Microsoft announces that the next version of Exchange, its upcoming Windows Server "Longhorn" SBS and its Centro infrastructure solution for midsize businesses will only be released as 64-bit.
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Babe, don't you understand, there is a big grand conspiracy theory where by there is a effort by unnamed people and organisations to make Linux illegal - yes, there are people out there with their head up their ass.
Linux is good, but only in niche areas; the key word is niche.
Member since:2005-09-21
Linux is good, but only in niche areas; the key word is niche.
I have no interest in joining this flamewar, but wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Windows is good, but only in niche areas?
Where is Windows good or dominant except on the desktop? Linux is dominant in supercomputing and *nixes still dominate servers. Video and audio editing is mostly done on Mac, and Windows is a very distant third in the smartphone market.
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Sadly you are right in some way but vendor lock-in is a problem in the IT industry as a whole and Microsoft is no angel when it comes to playing fair in that arena. Lock-in is one issue amongst many.
I would say that a clearly defined product that has broad industry support is extremely hard to usurp. Look, most IT decision makers aren't too cluey and they are familiar with Microsoft, understanding even some of the Unix concepts is a little beyond their capability. Sad but true.
Member since:
2005-11-16
Member since:2005-07-06
Uhm, if they were to do that all your programs would stop functioning as you no longer can perform calculations on datatypes other than 8-bit, 16-bit, and 64-bit long...:-P
Just because you have a 64-bit CPU doesn't mean you have to stop using 8-/16-/32-bit variables when it makes sense to use them...
Member since:
2005-11-15
>So why aren't companies flocking to better solutions
>like mad? Put away the tin foil hat too, because it
>has relatively little to do with "lock-in" and other
>magical Linux FUDster words.
There's these three little things you may have heard of... marketing, larceny and illegal abuse of a monopoly. Microsoft has been exceptional at all three. And at very little else.
Obviously you weren't around in the late 80s when Microsoft stole IBM's fire to start their own, burned or savaged what competitors it couldn't buy, forced companies to sell its product exclusively, purchased its own positive media coverage; actively flouted law and ethics whenever it felt there was a need.
There are other reasons. Novell's terrible gullability and arrogance. Commodore's larcenous board of directors. Atari's poor quality control. DEC's lack of vision. SGI's single-mindedness and faith in gullible customers. Apple's hubris. Sun's inability to keep the pace of performance and desire to be all things to few people, without an ability to make those products robust and mature. It wasn't all Microsoft's gangster tactics... but the pressure they exerted with their strongarm tactics just magnified the problems of the others as they succumbed to fear, uncertainty and doubt. Now where did I hear those words before?
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-11-15
>conspiracy theory where by there is a effort by
>unnamed people and organisations to make Linux
>illegal - yes, there are people out there with their
>head up their ass.
There is plenty of proof that Microsoft is doing what it can without getting the government down on its head again to make Linux an impossible choice. You have to have your head deep in the sand to not have heard about the SCOX lawsuit that has been funded by Microsoft and their partners. It's not a conspiracy, it's HAPPENED.
As for Linux being a niche product... please, get a grip. If Linux is a niche product, it's found itself into one hell of a lot of niches.
Member since:
2005-11-15
> And Linux dominates nothing.
Wrong. But I'm too tired to come up with a list of areas where Linux is dominant. Dominance doesn't imply quality or performance - if it did, we'd all be driving Bugatti Veyrons.
>Can you honestly say that Linux dominates the server
>market?
Thank heavens no. Luckily there is competition in that market still. Competition is good, despite Microsoft's best attempts to stifle it.
Member since:
2005-11-15
You know you want to spend those mod points.
--
...their new crap will not run on old crap.
Q'uell surprise.
For the love of God, who would run a mid-sized business on anything Microsoft is producing? This is not a troll, this is me being honestly incredulous that anyone would entrust their multi-million dollar business on Microsoft's Fisher Price OS. 100,000 functional viruses, 50,000 spyware products, hundreds of root-kits, blue screens of death, proprietary protocols, memory leaks galore, DLL Hell, the Registry (need not say more), lack of bundled functionality for text processing, Baby's First firewall... when does the list of mediocrity and insanity in software design end? Really?
I'm perplexed, and that's no lie.
Member since:
2005-11-15
Spend, spend, spend those mod points!
--
>So why aren't companies flocking to better solutions
>like mad? Put away the tin foil hat too, because it
>has relatively little to do with "lock-in" and other
>magical Linux FUDster words.
There's these three little things you may have heard of... marketing, larceny and illegal abuse of a monopoly. Microsoft has been exceptional at all three. And at very little else.
Obviously you weren't around in the late 80s when Microsoft stole IBM's fire to start their own, burned or savaged what competitors it couldn't buy, forced companies to sell its product exclusively, purchased its own positive media coverage; actively flouted law and ethics whenever it felt there was a need.
There are other reasons. Novell's terrible gullability and arrogance. Commodore's larcenous board of directors. Atari's poor quality control. DEC's lack of vision. SGI's single-mindedness and faith in gullible customers. Apple's hubris. Sun's inability to keep the pace of performance and desire to be all things to few people, without an ability to make those products robust and mature. It wasn't all Microsoft's gangster tactics... but the pressure they exerted with their strongarm tactics just magnified the problems of the others as they succumbed to fear, uncertainty and doubt. Now where did I hear those words before?
Member since:
2005-08-06
I personally think this is an odd move by MS. They sure play with high stakes lately when they push technology forward a lot.
I'm all for 64bit so I guess this means more happy apps for me, but on the other hand, is there really reason enough for everyone? I mean just because you can be 64bit doesn't necessarily mean you should be 64 bit?
On a little sidenote as a comment. We run 2k3 servers in our office and I'm happy we chose that in favour of other solutions. Easy to administer, very few exploits for small bucks. We need to have long-term plans and it's hard to bet on an option to MS then. Well surely we could've gone Sun... but looking at the options like Red Hat or IBM, we simply realized it will cost us FAR to much.
Member since:
2005-07-06
so thay need 64 bit for the exchange information store - it enables bigger databases, bigger caches in RAM, and so on.
making better use of RAM is a very valid argument, but why is 64 bit needed for a bigger storage? probably because their database driven mailstore is broken in the first place. i love maildir :-)
Member since:
2005-11-16
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"it's obvious they can't write portable code... "
Is that why WinNT ran on MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC?. Win2K was also ported to Alpha, but was development was cancelled by Compaq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT
(quoting the Wikipedia, I know....)
Win2K and up have run on Itanium. Look at the TPC scores for HP SuperDome (highest Superdome score) http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_perf_results.asp
XBox 360 runs a custom NT kernel. The developer workstations for XBox 360 are dual Apple G5s running a custom NT kernel.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14407
Windows CE runs on Arm, MIPS, and SH3/4 processors, as well as x86:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wc...
By design, anyways, very little of Windows is non-portable. Only the HAL, which deals with interrupts, SMP, etc. is non-portable.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q99588/
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2005-07-06
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2005-07-06
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2005-11-15
Why I am reposting is that I believe my comments are bang-on valid. And this casual mod point system is just a way for fanboys on the other side of the argument to make arguments they don't like disappear.
By way of demonstration, my posts are almost evenly modded up and down. The truth hurts, all the way around, I guess.
Member since:
2005-07-06
I think I am sitting at my last 32 bit machine. When I am ready to upgrade 64bit will be the standard. All of the people who don't understand the need for this haven't been paying attention for the past 20 years. 10 years from now I will be doing things that we have a hard time conceptualizing today--and to perform these untold wonders we will need faster machines. Progress marches on and it is good. When I was using a 120 Mhz machine, I might have said that no one needs a 3 Ghz machine and never will. I would have been wrong then, and the naysayers are wrong now.
Member since:2005-11-16
Hmmm - what exactly is the need for "64 bit" for desktop machines?
BTW your old computer is no good because it doesn't have the new metallic blue racing stripes. I think you should spend $2000 on hardware and another $1500 on software, just so you can take advantage of these nice new racing stripes. To ensure that your wallet is emptied sooner, we'll be discontinuing support for the old "non-striped" models, because honestly, all computers will have fancy blue racing stripes by the time we've convinced suckers that they're useful. Send your check for $3500 today (or 40 easy credit card payments of $100 a month) and we'll throw in a set of free steak knives! But ring quick - stocks are limited..
Member since:2005-07-12
While the 64-bitness of AMD and Intel's new chips isn't useful yet, these chips are greatly beneficial for a couple of reasons. First, the extra registers that come with the x86-64 mode provides flexibility and performance. Second, DEP makes it easier to write secure software.
Now that I think of it, 5 - 10 years from now, 3GB of ram on a desktop machine will be fairly common. It's a good idea to start building up demand now, so the industry is completely ready once we start feeling the pinch.
Member since:2005-07-06
Hmmm - what exactly is the need for "64 bit" for desktop machines?
Not much today. But in order to implement 64 bit we need hardware, an OS, and applications. The latter two aren't going to happen without the first two.
So my answer is that we don't need it today, but if the next ten years are anything like the last ten years--then we surely will need it. And it is a long implementation cycle.
Vista's successor (Windows 2020? We see clearly now?) will be MS's first 64 bit only OS.
Member since:2005-11-02
There are two main reasons to use 64 bit machines, both are likely to need the ability to use the much larger virtual address space.
1. For handling very large databases.
2. For video editing.
The first reason is why Opterons and 64bit Xeons are going out the door fast primarily to run Oracle, DB2 etc. The second case is as far as I know the only reason why you would need a 64 bit desktop machine.
Member since:2005-11-16
@Drumhellar
The extra registers can cause a small performance increase (between 0% and 15%) but won't make software more flexible. DEP or NX can theoretically improve security, but I've never had a problem that it would have prevented despite running Win95 and Win98 for ten years without anti-virus or firewall software.
3 GB of RAM might be common on desktop machines in 5 to 10 years, but a 32 bit CPU can handle up to 16 GB of RAM using PAE or PSE (36 bit physical addressing). I'd be very surprised if desktop machines need more than 16 GB of RAM in the next 10 years (despite the hardware requirements I saw for Vista :-).
@jtrapp
For well written/portable software, the "long implementation cycle" means recompiling it. This has already been seen with GNU/Linux software. IMHO there are some situations where 64 bit is currently beneficial (large servers, specialized applications, etc), so the long implementation cycle could begin with these areas so that compilers, etc are ready well before desktop machines need 64 bit.
@chemical_scum
Very large databases and video editing are specialized areas that a normal desktop computer user is unlikely to worry about. Despite this, if a single application needs more than 3 GB of virtual memory it can be split into several processes - for e.g. 4 processes at 3 GB each (which helps for multi-CPU or dual core, and in some cases allows those processes to be run on different computers). For an example of this have a look at how Google works. I also seem to recall an article on OSNews a month or so ago about setting up a distributed rendering farm (but normal video editing wouldn't require that sort of thing).
Member since:
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// I'm perplexed, and that's no lie.//
Perhaps you've never had to make a solid business decision?
Businesses use the software that GETS THE JOB DONE. For many businesses, there is NO LINUX equivalent for the software they use. NONE. NOT EVEN CLOSE.
So, they go with Microsoft -- and, they learn how to lock stuff down.
Which isn't terribly difficult, by the way. I've been using Windows XP for four years. Not one virus, not one trojan, maybe three or four BSOD's. Tons of productivity, tons of *FREE* software.
The horror ... the horror.
Member since:
2005-09-13
//Or they're kidding themselves. It can happen, we have one legacy app that we may never be rid of on Microsoft platforms. It's quite sad.//
Why won't you ever be rid of it, since it's apparently so easy to get Linux equivalents of necessary software?
Contradict yourself a few more times, chumly.
Member since:
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>Why won't you ever be rid of it, since it's
>apparently so easy to get Linux equivalents of
>necessary software?
You don't even know what app I'm talking about, sizzlechest. Moving to any other *app* is the problem in this case because of the legacy data. Not that you're interested in a reason, being trollful.
Member since:
2005-09-13
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2005-11-15