has made some very nice advances in the abililty to seemlessly integrate external media. If all you do it pop up simple text and shapes, then of course this won't mean anything to you.
I work for an accounting firm, and the guys here love Excel 2003 over Excel 2000. Personally, I don't use it enough to understand what they are talking about. But I take their word for it.
As for Access... I may have to agree with you there. Every story around the firm that involves access tends to have a bad ending. It seems to be a 'start small and pray you stay small' sort of app.
Contrary to want many may believe, a new version of office isn't going to suddenly make you more intellegent and make your powerpoint presentations look incrediable. It's up to you to read some docs and experiment. MS isn't going to make their apps auto-create everything for you (although I'm sure they'd like to try)
If it were me, and all I did was write the occasional email or letter to Aunt Sally, then Office 97 would be just fine. However, for the corp. environment... Outlook 2003 rocks. I look forward to Outlook 12. OpenOffice and other such apps are a joke to us, because nothing integrates with it that we use. Several of our app tie directly to Word/Excel/Outlook via toolbars and such. Open Office wouldn't be useful for anything other than writing a letter to Aunt Sally.
* Oh, you see no mention of Office XP in my post because all but one office skiped over that version. We didn't see a need for Office XP. It's possible we may not go to Office 12, but we certainly not going to dismiss it before it's released.
Secondly - Office 12 is suicide. Ordinary users hate GUI changes. It doesn't matter if the new GUI is good or not. There are probably tens of thousands of users here on Slashdot that agree on the problem of persuading people to make even a small jump from Windows 2000 to XP - or even worse the impossible switch to Linux or Mac.
I agree.. Microsoft still hasn't recovered from the Win 3.x to Win95 GUI change. Boy, what a terrible decision that was!
The GUI change will not be suicide for MS. Will people b*tch? Of course they will. People love to b*tch. Heck, pick any article here on slashdot for proof. What will happen is that the new GUI will come out, people will b*tch for a little bit, and then people will move on with their lives. The same thing happened here when we went from Office 2k to Office 2k3. People moaned about the new Outlook 2003 setup, but now love it. Office 12 will be nothing new. All that truely matters is compatiblity with older apps/toolbars. If everything works.. then everything is golden.
Microsoft products are easier to manage than Linux? On the Linux side, I simply rsync software to all our of workstations. I can even upgrade software people are using right at that moment (like rsyncing the newest thunderbird to/usr/local/thunderbird-1.0.7 while they use the thunderbird in /usr/local/thunderbird-1.0.6, and then moving the/usr/local/bin/thunderbird symbolic link to point to the new version). On the windows side, I wander around bugging people to take an early lunch or whatever while I install/upgrade software on their machine
Seems aweful combersome either way. I help manage about 1000 end user PCs, I haven't touched a PC for upgrades in about 4 years. With our setup, if an update needs to be applied, then we simply write a script to install it and it gets pushed out at logon. For example, if a user happens to be out of the office of a month and misses 16 updates, then the next time they come in their home office the script will apply the updates in order and reboot where needed (be it ms patches/updates, adobe updates, shortcuts, reg changes, or anything else). For those that use Windows, I would strongly suggest you look at an app called Winbatch.
To me, what make a windows environment easier to manage nowadays is the AD domain infrastructure and everything that comes with it. For those of you that claim to need to reboot your server every week.. perhaps the problem is how you have the server config. In one of our offices, we have a 1U pizza box doing file/print share and acting as a DFS/FRS real time replication hub of a 20 gig share. We happened to check that server yesterday and it had been up for a year and a half.
I'm betting several people on her try to blame there windows problems on something that's not windows' fault. For example, for those of you that may run Citrix and have to reboot your server faily often.... you may want to say 'windows sucks because of it'. Well, not really. You may want to look at the app you have installed to the machine. Heck, I bets there's "admins" out there that allow users to have blank PW's or otherwise simple passwords and then blame windows because a hacker got in using those simple passwords. Oh, and as far as complaining about if you put 200,000 files in a single directory and then complain that windows puke's when you try to view that directory. Welp.. techinically, that would be a windows problem.. but if I were the boss I would smack around the admin that's in charge of maintaining file structures standards. What kind of idiot admin would allow that? I'm smelling either Paper MSCE or 'A+ certified' former compUSA joker.
Oh.. we tried rsynch too at time one, but it didn't work out. It doing byte level changes were nice, but it doesn't scale well as far as being able to monitor it's activites easily (from 25+ sites), and also is all but useless if your network uses NTFS permissions. For those of you that are thinking about doing replication via windows (and want to do it on the cheap), check out 'Windows 2003 R2' the new DFRS is nice. I can't wait to convert out FRS structure over to it. (FRSv1 is file level, uhg).
Oh.. and our network does use linux as well. We have 2 linux boxes doing our virus/spam filter. There were several times in the past where email got backlogged for hours because the linux boxes couldn't handle the load. Should I start a ranting about how linux sucks because linux can't handle the load? No... the problem wasn't linux.. it was the app installed into linux that was causing the boxes to puke. That problem has since been fixed and now email is running great (so far). We have since purchases 2 dual AMD 64bitters to replace our email spam/virus scanners. However, we are having trouble getting them to talk to the EMC SAN. Should I join the over reacting bandwagon and start s
Since from the American's perspective, there are more foreigners than there are domestic workers (North Americans). Should we be protected under affirmative action? I'm tired of all the foreign workers keeping us domestic workers down!
Now, I'm not saying I'm willing to accept the same pay as those my job is going to, that's just crazy. They should pay me more because I'm a minority and I deserve it. Same pay for the same work only counts when it benefits me.
The entire registry isn't just a single file. For example, each user profile has their own registry file.
Also, by that arguement, I suppose you are suggesting to not only replace the registy with a million INI files, but to also have multiple backup copies of those INI files? Wonderful idea.. I bet if MS did that no one would complain at all.
Oh, by the way, it quite easy to tell windows to make scheduled snap shots of your registry in case you are concern that it will ever get corrupted. Personally, I think the chances are far greater that your HDD would fail as opposed to your registry getting corrupted. I don't know how MS did it, but I've never had a registry get corrupted. Hmm.. It's probably far greater that your powersupply would fail too.
I agree.. it would be nice if there were no installers and if everything was self contained. However, it's not going to happen. It's simply not practical. Programs share code inorder to keep their size down and to have uniformity in the actions.
IE: Let's say MS Word 2003 uses 50 DLL's (probably not to hard to believe). Let's says Excel 2003 also uses 50 DLL's, of which 30 are common to both apps. Are you saying that you'd rather have 100 DLL's between the two programs instead of just 70? Now, added Access, PowerPoint, Frontpage, etc to the mix. Things get crazy, and we're only talking DLL files.
Also, another lovely bit about the registy is that you can set program defaults and policies via the registy. At my office, we set Office 2003 program defaults via domain group policies. This policies get written into the regisry and the end user's PC acts accordingly. Personally, I love it when apps use the registy as much as possible. It opens up a world of possiblities. It really annoys me when I have to hunt for INI files on a PC and change settings there. Typically, registry keys remain constant while install paths can vary.
Also.. I write apps and use DLL's and other similar files. I dump all of them into a standard path (the path is also stated in the registry). That way, when I find a bug in a DLL, I can update the DLL in one place and all of my apps are fixed at once. I don't have to hunt down every other possible program of mine the user may have installed.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/02/23/jurassi c.beaver.ap/index.html
What? MS is bending to the will of a foreign land and obeying their laws? That makes them as bad a
Google! Let's start protesting!
... yes, it's sarcasm.
This isn't any big deal, other than it gives the slashdotters something else to exagerate and complain
about. MS Office was released in several different versions as well (Standard, Small Biz,
Professional, Premium,... student edition].
It's not a big deal. I'll tell now you know that although 8 versions of Windows are offered, only 2
version will primarily be sold. Homes will buy one version, while corporations and 'power users' may
buy another. I have no clue why they are offering so many versions this time, the only thing I can
think of is that it's worked well in the past so they are going to milk that cow again. No one is
forcing us to buy all 8 versions, it's simply an option.
the posters on this board from complaining tho.
From this, I get the feeling this has nothing to do with email content. If
the feds are looking for someone, the body/subject of the email may be
unimportant. After all, it could be encrypted in some fashion that the feds
are unable to decrypt.
The headers are gold tho. The headers can help the feds trace down a
suspected terrorist, here's an example.
1) Assume we have been tracking some terrorist in the US. We haven't
arrested him because we are hoping he will lead us to a big fish. So, we
install some monitoring software on his PC.
2) Eventually, he sets up a bogus hotmail account and then emails the big
fish about his current email address.
3) The feds sit and wait for one of two options.
..Option 1) If possible, they monitor for that big fish to check his email.
As soon as that account is logged into, we trace his IP and find out where
he is. That of course depends on the email provider notifying us as soon as
it's check. It could be most difficult if that ISP is not a US friendly
ISP.
..Option 2) We wait for the small fish to start receiving emails to his
bogus account. We can't read the body of the email (because it's
encrypted), but we can look at the originating IP and trace it back to its
source. It's slower than option 1, but hopefully the big fish will still be
sitting behind his PC when we drop the bomb. Or if we are lucky, we capture
him and then get him to decrypt the emails for us.
Another perk of knowing who the small fish is emailing, is that if the Big
Fish's email host happens to be US Friendly, then we can monitor the big
fish and see who else has been emailing him and then repeat the process
again. It's possible that you could build up a fairly large matrix pretty
quick.
I bet the guys at NTP are slapping their forehead, saying "DOH!", and thinking
'Ya know.. we probably should have settled for boatloads of money when he had
the chance'.
It sounds like the news over hyped a story for no reason. Say it ain't so!
Workstation is probably more widely used the GSX server. They are
different Animals. Even tho GSX server may end up being free, we may
install it to a single production server. However, we will also
continue buying Workstation for testing. There are several people with
Workstation installed to the laptops so they can create/run various
VM's. On my laptop alone, I hav about 8 VM's that I use for testing
(various OS, VPN softwares, script design, etc). I would never install
GSX to my laptop.
1) These tech companies have no choice but to do business with China.
I never said that. Companies are free to do business with whoever they
choose, the companies should simply obey the law.
2) There is no such thing as civil disobedience. A law is a law is a law,
and if it says to throw live puppies in the mulcher then by God, that's what
you do.
I find it odd that you get this from reading my posts. You are starting to
concern me. There is such a thing as civil disobedience. I'm sure there's
a wiki article on it. Google/MS aren't practicing civil disobedience, not
does the referencing artcle even touch on that. My point is the Google/MS
are obeying the law, and they shouldn't be punished for doing so.
3) Corporations have no responsibilities beyond their own bottom lines.
Not to human decency, not to the environment, not to the quality of life of
their customers or workers. The governments of the countries in which they
do business are the corporations' only conscience.
A corporation's primary responsibilities include obeying the law. Human
decency, the environment, and the quality of life of the coworkers are are
controlled by the law. It is up to the company if they want to provide
extra measures on top of that. For example, the law doesn't say you have to
get a Christmas Bonus, but many companies do as a type of reward for their
employees. Companies are allowed to do such things because it doesn't
conflict with the law. Companies may not choose to ignore a land's law
simply because some other company may disagree. Nor is it Google/MS
responsibility to try and change the law in China, nor should others assume
it is and try to punish Google/MS for not attempting to change another
countries law. If you go off on that tangent, why to stop you from saying
Google/MS are responsible for stopping the starvation in Ethiopia or the AIDS
crisis in Africa. Heck, or what's to keep a chinese company from
refusing to pay America taxes for their factory in America simply because
the chinese back home don't think it's right to pay american taxes.
The law is the law. If you don't like it, then try to get some guys
together and try to get it changed. Create a lobby group. Educate yourself
on the issues.
Microsoft and Google do business in another country. They follow that
countries laws, and that makes them the bad guy?
The law is the law. When doing business anywhere, you must obey the laws that
that land, not just the laws you agree with.
And moreover, if you want to put pressure on a foreign body to change their
laws.... wouldn't that be the job of politicians (talking to other
politicians) and not the job of some corporation?
Does this mean that IE is now the next 'Firefox Killer'?
Go for it.
With EMC, you do pay a lot for the name, but you also get a lot for
the price. We have an EMC at our data center that most of our
servers run on. We also have a test 'SataBoy' (soon to be replaced
by the SataBeast) hooked up to another server that we use for
replication and a Disk-2-Disk-2-Tape solution. The Sataboy is much
cheaper then the equivilant space on a sataboy, but you do lose a lot
of features.
If you could create a product similar to what EMC offers at half the
price, then we'd be interested. I don't see it happeing tho.. well,
not unless you happen to work for NetApp, heh.
Oh.. and it's not a big deal if the big *ss EMC has one of it's 2,400
drive failing fairly often. The EMC 'phones home' on it's own to
report the bad drive and dispatch a tech to swap the drive out for
you. It's not like you have to check all 2,400 drives yourself.
The Xboxes are probably still sold at a lose. They don't make
money off the Xbox, they make money from the games. If people just
buy a cheap Xbox and then pirate the games as they download them to
an internal drive, then are are losing quite a bit of money.
MS is trying to force the console to use used solely for the
intention it was designed for. You can't really fault them for
that. Now, if this updates disables feature that MS published,
then you'd have a solid footing to complain.
Now that RIM has a software workaround, I'm thinking that NTP may have
just lost a lot of money. RIM may no longer have any reason to
settle out of court with NTP, or at least they may cut the offer
way back as a result.
I'm curious as to if this software will work on all BlackBerry
models, or just the newer ones.
You found a vulnerability of which we were previously unaware? Here's a
bigger check. Keep up the good work, valued one!
I think they tried this at NASA when Challenger blew up. "Find a
defective O-Ring and get a reward for saving lived". Funny thing is,
this actually caused defects to go UP. The more defects there are (or
that you create on purpose), the more that can be found, and as a result
the more rewards you can collect.
Just a worthless tid bit...
For those that don't approve of the ISP forcing QOS rules on you, do you also
disagree with them using it to aid VOIP traffic? They use it to enhance the
experince of their customers and ultimately their profits. They are a
business, when it comes down to it, they can do what they please. If people
actually did complain and jump ship, they would change it.
Even if they did use QOS to make Yahoo load quicker than Google, would any of
you truly notice? Would you really notice if Google took 1.2 seconds to load
instead of 1.0?
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
And here I was thinking I was going to always give VOIP the highest priority in my QOS rules. It looks like there could be a new king!
I've been using MS Office since the first version came out and I'm still
waiting some basic features. For example there's still no news reader in
Outlook?!?!?! Sure, Outlook Express has a built-in news reader but it
doesn't have a calendar. I must be a lousy user, because I can't name a
single thing that would've improved my Office usability since Office'97 was
released.
Funny... Microsoft must have listened to the other slashdot users that
b*tch because MS tends to add 'bloated' features to apps that don't need to
be there. Perhaps they kept the newsreader out in an attempt to escape some
complaints.
Personally, I love Office 2003. Outlook 2003 is a major improvement from
earlier version. However, most improvements are only evident to corporate
users.. and even then.. possible only corporate users running exchange. RPC
over HTTP and Cached Mode are two options worth the upgrade for me. Being
able to open two calenders in the same window pain is nice too (wasn't
available in Outlook 2k w/o an add-on).
PowerPoint has made some very nice advances in the abililty to seemlessly
integrate external media. If all you do it pop up simple text and shapes,
then of course this won't mean anything to you.
I work for an accounting firm, and the guys here love Excel 2003 over Excel
2000. Personally, I don't use it enough to understand what they are talking
about. But I take their word for it.
As for Access... I may have to agree with you there. Every story around
the firm that involves access tends to have a bad ending. It seems to be a
'start small and pray you stay small' sort of app.
Contrary to want many may believe, a new version of office isn't going to
suddenly make you more intellegent and make your powerpoint presentations
look incrediable. It's up to you to read some docs and experiment. MS
isn't going to make their apps auto-create everything for you (although I'm
sure they'd like to try)
If it were me, and all I did was write the occasional email or letter to
Aunt Sally, then Office 97 would be just fine. However, for the corp.
environment... Outlook 2003 rocks. I look forward to Outlook 12.
OpenOffice and other such apps are a joke to us, because nothing integrates
with it that we use. Several of our app tie directly to Word/Excel/Outlook
via toolbars and such. Open Office wouldn't be useful for anything other
than writing a letter to Aunt Sally.
* Oh, you see no mention of Office XP in my post because all but one office
skiped over that version. We didn't see a need for Office XP. It's
possible we may not go to Office 12, but we certainly not going to dismiss
it before it's released.
Heh.. This pretty much sums it up: http://members.fortunecity.com/moondusted/simpsons /Grandpa_bitch.wav
Secondly - Office 12 is suicide. Ordinary users hate GUI changes. It doesn't
matter if the new GUI is good or not. There are probably tens of thousands of
users here on Slashdot that agree on the problem of persuading people to make
even a small jump from Windows 2000 to XP - or even worse the impossible
switch to Linux or Mac.
I agree.. Microsoft still hasn't recovered from the Win 3.x to Win95 GUI
change. Boy, what a terrible decision that was!
The GUI change will not be suicide for MS. Will people b*tch? Of course
they will. People love to b*tch. Heck, pick any article here on slashdot
for proof. What will happen is that the new GUI will come out, people will
b*tch for a little bit, and then people will move on with their lives. The
same thing happened here when we went from Office 2k to Office 2k3. People
moaned about the new Outlook 2003 setup, but now love it. Office 12 will be
nothing new. All that truely matters is compatiblity with older
apps/toolbars. If everything works.. then everything is golden.
Microsoft products are easier to manage than Linux? On the Linux side, I simply rsync software to all /usr/local/thunderbird-1.0.7 while they use the thunderbird in /usr/local/bin/thunderbird symbolic link to point to
our of workstations. I can even upgrade software people are using right at that moment (like rsyncing
the newest thunderbird to
/usr/local/thunderbird-1.0.6, and then moving the
the new version). On the windows side, I wander around bugging people to take an early lunch or
whatever while I install/upgrade software on their machine
Seems aweful combersome either way. I help manage about 1000 end user PCs, I haven't touched a PC
for upgrades in about 4 years. With our setup, if an update needs to be applied, then we simply
write a script to install it and it gets pushed out at logon. For example, if a user happens to be
out of the office of a month and misses 16 updates, then the next time they come in their home office
the script will apply the updates in order and reboot where needed (be it ms patches/updates, adobe
updates, shortcuts, reg changes, or anything else). For those that use Windows, I would strongly
suggest you look at an app called Winbatch.
To me, what make a windows environment easier to manage nowadays is the AD domain infrastructure and
everything that comes with it. For those of you that claim to need to reboot your server every
week.. perhaps the problem is how you have the server config. In one of our offices, we have a 1U
pizza box doing file/print share and acting as a DFS/FRS real time replication hub of a 20 gig share.
We happened to check that server yesterday and it had been up for a year and a half.
I'm betting several people on her try to blame there windows problems on something that's not
windows' fault. For example, for those of you that may run Citrix and have to reboot your server
faily often.... you may want to say 'windows sucks because of it'. Well, not really. You may want
to look at the app you have installed to the machine. Heck, I bets there's "admins" out there that
allow users to have blank PW's or otherwise simple passwords and then blame windows because a hacker
got in using those simple passwords. Oh, and as far as complaining about if you put 200,000 files in
a single directory and then complain that windows puke's when you try to view that directory. Welp..
techinically, that would be a windows problem.. but if I were the boss I would smack around the
admin that's in charge of maintaining file structures standards. What kind of idiot admin would
allow that? I'm smelling either Paper MSCE or 'A+ certified' former compUSA joker.
Oh.. we tried rsynch too at time one, but it didn't work out. It doing byte level changes were
nice, but it doesn't scale well as far as being able to monitor it's activites easily (from 25+
sites), and also is all but useless if your network uses NTFS permissions. For those of you that are
thinking about doing replication via windows (and want to do it on the cheap), check out 'Windows
2003 R2' the new DFRS is nice. I can't wait to convert out FRS structure over to it. (FRSv1 is
file level, uhg).
Oh.. and our network does use linux as well. We have 2 linux boxes doing our virus/spam filter.
There were several times in the past where email got backlogged for hours because the linux boxes
couldn't handle the load. Should I start a ranting about how linux sucks because linux can't handle
the load? No... the problem wasn't linux.. it was the app installed into linux that was causing the
boxes to puke. That problem has since been fixed and now email is running great (so far). We have
since purchases 2 dual AMD 64bitters to replace our email spam/virus scanners. However, we are
having trouble getting them to talk to the EMC SAN. Should I join the over reacting bandwagon and
start s
Since from the American's perspective, there are more foreigners than there are domestic workers (North Americans). Should we be protected under affirmative action? I'm tired of all the foreign workers keeping us domestic workers down!
Now, I'm not saying I'm willing to accept the same pay as those my job is going to, that's just crazy. They should pay me more because I'm a minority and I deserve it. Same pay for the same work only counts when it benefits me.
I guess I can finally stop hitting that download button over and over and over. I wore out 3 mice already!
You've never installed more than one version of certain "enterprise database software", then.
;)
Well.. there's your problem. You shouldn't be using 'enterprise database software'. You should be doing everything in flat text files!
The entire registry isn't just a single file. For example, each user profile has their own registry file.
Also, by that arguement, I suppose you are suggesting to not only replace the registy with a million INI files, but to also have multiple backup copies of those INI files? Wonderful idea.. I bet if MS did that no one would complain at all.
Oh, by the way, it quite easy to tell windows to make scheduled snap shots of your registry in case you are concern that it will ever get corrupted. Personally, I think the chances are far greater that your HDD would fail as opposed to your registry getting corrupted. I don't know how MS did it, but I've never had a registry get corrupted. Hmm.. It's probably far greater that your powersupply would fail too.
I agree.. it would be nice if there were no installers and if everything was self contained. However, it's not going to happen. It's simply not practical. Programs share code inorder to keep their size down and to have uniformity in the actions.
IE: Let's say MS Word 2003 uses 50 DLL's (probably not to hard to believe). Let's says Excel 2003 also uses 50 DLL's, of which 30 are common to both apps. Are you saying that you'd rather have 100 DLL's between the two programs instead of just 70? Now, added Access, PowerPoint, Frontpage, etc to the mix. Things get crazy, and we're only talking DLL files.
Also, another lovely bit about the registy is that you can set program defaults and policies via the registy. At my office, we set Office 2003 program defaults via domain group policies. This policies get written into the regisry and the end user's PC acts accordingly. Personally, I love it when apps use the registy as much as possible. It opens up a world of possiblities. It really annoys me when I have to hunt for INI files on a PC and change settings there. Typically, registry keys remain constant while install paths can vary.
Also.. I write apps and use DLL's and other similar files. I dump all of them into a standard path (the path is also stated in the registry). That way, when I find a bug in a DLL, I can update the DLL in one place and all of my apps are fixed at once. I don't have to hunt down every other possible program of mine the user may have installed.