Yeah, because it's so easy to replace the 20+ programs that form the core of our business, and data migration's so easy a baby could do it. Please, try responding to the point that's actually raised here instead of going on and on about migrating to alternative systems. Many companies are simply not in a position to migrate their entire network.
Personally, I'd love to migrate us to Linux, but until I can replace CAD/CAM systems, accounting packages, design software, drawing packages, etc... that's simply not going to happen, and until it does happen I'm faced with the job of keeping our MS systems secure.
We've found that preventing web based scripts from running has kept us virus free for nearly two years now, but even then we're expecting to be hit by something sooner or later. If you're running a Microsoft network, it's worth putting a few weeks aside to get RIS / Ghost working well. Right now we're looking to take things a step further by running all our clients off a set of blade servers running virtual machines. There are cost savings to be had with the ease of maintenance and disaster recovery suddenly becomes a whole lot simpler.
Arghhh!! How many times do we need to point this out. You may not feel like there's a problem with compatibility but for a government department who want to *guarantee* accessibility of documents, the MS formats are not currently suitable.
You say anyone who wants to write a good WP package will be decoding word. Sure, many programs do this, but they've all had to reverse engineer the format. This means they cannot guarantee that they're importing the document correctly. MA correctly take the view that they cannot afford to be giving out documents for the next 100 years that *may* be correct, they need to be sure.
That is why MA are insisting on an open spec. They're not anti-MS by any means, they are just clearly defining their requirements and inviting companies to demonstrate how they can meet them. That's a normal tender process. The fact is that MS don't like having to make their programs suit the needs of the customer, they'd rather the customer changed their requirements to suit MS.
This is not a MS / Open Source issue, it's a question of whether there's an open public standard for saving and reading documents. MS have options of making their formats public, or of making their software compatible with a public standard. Neither of these are things MS are keen on doing since they both open them up to competition, but both are quite possible.
PS. I'm not anti-MS, in fact I'm very Pro-MS. I run a domain of 100+ computers and 11 servers, all running MS software, and I wouldn't want it any other way. I think some of the work MS are doing is superb and I'm waiting for their next generation operating systems with baited breath. But despite all that, I can see the sense in the decision MA are making.
I've just built a 2TB RAID server as a hot backup server for work, there's plenty of pre-built stuff on the market but I found it's all way overpriced if you're looking for RAID-5 (or 6). I've got 2TB of usable space on a RAID-5 server for around £1,700, and it's upgradable to 3.5TB. Standard solutions would have cost me anywhere from £5,000 to £12,000.
If you're after RAID-5, don't forget that if a drive fails you want to be able to swop it as quickly and easily as possible. That means buying a spare drive at the outset and ideally having a case with hot-swop capability.
My solution was a Promise RAID controller, a whole bunch of cheap SATA drives and a case with 8 hot swop SATA bays. I'd always recommend Promise for IDE or SATA RAID, I've had too many problems with Adaptec cards in the past, arrays lost, cards fried, etc... Promise cards have always recovered from everything I've thrown at them, even when I've expected to loose data.
Unfortunately Promise don't guarantee hot swop ability with this case - they'll only guarantee it if you're using their own enclosures, but personally I'm happy enough to take that gamble. My feeling is that the worst case scenario is that it doesn't recognise a new drive automatically and I have to reboot, I can't see me frying a drive or loosing the array.
Good luck with your project, let us know how you get on:)
Aaah, but I think you're missing my point. MS won't have to write a web interface. They're providing the data structure for windows, all we need then is for Google to write a plugin to synchronise your local data with your data share on the web. And that my friend is going to be a piece of cake.
As MS say - WinFS is just an enabling technology. They don't need to write the web links or distributed applications themselves, that's open to anybody.
Google get to mine the data, MS really get to show off what Vista & WinFS can do, and the rest of us get to see what it means when the internet is truly integrated into your OS.
Oh, there's no way google took their eye off the ball with this one. Imagine the possibilities if you started using Google to store some or all of your data. Not only do you have your files available from anywhere on the planet but you can search all of it, from anywhere, with the best search engine around. Integrate that with Windows (WinFS anyone) and the potential is huge.
Plus the more structured information we can give Google, the more their search engine can learn. The more it learns the more relevant the results can be. And giving google a planet wide database of structured information is going to make a huge difference to what they can teach that engine. Anybody else wondering how long it will be before the google search engine becomes this planet's first AI?
Ok, getting back to reality, not only are you now getting google's response to your search, you're getting back details from your own notes and files too, and potentially info from other people if google take it that far. Imagine, you search for 'Restaurants in Paris' and get back a google map of the restaurants with the numbers, your own contacts numbers and notes from your address book, other people's ratings of the food and the photos you took last time you were on holiday there... It's all possible, it's just a case of how much information we feed google and how well they can integrate it.
Go take a look at some of the demos Microsoft are putting out for WinFS. It's impressive stuff and that's just for your own computer. Imagine a technology like that, in the hands of a company like google, linked to the whole planet...
Even worse - he's bitching that he can no longer press Ctrl-Alt-Del twice to reboot the computer...
I can just imagine the day he discovered that:
"What? I can't just crash it any more? I gotta shut down properly? F*%£ng Microsoft!!!"
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because it's so easy to replace the 20+ programs that form the core of our business, and data migration's so easy a baby could do it. Please, try responding to the point that's actually raised here instead of going on and on about migrating to alternative systems. Many companies are simply not in a position to migrate their entire network.
Personally, I'd love to migrate us to Linux, but until I can replace CAD/CAM systems, accounting packages, design software, drawing packages, etc... that's simply not going to happen, and until it does happen I'm faced with the job of keeping our MS systems secure.
We've found that preventing web based scripts from running has kept us virus free for nearly two years now, but even then we're expecting to be hit by something sooner or later. If you're running a Microsoft network, it's worth putting a few weeks aside to get RIS / Ghost working well. Right now we're looking to take things a step further by running all our clients off a set of blade servers running virtual machines. There are cost savings to be had with the ease of maintenance and disaster recovery suddenly becomes a whole lot simpler.
Arghhh!! How many times do we need to point this out. You may not feel like there's a problem with compatibility but for a government department who want to *guarantee* accessibility of documents, the MS formats are not currently suitable.
You say anyone who wants to write a good WP package will be decoding word. Sure, many programs do this, but they've all had to reverse engineer the format. This means they cannot guarantee that they're importing the document correctly. MA correctly take the view that they cannot afford to be giving out documents for the next 100 years that *may* be correct, they need to be sure.
That is why MA are insisting on an open spec. They're not anti-MS by any means, they are just clearly defining their requirements and inviting companies to demonstrate how they can meet them. That's a normal tender process. The fact is that MS don't like having to make their programs suit the needs of the customer, they'd rather the customer changed their requirements to suit MS.
This is not a MS / Open Source issue, it's a question of whether there's an open public standard for saving and reading documents. MS have options of making their formats public, or of making their software compatible with a public standard. Neither of these are things MS are keen on doing since they both open them up to competition, but both are quite possible.
PS. I'm not anti-MS, in fact I'm very Pro-MS. I run a domain of 100+ computers and 11 servers, all running MS software, and I wouldn't want it any other way. I think some of the work MS are doing is superb and I'm waiting for their next generation operating systems with baited breath. But despite all that, I can see the sense in the decision MA are making.
I've just built a 2TB RAID server as a hot backup server for work, there's plenty of pre-built stuff on the market but I found it's all way overpriced if you're looking for RAID-5 (or 6). I've got 2TB of usable space on a RAID-5 server for around £1,700, and it's upgradable to 3.5TB. Standard solutions would have cost me anywhere from £5,000 to £12,000.
:D. asp?segment=RAID%205%20HBAs&product_id=148
? chs=743.
:)
If you're after RAID-5, don't forget that if a drive fails you want to be able to swop it as quickly and easily as possible. That means buying a spare drive at the outset and ideally having a case with hot-swop capability.
My solution was a Promise RAID controller, a whole bunch of cheap SATA drives and a case with 8 hot swop SATA bays. I'd always recommend Promise for IDE or SATA RAID, I've had too many problems with Adaptec cards in the past, arrays lost, cards fried, etc... Promise cards have always recovered from everything I've thrown at them, even when I've expected to loose data.
I used the SX8300 which, thanks to Slashdot, I've just found is upgradable to RAID-6, sweet
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng
I also found a superb case from Supermicro, the SC743. It's a dream to work in and has more than enough cooling for all those drives. It is a little noisy though:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/tower/
Unfortunately Promise don't guarantee hot swop ability with this case - they'll only guarantee it if you're using their own enclosures, but personally I'm happy enough to take that gamble. My feeling is that the worst case scenario is that it doesn't recognise a new drive automatically and I have to reboot, I can't see me frying a drive or loosing the array.
Good luck with your project, let us know how you get on
Ross
ROFL! Linux??? This is a *gaming* pc. Go on, show me Sims2 running on a Linux box... Oh, and before anyone gets sarcastic, using Wine doesn't count.
Aaah, but I think you're missing my point. MS won't have to write a web interface. They're providing the data structure for windows, all we need then is for Google to write a plugin to synchronise your local data with your data share on the web. And that my friend is going to be a piece of cake. As MS say - WinFS is just an enabling technology. They don't need to write the web links or distributed applications themselves, that's open to anybody. Google get to mine the data, MS really get to show off what Vista & WinFS can do, and the rest of us get to see what it means when the internet is truly integrated into your OS.
Oh, there's no way google took their eye off the ball with this one. Imagine the possibilities if you started using Google to store some or all of your data. Not only do you have your files available from anywhere on the planet but you can search all of it, from anywhere, with the best search engine around. Integrate that with Windows (WinFS anyone) and the potential is huge.
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Plus the more structured information we can give Google, the more their search engine can learn. The more it learns the more relevant the results can be. And giving google a planet wide database of structured information is going to make a huge difference to what they can teach that engine. Anybody else wondering how long it will be before the google search engine becomes this planet's first AI?
Ok, getting back to reality, not only are you now getting google's response to your search, you're getting back details from your own notes and files too, and potentially info from other people if google take it that far. Imagine, you search for 'Restaurants in Paris' and get back a google map of the restaurants with the numbers, your own contacts numbers and notes from your address book, other people's ratings of the food and the photos you took last time you were on holiday there... It's all possible, it's just a case of how much information we feed google and how well they can integrate it.
Go take a look at some of the demos Microsoft are putting out for WinFS. It's impressive stuff and that's just for your own computer. Imagine a technology like that, in the hands of a company like google, linked to the whole planet...
WinFS: http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/
PDC Demo: http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2005/10/05/47
Channel 9 Video (long): http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=106
Even worse - he's bitching that he can no longer press Ctrl-Alt-Del twice to reboot the computer... I can just imagine the day he discovered that: "What? I can't just crash it any more? I gotta shut down properly? F*%£ng Microsoft!!!"