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Bob Muglia on Longhorn Server, Linux and Blackcomb 210

Posted by CowboyNeal from the up-close-and-personal dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a wide-ranging interview, Microsoft's senior VP Bob Muglia talks about the work involved in getting Longhorn Server out by 2007. He also gives the lowdown on the next major release of Windows Server, code-named Blackcomb. 'If Indigo (a major feature of Longhorn) took four years to develop, some major infrastructure things inside Blackcomb will also take four years to develop,' Muglia said. On competition from Linux, he said: 'When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.' Very different from what Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates have been saying but Muglia says he's trying to teach them a thing or two."
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Bob Muglia on Longhorn Server, Linux and Blackcomb More

Bob Muglia on Longhorn Server, Linux and Blackcomb

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  • No competition (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:57AM (#9213054)
    That lazy penguin's no match fro Clippy.

  • They come and they go... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:57AM (#9213056)
    When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor.
    -and-
    Muglia says he's trying to teach them a thing or two. (Gates and Balmer)

    Gee, I wonder how much longer he's gonna be around at MS.

    • Re:They come and they go... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:21AM (#9213141)
      He does have a point. Linux by itself isn't a product that a company can buy. MS should be more concerned with the companies that distribute it (along with support contracts et al).

      In the end, any sane company shouldn't care who supplies the product, as long as said product is suitable for their needs, within their budget and will be have overall positive impact on their business as usual. As long as companies like SUSE, RedHat and such are providing a good quality product, and devs like Torvalds are improving it then MS have something to worry about.

      This is all quite similar to the old adage that Linux by itself is not an OS, it's the tools that are usually supplied with it that make it a usable environment.
      • OK ok, so its not a competitor but a competing product, and the companies such as RH, suse selling it and providing support are the competitors. What is the practical difference?

        • Re:They come and they go... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @06:04AM (#9213415) Homepage Journal
          OK ok, so its not a competitor but a competing product, and the companies such as RH, suse selling it and providing support are the competitors. What is the practical difference?

          For one thing, it's way harder to fight. It means they aren't fighting a competitor, they are fighting a paradigm shift. IBM may wave the Linux flag, but the real danger is that they are getting away from selling software and focusing on solving problems for businesses more cheaply. SCO could kill Linux, and IBM could switch over to BSD without scarcely missing a beat.

          As long as people are buying a brand or a worldview or a technology strategy, MS in unstoppable because they define the battleground and charge admission. If people look at problems they have defined for themselves and how to solve them most cheaply, MS no longer defines the battleground and a lot of the stuff that's designed to keep Microsoft in charge of the gates becomes irrelevant.

          Look, business is a dirty, bare knuckles kind of thing. You find the choicest customer, become his friend, and use that relationship to tar the competitor. With Linux, MS must discredit the very idea of working anybody but MS. True, a lot of customers think this way; but it is a result, not a strategy. MS wants to create this worldview, but it can't rely on it to be stable in and of itself.

          • Re:Change of policy for MS? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by CommandNotFound ( 571326 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:08AM (#9213650)
            Look, business is a dirty, bare knuckles kind of thing. You find the choicest customer, become his friend, and use that relationship to tar the competitor. With Linux, MS must discredit the very idea of working anybody but MS. True, a lot of customers think this way; but it is a result, not a strategy. MS wants to create this worldview, but it can't rely on it to be stable in and of itself

            I wonder if this is a subtle change of policy for MS? By defining Linux as just another technology, that opens the door for MS using it, too. Not that Microsoft would ever release GPL'd software; but my prediction is that they will have a BSD-based Unix on the market around 2010. Apple did it, so they will too... :)

            • Au contraire! Microsoft has been shipping GPL software for a while. They call it "services for unix."


              • Au contraire! Microsoft has been shipping GPL software for a while. They call it "services for unix."

                Last time I noted this, some asshat quipped "GNU's Not Unix." So I provided a trail [slashdot.org] to follow and see Microsoft's use of GPL'd code for yourself.
              • Au contraire! Microsoft has been shipping GPL software for a while. They call it "services for unix."

                Thanks for the correction; in my head I was talking about MS not releasing core products like operating systems, office suites, etc under the GPL, but it didn't make it to the keyboard in my post...
            • Surely the dreamers behind the GPL thought to include a non-Microsoft clause?
              • Nah. I do wish they had included a clause that said "if you use this software you promise to choke any MS executive if and when you encounter them". Oh and also choke the shit out the guy at MS who decided that the active directory client for windows 98 would not process group policies. That guy really needs to be punished.
            • Kewl.. Then we will be able use use *BSD without suffering the pains of having a reliable system!

              The whole world has really been waiting for this!

            • Apple had not spent billions of dollar and many years developing something on the scale of Windows NT like Microsoft did. There's no way they will be switching to a BSD based system. Not only do they have all that money invested in NT, but all of their systems built around it.

              To sum up: No. Frickin. Way.


          • For one thing, it's way harder to fight. It means they aren't fighting a competitor, they are fighting a paradigm shift. IBM may wave the Linux flag, but the real danger is that they are getting away from selling software and focusing on solving problems for businesses more cheaply.

            There's another potential shift that threatens Microsoft... and it dove-tails rather nicely with this observation. It has to do with commodity markets.

            Microsoft won because IBM lost. That is, IBM lost control of their m


            • That makes financial success less of a given.

              Innovators dilemma.

              MS has the people and money to do pretty much as it pleases.

              It would not please it to undermine Windows by selling Office for Linux, in particular.

              Yet, if Linux continues to grow and MS wants to be a part of the software vendor marketplace it has to be able to offer compelling products on whatever the customers are using.

              I think they could sell a lot of copies of Office for Linux right now.

              But they'll wait because they don't want to be

        • OK ok, so its not a competitor but a competing product, and the companies such as RH, suse selling it and providing support are the competitors. What is the practical difference?

          I think the practical difference is, Microsoft realises that they can't take out Linux at the source, that they have to attack the people who sell, service, support, and distribute Linux.

          This leaves them fighting on multiple fronts, which stretches their resources and makes it harder to eliminate. For example, if they say that Re

    • I guess that all depends on how much more they are willing to delay Longhorn (or Longshot as it's starting to resemble)

  • Article originated from (Score:5, Informative)

    by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:57AM (#9213058)
    I thought this article looked familiar. It's actually from C|Net's news.com.com [com.com].

  • yeah, right (Score:4, Funny)

    by pato perez ( 570823 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:59AM (#9213067) Homepage
    He's just playing good cop...

  • Clever guy... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaneelGiskard ( 222145 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:59AM (#9213069) Homepage
    'When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.'

    He realized that it is hard to fight Linux itself, because there is no single company producing it. So he aims at companies offering Linux as an alternative to Windows in order to solve specific problems.

    • Re:Clever guy... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by zlel ( 736107 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:06AM (#9213262) Homepage
      ah, so in this way he can teach MS to dis"solve" these specific problems....
    • He's opening up the possibility that Microsoft themselves could make use of that technology whereas that would be inconceivable if Linux itself were their competitor.

      It's an interesting development.

    • Re:Clever guy... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by banana fiend ( 611664 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:54AM (#9213390)
      Not necessarily,

      He might just know that the average desktop user is not going to buy Linux for any reason other than to use the software that has been produced for it.
      In that case - they are trying to dominate with Office .NET, directx (XNA) etc. and don't give a damn how good Linux is.

      This sounds right for a slashdot - "Let's produce stuff that is great for the user experience" harangue. But It's not something I think that grass-roots is producing (See previous arguments about StarOffice just cloning MSOffice, Mono cloning .NET etc.)

      • I don't think they are that worried about the "average desktop user". They are more worried about the corporate desktop. The average user does not pay for windows and does not upgrade on schedule. They either steal windows or get it with their PC and MS makes almost no money from that. Corporations OTOH upgrade like clockwork and are the primary cash cow for MS.

        Sun, Suse/Novell, and IBM now have a pretty compelling corporate desktop. Openoffice, Evolution with exchange connector, and mozilla pretty much co

  • Smart Guy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:01AM (#9213072) Homepage

    In the first interview question, he not only shows a correct grasp of the marketplace (Linux is a technology used by businesses to produce competing products/services, not a competitor in itself) but also brilliantly spins it ("It was thought of as free." -- love it!).

    Why the heck is Ballmer still in charge if they have someone who makes sense? Perhaps if this guy had been in charge of promoting .NET they wouldn't have had everyone thinking that .NET was an XML parser for about a freakin' year.

    • Why the heck is Ballmer still in charge if they have someone who makes sense?

      welcome to the world of business.... it is not what you know or what your abilities are..... but who you know.

      Ballmer has the right contacts in the right places, even though he is a complete and utter moron.

      this is very typical, they hire on who is more "connected" not who has the best skills for the job.... all corperations do this.

    • Re:Smart Guy (Score:4, Funny)

      by DiscoOnTheSide ( 544139 ) <ajfili AT eden DOT rutgers DOT edu> on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:39AM (#9213347) Homepage
      Well, as far as my knowledge goes (I.E.- watching "Pirates of Silicon Valley") that fat goon Balmer more or less roommates with a dork who had a hardon for computers and rode on his coat tails so he could bounce around like he was auditioning for planet of the apes.

      Gates: "Hmmm... that developer... He doesn't look motivated enough. Release the chimp!"
      Balmer: "DEVELOPERS DEVERLOPS DEVELOPERS!"
      Developer: "Nooooooo!!!"

  • Accurate assessment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:01AM (#9213076)
    'When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.'

    Well, that's true enough. Linux does NOT compete with Microsoft, and in fact never did. A Linux distribution company such as Red Hat competes with Microsoft and a Linux distribution competes with a Microsoft product such as NT.

    It's like back in the day, Intel sent a sales rep to my (then) employer asking how Intel could help us. We explained the score to him: we don't buy Intel. What we buy is Compaq (i.e. complete systems) and if they happen to have Intel in fair enough, but really, that's Compaq's decision, we don't care.

    Thus it is with Linux. The average person DOES NOT CARE whether the kernel on their system is Linux or the NT kernel or Mach or anything else. They just want to run their applications to get the stuff they want to do done.

    • Re:Accurate assessment (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NodeZero ( 49835 )
      It's true that the average person does not care whether their kernel is Linux or NT or BSD or whatever. But there has been a lot of growth in the computing community in the past years. I remember when I first started playing with Linux in 1996, nobody i knew in real life knew anything about it, and at that point in time I would say most people didnt even know there was an alternative to OS/2 / DOS / Win 3.1 / Win 95. But now there are a lot of people who have been exposed to a *nix variant of some sort and

  • Stating the obvious (Score:5, Informative)

    by upside ( 574799 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:07AM (#9213094) Journal
    He goes on to say the main competitors are FIRMS that sell Linux, such as IBM and RedHat. In other words, there is no Linux, Inc. or a single Linux product.

    Reminds me a study I read about in an industry rag some months back. It concluded that Windows is n times more pervasive than Linux because that is how much more people spend on buying their OS.

    Just the small fact that Linux is FREE and what you really pay for wheny buying a Linux distro such as RedHat or SuSe is support.

    • Re:Stating the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:21AM (#9213139)
      Just the small fact that Linux is FREE and what you really pay for wheny buying a Linux distro such as RedHat or SuSe is support.

      True, but how much difference does that actually make? If you buy 25 licenses for Red Hat's enterprise distribution, they won't support you if they find out that you installed it on a 26th system.

      Now, obviously, if you simply download Fedora (4 CDs worth of it, I wonder how big Longhorn will be) you can run it on as many systems as you like, but you're on your own if you want support (no, Usenet doesn't count as an advantage here as there are also Windows newsgroups, mailing lists, whatever). That's free. But in practice, for a corporation, buying Red Hat isn't so different from buying NT.

      • Re:Stating the obvious (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Asphixiat ( 451920 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:06AM (#9213260)
        I've been a Linux admin for a few years now, mostly at the SME level. I have never had much of a budget, and consequently never used or installed a commercial Linux product with the expectation of support.....but guess what - never been completely stumped.

        Usenet - rarely use it - google is my #1 support resource these days, after pulling my hair out for a while, I email - guess who - the guy who *actually* wrote the code - not some 16 year old who's collecting call stats, not some manager type who thinks the world will spin off it's axis if their company cops any form of responsibility for their product by admitting a fault...I just email them, they offer a suggestion, and it usually works. Now thats support!! (the Linux hackers are mostly totally cool, and they have PRIDE in their work)

        Oh and it's fine to say - well home users shouldn't need to hack source code, but seriously, if you're an admin - you should know at least 2-3 languages - not overly well, but well enough to fix small bugs IMHO (if you are, and you can't - get involved - hack some kde stuff to make your life easier, then share it at kde-apps.org or sumfin :)
    • Just the small fact that Linux is FREE and what you really pay for wheny buying a Linux distro such as RedHat or SuSe is support.

      No, that doesn't make any sense, especially in a buisness model. Sure, the OS itself can be free, the installation, free, but you have extra costs:

      1. Paying to teach the administrators the new distro that they are not used to administrating on

      2. Paying to teach the employees how to use the new distro that they are not used to working on

      3. Payment for code conversion (if n
  • When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor...

    ... because Microsoft doesn't compete with the tooth fairy and Santa Claus [linuxworld.com]

  • Sure... (Score:5, Funny)

    by xxx_Birdman_xxx ( 676056 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:09AM (#9213105)
    From the article:
    Muglia must keep a long train of updates and service packs for older versions of Windows rolling off the production line

    WOAH, slow down with all those service packs for XP microsoft!
    If the service packs for XP were actually a train, the would be only one carriage.. but that carriage would be bloody long!

  • reminds me of the famous quote (Score:3, Insightful)

    by v1x ( 528604 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:10AM (#9213106) Homepage
    At first they ignore us, then they laugh at us, then they fight us, then we win -Mahatma Gandhi Funny how this seems to be already happening with Linux & MS ... technology used by our competitors ... whatever!
    • We are already on step 3. SCO is proof of that. They ignored us for most of a decade, can't think of anything for step 2.
    • If this is the case, hopefully the fight continues on for many years. Not in the courtroom, but on a technical level. Competition among operating systems is nothing but good news for consumers. I would hate to see either side 'win' over the other, because the winning side could become complacent over time and we would not see the same level of innovation and development.

  • Migration (Score:5, Interesting)

    by darnok ( 650458 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:24AM (#9213150)
    From the article:
    > In the last 12 months, about 35 percent of the
    > base has moved to Windows 2000. It's accelerating.
    > We will see in this calendar year another third of
    > the base move. It's a pretty small percentage of
    > customers on NT 4.0 -- less than 20 percent. Japan
    > is higher than that. The United States is lower.
    > But the vast majority of customers will move by
    > the end of this year

    Based on my own experience, I'd dispute these figures. Over the last 12-24 months, I've worked at several banks, General Motors, General Electric, and large government bodies. Every one of them has loads of NT 4 servers in production, and no plans to migrate a lot of these systems because they just work.

    Many of them still use NT 4 on the desktop too. I've got no idea how the licencing for this works, but many many people who work for these companies are logging into NT 4 each day.

    If this guy is talking about migrating their customer-facing systems to Win 2000 or 2003, then I'd believe that - these companies roll out new customer-facing systems very quickly and not many *customer-facing* systems more than a few years old are still out there. However, it isn't stated in this interview that he's excluding back-office and end-user systems in these migration figures. You'd be right if you guessed that customer-facing systems make up a tiny percentage of overall system numbers at these sites.

    There must be a lot of Slashdotters working at similar large sites - what have you encountered in terms of migration rates, and the number of NT 4 systems still in operation?

    • Re:Migration (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We have 5 sites all running NT4 on desktops and servers. At least 1000 desktops per site with between 10-20 servers per site with the odd HP-UX one holding a massive customer database.

      Everything - bar the database servers - is being migrated to XP. And I mean everything. I shudder to think what the licensing costs were...

    • Re:Migration (Score:5, Interesting)

      by InternationalCow ( 681980 ) <mauricevansteensel @ m a c .com> on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:34AM (#9213180) Journal
      I work in a large university hospital (more than 5000 employees) where the entire information structure is based on NT4. The only recent innovation was that desktop PC's running (you're not going to believe this considering the critical data some people are working with) win 98 were phased out and replaced by WinTerms. Desktop applications are now delivered by server. The groupware is Novell's, running on NT4. There is no way that the IT department is going to consider running W2K or up, especially not now that we have major budget cuts. Hell, we may actually see a move to Linux before too long :)

      • Re:Migration (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        OK, I am a surgeon working in a similar large university hospital. We have recently (2003) moved off of a system employing IBM PC-compatible terminals booting off a floppy(!), to a WinTerm-based system for accessing the DOS program for laboratory data. For anyone outside the hospital, they have a web-access portal that is only usable with IE due to ActiveX controls. I don't know wtf the IT people at our hospital are thinking with their dedication to Microsoft, but hey, I am only a dumb surgeon, I don't kn

    • Re:Migration (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kd4evr ( 712384 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:46AM (#9213213)
      Good question!

      Every corporate user (or group of users) faces a dilemma:

      - stick with the good ol' NT 4 stuff which they finally mastered and managed to put in some kind of stable and working order, not only to avoid pitfalls with new bugs (oops, features) but also to avoid W2k and XP specific viral and security exploits to limit their security update efforts;

      - or migrate at some point, hoping to avoid both old aches and pains as well as lack of features and interoperability compared to those entitites who migrated already.

      Considering all side factors (sysadmin skills and preferences, ability to spend & invest in infrastructure), parent (darnok) has a point: those who hadn't yet migrated, are not likely to do so unless they are lured into a honeytrap of some sort: either new value, package deals or discounts, etc.

      Finnaly, if those (probably smart) people would want to migrate, wouldn't they consider all options and likely consider the competition - give linux driven solutions a go?

    • Our customers mainly use Solaris 8 as a server platform, but for desktop software, they're split between Win3.1/NT/2000, with most of them still on NT. If it's been working fine for 10 years, why change it. That said, the last of the Win3.1 people are either moving or about to move to something newer to take advantage of software that's not available on Win3.1.

    • Re:Migration (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Baki ( 72515 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:48AM (#9213370)
      I know a large swiss bank using w2k for windows server (all real servers are solaris or mainframe) and still NT4 for desktop. It is being replaced by win-XP over the next 3 months, because support for NT4 has been terminated. Another reason is increased use of laptops. The laptops currently use W2K (since NT & laptops don't mix well) and they want to move to a single client operating system.
    • They bought a New P4 system from HP, preloaded with win2000, to run as a dedicated system for our software.
      But their company policy dictated all systems had to run NT, so they installed NT.
      We installed our software, but the machine chrashed 2-3/week in tcpip.sys. We tried about 17 different tcpip.sys for winNT (there are lot's of tcpip.sys versions, for a file of just a few kb !!)
      There were very angry with us that we could not get our software working (it worked fine elsewhere on NT). We figured it was a pr
    • Good question!

      I work as a freelance Microsoft Certified Teacher in Europe (teaching Windows networking, not development). Most of my students are from medium to large organizations.

      Most of them are in the process of migrating their NT4 domains to Active Directory (2000 or 2000/2003 mixed). This is just like two years ago!! Really, most of them are working over two years on this migration.

      One difference is that two years ago i didn't hear anyone mention linux or OSS, now they ask about it (There is at lea

  • He's being vague (Score:5, Interesting)

    by InternationalCow ( 681980 ) <mauricevansteensel @ m a c .com> on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:54AM (#9213232) Journal
    While wide-ranging, this guy's answers are really vague. I am none the wiser for it. What the hell does he mean by "We're taking the concept of transferring information across the life cycle of the business application and ingraining it in as part of the process. DSI is all about information transfer between a developer, the operations center and the end user. There are ways to do that on a surface level, and there are ways to build that deeper into the OS, and that's what we are doing."?? Like, are they going to provide a pack of Sticky Notes (TM, did they buy 3M?) with every copy of Longhorn or Blackcomb that they sell so that the developer may leave a note for the user? That's one way of "ingraining" info. And while I'm at it, why is he touting complexity as a good thing? AFAIK the more parts there are, the bigger the chance of something breaking down. New security holes, here we come.
    • Like, are they going to provide a pack of Sticky Notes (TM, did they buy 3M?) with every copy of Longhorn or Blackcomb that they sell so that the developer may leave a note for the user?

      And, yet again, they would be doing a poor job of copying Apple. [macdevcenter.com]

    • Re:He's being vague (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:41AM (#9214372) Homepage
      And while I'm at it, why is he touting complexity as a good thing? AFAIK the more parts there are, the bigger the chance of something breaking down. New security holes, here we come.

      That's a profound observation I see played out over and over across my customer base. The longer I'm in IT, the more I encourage my customers to keep their data systems simple and build them on open standards. Then some rep will come in with some dribble about the "development stack" (I've never figured out what that was) and "information transparancy" (my personal favorite useless buzz phrase) and a demo and pretty soon UPS will be wheeling in some boxes. Nevermind if it can talk to the other systems and fits in with the integration plan. And what platform does it run on? Who's going to administer the box? Who is going to be the customer owner? No thought at all. It looks pretty let's get that.

      And the best part is the vendor will blame IT if it doesn't work right. We're obviously not following "best practices" however the f' they happen to be defining those at the moment. Hey, has anyone seen the big book of Best Practices anywhere? Crap, someone keeps borrowing mine.

  • Migration. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EvilGrin666 ( 457869 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:55AM (#9213238) Homepage
    Microsoft has had trouble getting some customers to move from older versions of Windows, like Windows NT 4.0.

    In the last 12 months, about 35 percent of the base has moved to Windows 2000. It's accelerating.

    I wonder what % of that is forced to move due to the unpatchability of NT4 against recent worms like Sasser?

    • Re:Migration. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Shimbo ( 100005 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @06:00AM (#9213400)
      I wonder what % of that is forced to move due to the unpatchability of NT4 against recent worms like Sasser?

      Doh. NT isn't vulnerable to Sasser.

    • Re:Migration. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jawtheshark ( 198669 ) * <slashdot@@@jawtheshark...com> on Friday May 21, 2004 @06:05AM (#9213416) Homepage Journal
      None... Networks using Windows NT4 are usually cut off from the internet. At least, at the client where I work it is that way. Want to go on the internet? Over there is a machine connected to the "Yellow Network", where you can surf all you want... This has the added effect of employees not wasting time on the internet because it is very "visbile" when you're surfing.

    • I wonder what % of that is forced to move due to the unpatchability of NT4 against recent worms like Sasser? and from a child post

      Doh. NT isn't vulnerable to Sasser.

      Shimbo, NT is vulnerable - you're just completely wrong. You shouldn't post unless you have your facts straight.

      EvilGrin666, NT is patchable [microsoft.com]. Now if you are referring to the problems [microsoft.com] with patching NT systems with system partitions larger than 7.8GB, you are hal'f right. Just remember that these configurations were never recommended

  • MS don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PorscheDriver ( 698772 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @04:56AM (#9213243) Homepage
    Muglia, a 16-year veteran of Microsoft, is tasked with building Longhorn Server, likely the most complex operating system ever designed

    A server shouldn't need to be the most complicated thing ever. Fundamentally, it does a fairly simple job. Making it 'more complex than ever' makes me want to use something else! (I'm a Tech. Director).

    Wouldn't it be cool if MS said "Hey this new OS will use half the resources, be 99% secure, and run on a reasonable spec PC, and be simple to use and understand". Don't think we'll be getting that somehow though...

    Still, I suppose from a business point of view they have to keep swimming, like sharks.

    • Re:MS don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by offpath3 ( 604739 ) <offpath4 AT yahoo DOT co DOT jp> on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:42AM (#9213354)
      likely the most complex operating system ever designed

      A certain quote by Kernigan comes to mind here...

      "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

    • Re:MS don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)

      by toby ( 759 )

      "Hey this new OS will use half the resources, be 99% secure, and run on a reasonable spec PC, and be simple to use and understand"

      Sorry to state the obvious, but - Lucky we've already got half a dozen free O/S that meet or exceed those criteria, isn't it?

      I suppose from a business point of view they have to keep swimming, like sharks.

      Yes, that's the tragic part. Burning untold oxygen and programmer hours and customers' money. It's probably best if we continue to withholding money and other encouragem

  • No competition? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by miffo.swe ( 547642 ) <daniel.hedblom @ g mail.com> on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:02AM (#9213256) Homepage Journal
    When i slap together a new LAMP server on linux it sure as heck is taking business away from Microsoft. A DNS, DHCP, Firewall, mailfilter/AV is today only a couple of cd's away for most admins with half a brain. And the best part? It doesnt cost a dime!

    Even if Microsft successfully attacks all the companies selling linux there will still be a significant marketshare who is using linux on servers. What Microsoft should do is start selling applications and services to linux, like a full blown emulator for win32 and Office for Linux.

    That way they wouldnt have to kill competition to earn money. Sometimes it feals like killing the competition is the goal and making money just a side effect.
    • "And the best part? It doesnt cost a dime!"

      Study after study shows the upfront cost is only the small percentage of the cost of a computer over its lifetime. Please kill the "it doesn't cost a dime" meme once and for all.
    • His point is that Linux isn't a Microsoft competitor, you are. You may call it slapping together a server, but you're really building out of raw materials a product which competes with their products. If you were an IBM employee, the same task would be "delivering a solution."
      • What do you mean? If i put the same server together out of Microsoft products am i still competing with them? I use another system than Microsofts doing the same exact thing i would do if i bought the parts from them?

        Everything that enables a customer not to buy something from Microsoft is competition.

  • Sounds pretty obvious to me... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:08AM (#9213269) Homepage Journal
    When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.

    In other words you think of it as a competitor.

  • Microsoft linux offerings (Score:3, Interesting)

    by marvin_pa ( 751407 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:10AM (#9213276)
    This is a first step towards Microsoft deeming open source solutions ready for the market place.

    No doubt that Microsoft will start using the linux kernel once they think it will make them more profitable.

    • This is a first step towards Microsoft deeming open source solutions ready for the market place.

      For a start, the Microsoft operating systems depend on open source solutions to get on the internet at all - and there are other exapmples.

      Quite a few years ago they were selling CDs of development tools which included gcc - all above board with licence and source, the way it was always intended. Another thing to remember is all the stuff in Microsoft software (eg. TCP/IP implementation) that came out of Berkle

  • expertise, consultancy, and cost (Score:5, Insightful)

    by koekepeer ( 197127 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @05:27AM (#9213322)
    the guy says:

    "... and we think about software-based solutions to information technology problems and how our software can drive down cost. That's pretty distinct from, say, an IBM that is first and foremost a consulting company. Our focus is how to provide more out-of-the-box solutions that don't require those consulting services."

    MS always uses the "low cost - no need for expertise" argument, yet always fails to deliver. windows consultants will always be needed. IMHO, when you make a swiss-knife piece of software, you'll always need an expert to implement that part of the swiss knife you actually need in a specific situation.

    i don't think you'll spend less on consultancy, as compared to other solutions such as linux...
  • What the gentleman is trying to say is "We will try to make the next version of MS Windos as much alike Linux as possible".
    That's about as simple as it gets.
    O.O

    • Re:The true meaning? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tiger99 ( 725715 )
      Does that mean that the Posix compliance will be real, and not illusory, and that it will read and write "foreign" file systems?

      Quick, everyone, patent your little (or big) bit of Linux now, while you can......

      Only joking of course, I doubt that what Sir Bill has between his ears is capable of grasping how extensive and powerful the facilities provided by Linux really are.

      If they want to make a *nix-like system, they will face serious sompetition, from IBM, Sun (now remember how quickly Bill fell out with

  • Blackcomb? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Whitecloud ( 649593 )
    He also gives the lowdown on the next major release of Windows Server, code-named Blackcomb.
    Blackcomb, sounds evil. The OS from the darkside, while doing battle surfing on lava [slashdot.org] against the might of Linux.

    need a website? [whitecloud.co.nz]

    • Re:Blackcomb? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Blackcomb isn't evil... some of the ski runs there are though. Ever heard of Whistler Blackcomb [whistlerblackcomb.com]? Yeah, suprisingly those two mountains were around BEFORE Microsoft.

    • Some people have mentioned that this is possibly a step towards Microsoft having an open source model, which is highly unlikely. The business model is 'own the OS'. It has proved so profitable they plan to repeat the experience by owning the market for a gaming OS, codenamed XNA [slashdot.org].

      It makes no sense for Microsoft to say Linux is a competitor or to reveal a strategy to deal with the threat, why show your hand early? Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, these are the tools of the dark side...

  • Quite right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @06:20AM (#9213468)
    'When I think of Linux, I don't think about it as our competitor. I think about Linux as a technology that is used by our competitors to build competitive offerings.'

    He's quite right here. Linux isn't a competitor - it's just a kernel. GNU/Linux is a competitor. GNU/Linux with X and KDE is a dangerous competitor. But Linux on its own is not a big problem.

    • Very much the case, the "Competitor" here isn't just Linux (It's just a kernel) It's fedora, it's redhat, it's debian, it's the FOSS movement as a whole that is getting to them. Linux by itself is such a small target, Apache and everything else is also within scope.

  • To Microsoft Project Managers: Get out of BC (Score:3, Funny)

    by Matt Clare ( 692178 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:24AM (#9214192) Homepage
    As a Canadian Linux and OS X user I really wish M$ would stop using ski destinations in British Columbia for their code names. If they must use Canadian based names why not things like "Sea King," Mulroney and Hamilton?

  • On a more serious note, I think that the best thing M$ can do right now is to work on PR. They have a proven record of releasing sub-standard software applications; therefore, unless they truly come up with something original and stable, they should keep their mouths shut. Empty promises hurt their PR just as much as lousy software they manage to mint every once in a while.

    He is right about Linux though. I do not see Linux replacing Windows on a desktop anytime soon. There are several reasons for that.

    • Windows XP is pretty stable.

      I've been forced to use it 40+ hours a week for work for the last 8 or so months, and not one crash or blue screen of death.

      I guess you could keep calling it unstable anyway, but if you're a rabid Linux fanboy (which, I'm not saying you are, but let's be honest... normal people do not write MS with a dollar sign) you'd do better to tout the advantages Linux actually has over Windows. Stability isn't so much one of them, anymore.

      • Re:Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by $criptah ( 467422 )

        I am not a Linux fanboy. I used what is good for my productivity. My primary desktop is a mac running Mac OS 10.3, that, alas, blows Windows out of this world. My production servers run Linux Debian.

        My regular computer runs a web and a database server. I process graphics applications and run resource hungry software on it. I restart it only when it comes to software updates.

        The real problem with Windows is that M$ never learns from its mistakes. They keep producting crap they call Windows without loo

    • A misconception that I see over and over is that there exists a competition between Linux and Microsoft.
      This is a misunderstanding.
      Some people believe that Linux and more generally, Open Source Software, has a goal of becoming the operating system of choice in all venues.
      This is false. And this is why
      Microsoft is a Corporation in the United States of America. The Microsoft Operating System is a computer program.
      Linux or OSS is a computer program. It does not belong to any Corporation anywhere.
      Micros
      • You're right, Linux doesn't compete with microsoft. It's the software for linux that competes with microsoft. I think the only creative thing about the Linux movement has been the kernel. The other mainstream apps and desktops are clones.

        Gnome's trying to be like apple. KDE's trying to be like Windoes XP (Plastik?). Openoffice and star office are clones of Office. Mono says itself it's copying .NET. XMMS...winamp. Gimp...photoshop.

        I'm not saying these ideas started out at microsoft (so save the ms
  • Microsoft has been on the offensive lately. Trying to avoid people from migrating away from their security hole ridden operating system to Linux, Mac OSX and the BSDs. I hope companies don't sit still and stop innovating their own products fearing Microsoft will wipe them out. e.g. Macromedia adoption of Central has slowed down because many people are waiting for Indigo and Avalon.

  • hahaha I liked this answer: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 7-Vodka ( 195504 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @09:03AM (#9214573) Journal
    Q:What percentage will take advantage of 64-bit versions of Windows Server?

    A very high percentage. It depends on how fast the hardware ships. Any application with a high memory demand will see the advantage of 64-bit.

    Sure dude. Because the hardware hasn't already been shipping for friggin months and months...

  • Interview Text Excerpt (Score:4, Funny)

    by ThisIsFred ( 705426 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @09:57AM (#9215223) Journal
    Interviewer: So tell us what we can expect from the next version of Windows in 2005.

    Microsoft Spokesperson: Well, with the release of Nexthorn in the first quarter of 2006-

    I: Wait, did you just say 2006?

    MS: Pardon?

    I: Nevermind. Go on.

    MS: Well, after the initial release, slated for the last quarter of '06-

    I: Hold on. What did you just say?

    MS: Er, well... Where was I? Oh yes, a new technology code-named Indigo will be a major feature in enhancement with the 2007 release of Window-

    I: There! Stop! You just did it again?

    MS: Did what?

    I: Just now.

    MS: Just what? What'd I do?

    I: You keep changing the date.

    MS: No I'm not.

    I: Yes, you are. I just heard you. You said "2007".

    MS: Couldn't have.

    I: What? Why not. I just heard you say it.

    MS: No, I said "2008".

    I: [pause] Okay. I apologize. Please continue.

    MS: Allright then. Indigo will up the standard for OS design in 2009...

  • NPR Underwriter (Score:3, Funny)

    by carrier lost ( 222597 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @10:29AM (#9215687) Homepage

    Microsoft - Your innovation, our patents

    MjM

  • Indigo, please (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok, I read through all the stuff about indigo I could find and so far I am not impressed. Two of the things Indigo has is kernel level transaction manager and a lightweight manager. All of this is tied to the network stack at a low level because MSMQ was not originally intended as interprocess messaging. Not a full blown network messaging server. This is also whey transaction messages in Biztalk have a real hard time scaling as the number of concurrent users increases.

    So to get around UI centric thread sch

  • Bah Humbug (Score:2, Interesting)

    by katorga ( 623930 )
    Here is my take. MS simply takes too long to release new features and capabilities into the Windows line. Come on, WinFS is a file system. Its going to take them until the "end of the decade" to release a file system? Slack off the world domination lockin strategy of uber-integration and technology dependencies, and release a more modular OS.

    Linux has the opposite problem. The pace of development and modularization of the system is excellent. But, the integration by the distributors is poor. From a clean

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