Ballmer on Windows Server 2003, Linux 1282
no_demons writes "Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, has given an interview to CNet about Windows Server 2003 and Linux. He claims that 'our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us than they have seen from that [open-source] community'. Discuss." Also in the news: two critical security vulnerabilities (MS03-014, MS03-015), and this piece about Windows 2003 mentioning that Microsoft is trying to develop a command-line only server.
Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Informative)
Uhh, in
Microsoft's endemic security failure. (Score:5, Informative)
For example, Microsoft was notified of the issues, concerning only Microsoft implementation of its JVM, on September 2nd 2002 and after SEVEN MONTHS on April 9th 2003, Microsoft have issued an update to fix the problem.
Such a delay with such a serious vulnerability is so abysmal that it borders on the absurd.
Quality and security are measures which only mean something when compared relatively to another.
There is no absolutely secure, therefore you must expect, that once a vulnerability is made known to the vendor, the vendor should do their utmost to close the Window of Exposure ( http://www.counterpane.com/window.html [counterpane.com] ) as soon as possible.
For example, with the lastest SAMBA vulnerability, once notified, the SAMBA developer owned up to the mistake and the SAMBA project released a patch within 48 hours. Within aother 24hrs, redhat had already backported the patch into their distributions RPMs. Similarly any major security issues in Mozilla and Netscape browser are also fixed and updateable within a couple of days
Meanwhile, there are currently 13 KNOWN unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer ( http://www.pivx.com/larholm/unpatched/ [pivx.com] ).
Some DANGEROUSLY EXPLOITABLE had not been fixed in over a year ( http://security.greymagic.com/adv/gm002-ie/ [greymagic.com] ). That Microsoft has not rewritten the scripting system embedded with IE so that it is sandboxed by default is bad enough, but to have such major unpatched vulnerabilities exposed for months is abysmal.
Other inherent vulnerabilities, such as the Shatter attack ( http://security.tombom.co.uk/moreshatter.html [tombom.co.uk] ), Microsoft has known about since 1994!
Even if the API/call flaw is inherently unfixable, that is plenty of time for Microsoft to implement a safer methord/systemcall/API, adapt it's own applications to use the safer methord and depreciate the unsafe API.
It also appears that Microsoft 's own implementation of SMB is vulnerable and Microsoft has known about it for over eight years ( http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=599 60&cid=5681769 [slashdot.org] ), but Microsoft either choose not to, or cannot fix the problem themselves.
Microsoft is clearly not closing the vulnerabilities they are aware that exist in their products and services.
A year after after Bill Gate's Email promoting securtiy over functionality, Microsoft by choice, remains neither secure or trustworthy.
Microsoft's attitude towards the security of it's products, service and customers is abysmal.
From Jason Coombs' A response to Bruce Schneier on MS patch management and Sapphire ( http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/315158 [securityfocus.com] )
Re:No wonder (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. Capitalism is based on the scarcity of resources, or to be accurate, scarcity of currency. It's not typified by competition, that is an aspect of many economic systems which bear no resemblance to capitalism.
If anything open source is an example of a hybrid capitalist/gift economy.
Arriving late on the Windows scene (Score:3, Informative)
I've been various non-MS OSs for 20 years, and running a Linux-only cybercafe for 18 months. I installed my first Windows server last week. W2K Server (yeah yeah, I know, it took me 6 months to get round to installing it...).
I haven't seen anything radically innovative yet, but then I'm not sure that there is much radically innovative about Linux either. But I have had a few surprises:
Doing everything with the mouse is driving me mad, but I expect I could get used to it. I don't see me ditching Linux as a result of the experiment, but some sites, especially chat ones, run ten times faster than with Linux on equivalent hardware, and don't keep hanging.
All of which is to say that I have now met with the enemy, and it doesn't seem quite as bad as the anti-MS propaganda suggests, and even has a few endearing features...
Amusing misunderstanding (Score:5, Informative)
We'll be able to patch probably two thirds of the components without shutting the system down. That's an area where the Unix guys are ahead of us, because of the way they do redirection -- they can patch a file and then change the symbolic link. That's an area where we've got a problem, and we'll fix it in the near future when possible.
You can patch a file in use on UNIX without shutting down because you can delete an open file and the applications will still be able to map/read/write to that inode, which will magically disappear when the last application closes it.
Example:
Symlinks are cool, and it would have been nice if Microsoft implemented Shortcuts at the file system level, but they aren't what save us from rebooting.
Re:Innovation (Score:5, Informative)
Besides the new way to develop software (i.e. the Bazaar idea), here are couple of products that were first developed as open source projects:
email
web server
web browser
I have to wonder about your experiences... (Score:3, Informative)
Darwin Streaming Server [apple.com] which supports QuickTime, MPEG4, and MP3 streaming.
RealNetworks Server [realnetworks.com] which has supported Linux for some time, supports all Real media formats, MPEG4, etc.
In the case of the RealNetworks server, they have a free version that's crippled to 1Mbit bandwidth.
Now, it depends on when you tried this. If it was within the past few years, Darwin's streaming server has been available during that time. If it was before that, I can't understand as RealNetworks HAD a streaming server. Oh, I've figured it out, you wanted something that was "free". Sorry, the only free, uncrippled stuff as in "free beer" stuff has only shown up on the scene fairly recently.
If you did this in fairly recent times, all I can say is that you didn't try very hard. If you did this a while back, I will say that you pay for bandwidth capacity (and proportionately the same) in the case of RealNetworks' server and Microsoft's- and that there's really only players for Microsoft's on Windows. If you use the MS streaming server, forget supporting MacOS and Linux machines.
Re:He has a funny idea of "Innovation." (Score:5, Informative)
NT is NOT "based" on VMS. David Cutler lead the design of both and they are sure to share similarities because of it, but one is not BASED on the other and to say that NT is some "clone" of VMS is flat wrong.
BTW--Linux is not a clone of the original 20 year-old OS. It's a MODERN Unix clone. It's based on POSIX standards which is actually quite a bit newer.
But to choose to stop your own logic with this one. POSIX is based on trying to unite SystemV with BSD! Not only that but POSIX itself was started up around 1985, still almost 20 years ago.
Re:innovation. (Score:3, Informative)
Samba really is faster. (Score:1, Informative)
I measured filesharing performance by copying a 500MB iso image file from a Window 2000 workstation both to and from each server and got a little over five minutes for the newer, faster NT4 machine, and about 2 minutes, 35 seconds for the older machine running Linux+Samba.
Re:Microsoft, first to implement CLI on top of GUI (Score:3, Informative)
Counting out patches... (Score:3, Informative)
Dude - I'm applying at least a patch a day on average on our linux boxes at work. That argument is idiotic in the software world. Software is meant to be patched (just one glaring example: Apache - name from a-patch-e). Give me a week when there is not a patch for some security vulnerability/stability enhancement in open source and I'll go kick Ballmer's ass for you.
Are you patching public servers at this rate? Seriously, sorting through the various advisories from Redhat for this year gives me 14 patches that you might have considered patching a public server that ran a linux 2.4 kernel, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, kerberos, Samba and OpenSSL. That's hardly one a day. Given that you'd be unlikely to require all of those on ONE server, the chances are that you'd have had maybe 8 patches in the last 4 months.
Note also that's it often impossible to compare a single vulnerability seen in, say, PostgreSQL, which results immediately in a new PostgreSQL release with a new patch for SQL Server 2000 where the number of security related fixes can't be counted.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:Microsoft OS names (Score:3, Informative)
Windows/386
Windows 3.0
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.51
Windows 95 OSR2
Windows 98 SE
Also, what you list as "Windows 3.1 for Workgroups" was officially titled "Windows for Workgroups", but internally it was actually Windows 3.11. And Windows NT 4 didn't come out until 1996, after Windows 95. And "Windows 1" was just called "Windows" at the time.
Finally, ME is an acronym for "Millenium Edition", and XP is a contraction of Experience.
Re:No wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. Cummunism is the result of a cycle beginning with Fuedalism. Then capitalism, socialism and finally communism. At least that is what Marx and Engel wrote in their manifesto. Capitalism is the state of economic affairs where there is two classes (proletariat and bourgeoisie) and the people are detached from the government. Socialism combines the two classes but leaves the government seperated from the people. Ideally, communism would have the state dissapear completely because the people would not need any centralized control (they are obviously happy according to Marx).
For the record, Fascism is when the state controls the means of distribution, socialism is where the state controls the means of production.
In this case Microsoft, the convicted monopolist, is closer to the central state than the any of the GPL hordes. [conspiracy] I even think that the GPL will ensure that, once Microsoft does control everything, the transition from central control to responsible individual control will be forced to occur where it failed in the past. [/conspiracy] Still, this is more anarchism or libertarian than communist as history defines it.Microsoft is the epitome of capitalism turning into socialism. As Microsoft completes its domination of the software market, it will control the means of production. Since the people have no purchasing choice, they are controlled. Open Source is, as the parent poster points out, close to ideal communism. Communism as a model is too flawed for practical use because it is the nature of man to be selfish. Hobbes and Machiavelli trumps Marx and Sir Thomas More every time.
Also, motivation [to] do what you want vs. money earned to do what you hate is far more of an incentive for most.Motivation is important, but motivation to survive is supreme. I would rather code for Microsoft and feed my kids than code for free and enjoy it!
Re:It's partly true (Score:4, Informative)
What improvements? You mean the Start menu used to Shut down Windows, or the ever annoying Office Clippy whose final removal from Office XP became a feature celebrated with a Flash movie http://www.microsoft.com/Office/clippy/ by its creator, or the beloved Registry.
Microsoft is 60 times bigger than Apple with over $40 billions in the bank, but produces virtually zero innovation. Even more amazingly, a hardware company like Apple actually has a bigger and better software portofolio than MS.
Re:He has a funny idea of "Innovation." (Score:3, Informative)
It gets better.
According to this [microsoft.com], Windows traces back to 1983. What year is it, again?
Wait, what does MS innovate??? (Score:5, Informative)
MS has a GUI. Apple and Xerox did it first.
MS has multi-tasking. OS/2 had it before MS did, and many OS's did/do it better even after MS finally got around to it.
MS has Word. WordPerfect, among others, did it first.
MS has Excel. Anyone heard of Lotus 1-2-3? Or VisiCalc?
MS has IE. Netscape, Mosaic, et al. all came first.
MS has Outlook, and I know for a fact I got e-mail on various clients long before Outlook was a glint in the e-postman's eye.
MS has "Age of Empire". Microprose already did Civilization.
MS has X-Box. Sony and Nintendo already had products in this area.
MS Money is a Quicken clone.
Visio was already Visio before MS purchased them.
MS NetMeeting was innovated by another company (Databeam) and purchased by MS.
MSN Instant Messenger comes from IRC by way of AIM and ICQ.
For that matter, MSN is basicaly a value-added ISP, essentially AOL with butterflies.
Windows NT was really IBM's OS/2 technology for the most part.
DOS was purchased, and was, in any case, basically CP/M.
Windows post 95(b) provides Internet Access via TCP/IP, but they were probably the last player to enter that game.
Media Player is basically just RealPlayer.
Someone please enlighten me . . . apart from legal and marketting ploys, what has MS actually innovated? What technology did they come up with themselves? (As opposed to either buying someone else's tech and rebranding it, or cloning someone else's idea.) So far, only ones I see as possibles are MS Project and MS PowerPoint, but I have a feeling that these are purchased technology also. (I seem to recall reading as much, but can't find the reference at the moment.)
Any MS apologists care to give us a list of MS innovations?
Re:He has a funny idea of "Innovation." (Score:3, Informative)
Mark Russinovich's article [winntmag.com] doesn't seem to agree with you. According to that article they are *very* close. No...not clones but they apparently share a lot of similarities.
Re:Another informed reader (Score:3, Informative)
Lenin and Stalin were Marxists. Marx was a communist.
Re:Uptime (Score:3, Informative)
NET STATISTICS SERVER | MORE
The first line or two tells you when the server service was started. (Technically, you can also use WORKSTATION.)
Re:Steve shares nose surgeon with Michael Jackson? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait, what does MS innovate??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait, what does MS innovate??? (Score:1, Informative)
"DOS was purchased, and was, in any case, basically CP/M."
Another one of your clumsy statements. Yes it was purchased, but it was not basically CP/M.
Ummm, DOS replicated many of the CP/M bios calls to extent where int 21 was almost the same as listed on the CP/M bios.
Re:Wait, what does MS innovate??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait, what does MS innovate??? (Score:3, Informative)
MIT did this with X in the mid 1980's IIRC - and they used all *three* mouse buttons! :-)
DHCP, yes they came up with this
Ralph Droms (Bucknell University) and Ted Lemon (Internet Software Consortium) invented DHCP.
Task Bar
fvwm had this option 2 years before Windows 95 was unleashed, again IIRC (Remember fvwm95? That was fvwm configured to look like Windows 95 - a singularly bad idea, but it shows that this capability was there, ready and waiting, when Win95 was released - some misguided individual just wrote some configuration files and voila - your X desktop looks like the Beast from Redmond)
The "Show Desktop" button
Not exactly an earth-shattering invention, and anyone can (and probably did, long before MS thought of it) bind a button in (insert your favorite WM here) to a 6-line script that does the same thing, but I'll give them that one...
Re:Wait, what does MS innovate??? (Score:2, Informative)