Microsoft boss Bill Gates pledged further action to help users and firms improve security when he opened the RSA conference in San Francisco late February. Also, Longhorn Aero UI won’t debut until PDC 2005 while while Microsoft delays major developer tools and database releases.
Gates maps out future for Microsoft anti-virus; Aero UI
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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He better shut up and deliver the current string of products he promised.
Why. The more he promises and fails to deliver the mroe people will look elsewhere. It won’t take much. You don’t even have to kill off MSFT just drop them down to 50% marketshare or so. After that Everybody will get better software.
Microsoft keeps telling us. How about showing us?
It’s already been shown, Microsoft has purchased Sybrari, a company that makes anti-virus software, which actually uses multiple engines to scan for viruses.
“Everyone will get better software.”
I realize you don’t like Microsoft for whatever reason. However, you might want to think about some of the generalizations your saying. Its more than quite possible the feature subset of software you pay particular attention towards isn’t in your opinion all the peach. However that rarely if at all applies to the overall case. For instance in my experience Microsoft tends to ofter very feature complete software.
Just a few things I’ve run into:
– Implementation of an Encrypted File system
– Granularity of ACLs
– Systemwide support of ACLs and integration with CIFS
– Integration of all three mentioned with Active Dircetory
In these particular cases I’ve experienced, the linux counterpart tends to be a bit short in robustness. Do I go around focusing only on that and saying Linux isn’t good software and the Windows is better software? No. I have some kind of common sense.
Think of it this way – someone who doesn’t know any better might happen to read whatever you’re posting and actually think you know what your talking about.
XP got long in the tooth. Short of DRM being integrated into the longhorn OS I am waiting with anticipation what the new OS would be like.
Hey, bad writing nonetheless, you seem to be *very* serious about something that is quite humorous: Bill Gates opening his mouth!
Geez…lighten up a little. It’s fun to poke at the richest man in the World. Try it yourself, and you might enjoy it!
On a serious note, I agree that MS has typically offered “feature complete” software, where the UNIX counterparts are more modular and tend to be works-in-progress. But I think that Paragrin has a point that “better” software is on the way. In many ways, the Linux counterparts are quite capable against anything Microsoft puts out and the momentum is on the Linux side where, and I think this was the point, Microsoft seems to be a little “stuck” right now. This will be fun to watch….
And hey everyone, laugh a little, OK?
Geez…there seem to be so many “really serious” people around here! It’s only computers….I mean…..ain’t there a lot more to life than that?
(tounge in cheek)
Gates maps out future for Microsoft anti-virus; Aero UI
Posted by Eugenia Loli-Queru on 2005-03-21 21:06:05 UTC
Microsoft boss Bill Gates pledged further action to help users and firms improve security when he opened the RSA conference in San Francisco late February. Also, Longhorn Aero UI won’t debut until PDC 2005 while while Microsoft delays major developer tools and database releases.
becomes
Gates maps out future for Microsoft anti-virus; Aero UI
Posted by anyweb on 2005-03-21 23:06:05 PTC
Microsoft boss Bill Gates pledged further action to help users and firms improve security by advising them to install Linux. Also, Longhorn Aero UI won’t debut until PDC 2005 while while Microsoft tests Apples Tiger BETAs.
(/tounge in cheek)
How it’s possible that a company with basically unlimited amount of research budget can be delaying most of its future developments. Something has gone very wrong in redmon…
They keep talking about updates and upgrades even when it takes several years to deliver (IE7, Longhorn) and stay in the news that way. It also entertains their crowd of Windows fanatics who enjoy struggling with Exchange and SQL Server.
Try an Open Source project and do not provide any updates for two years…the project will fade away! I’m still stunned at how MS manages to infiltrate into the minds of millions like that.
Didn’t Microsoft also buy RAV Software? When we will be seeing it in windows? If I understand it right, RAV was bought up so that it’s Linux and UNIX components can disappear.
Until Microsoft actually delivers on its goals, I won’t believe that it can accomplish what it needs. Personally I’ve moved onto other third party solutions. Heck, most of my Windows apps aren’t even made by Microsoft anymore.
Try an Open Source project and do not provide any updates for two years…the project will fade away! I’m still stunned at how MS manages to infiltrate into the minds of millions like that.
More to the point: try to find an open source project with the feature set and support of Exchange (especially) or SQL Server. Any you care to mention are a decade behind in features.
EOM
The more we find out about MacOS X Tiger, the more and more promising it looks. Tiger is even rumored to *gasp* be shipping next month.
The more we find out about Longhorn, the more we discovered its rumored-to-be features are being axed as the entire project is further and further delayed.
Oddly enough, many of these features, such as Avalon and WinFS, have counterparts already appearing in Tiger in the form of CoreGraphics and Spotlight.
I think this speaks volumes about the development models at the two companies. OS X is a very rich and easy to develop for both in terms of OS intrinsics and applications, and Windows, well, simply isn’t.
“The more we find out about MacOS X Tiger, the more and more promising it looks. Tiger is even rumored to *gasp* be shipping next month.
The more we find out about Longhorn, the more we discovered its rumored-to-be features are being axed as the entire project is further and further delayed.”
Boy, you said it, Bascule. And all this keeping in mind Apple is primarily a hardware company, and Microsoft the largest, wealthiest software company in the world by far. You’d think with MS’ vast resources their software would always be the very best there is.
I hope they do, at that point it should become painfully evident to people that they’ve invested in the wrong group! It should have already, but then they bought virus scanners and thought they were ok. Either that, or people will just use the open scanners, which will somehow surpass Symantec..
how funny would it be if all these “oh this feature wont be there” and all that kind of stuff was jsut a bunch os B.S. and is jsut being used as free marketing so sites like this post about longhorn. and then in the end it all shows up in longhon and there is some big article like “microsoft comes through for big finish” making it seem like they are miricle workers lol
I guess it would be…if you work on a competing anti-virus tool.
More to the point: try to find an open source project with the feature set and support of Exchange (especially) or SQL Server. Any you care to mention are a decade behind in features.
True the opensource world doesn’t have one exchange replacement, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get the same functionality. It will just not be done with one program.
A combination of cyrus imapd, sieve, murder, openldap, openssl, postfix, spamasssassin, clamav, kontact could easily replace the Microsoft Exchange/Outlook combo, and it would be easily scalable to an infinit number of users If you don’t like cyrus Hula would probably do the trick. Postfix could be replaced by sendmail and so on.
As for SQL server there are plenty of free databases that could replace that functionality. Some of them will also have features that is not included in the Microsoft product.
E.g. how would you do to use SQL server as datastore for Active directory, or using it directly for your user database without any LDAP stuff. How about object oriented extensions to SQL or the multilanguage stored procedures like you find in postgresql.
All of these products gets regular updates, usually many times a year.
A combination of cyrus imapd, sieve, murder, openldap, openssl, postfix, spamasssassin, clamav, kontact could easily replace the Microsoft Exchange/Outlook combo…
Yeah, and a chassis, some body panels, tires, seats, wires, and various rivets and screws could replace my car … if I had time to build it.
Oh, and I can only drive it on the race track? Oh, Ok.
otherwise it doesn’t make commercial sense. who would pay for half baked technologies?
The more we find out about Longhorn, the more we discovered its rumored-to-be features are being axed as the entire project is further and further delayed.
Rather delay and ship a good product or rush and ship a beta and make it good with service packs?
They keep talking about updates and upgrades even when it takes several years to deliver (IE7, Longhorn)
IE 7 was at first announced for Longhorn and was only recently announced for release at summer? As for Longhorn it was (almost) always 2006, but they took some features out to reach it (hopefully).
How it’s possible that a company with basically unlimited amount of research budget can be delaying most of its future developments. Something has gone very wrong in redmon…
AFAIK they stopped most of they’re development to work on SP2 (for XP). Now that this is out there shouldn’t be any delays. At least they hope so
I don’t really mind the delay of VS.NET although I know developers are really pushing Microsoft to get it out already. I’m really looking forward VS and if someone is interested here are some articles on it’s new features;
http://www.codeguru.com/columns/Kate/article.php/c9167/
http://www.codeguru.com/columns/Kate/article.php/c9381/
SOS
PostgreSQL is more feature-full than SQLServer according to a comparison on wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_mana…
PostgreSQL is very advanced, and I didn’t recongnize that until after I got a recent internship working in SQLserver. I had to read up on SQL, and when I looked at the features that are expected of an enterprise level DBMS I came to realize just how awesome PostgreSQL is (and how braindead MySQL is, but that’s a bit off-topic). All PostgreSQL needs is a management tool comparable to Enterprise Manager and it will be a force to be reckoned with.
A combination of cyrus imapd, sieve, murder, openldap, openssl, postfix, spamasssassin, clamav, kontact could easily replace the Microsoft Exchange/Outlook combo…
Yeah, and a chassis, some body panels, tires, seats, wires, and various rivets and screws could replace my car … if I had time to build it.
Lets continue the car analogy. In the Microsoft world you buy a new car if you get a flat tire and the hood is welded shut. I don’t see much of a market for that car.
Oh, and I can only drive it on the race track? Oh, Ok.
Yes, if you hand pick and hand tune your parts you probably could. Most people don’t do that. They buy it assembled by a car manefacteurer. Why not do the same with your mail, calendaring software.
Most of the programs,if not all, I mentioned is on the install CD of any decent Linux distro. Most of it is probably even installed by default if the distro is targeted at the server market.
Sure, you would need to do a little configuration, e.g. you would have to turn off the firewall on port 25,.., perhaps tell postfix some mascerading rules, set up distinguishng names for LDAP etc. But that is things you would have to configure in a Microsft solution as well. Regardless if you use Linux or windows you will need knowledge to do this. If you didn’t need knowledge Microsoft wouldn’t have certificaton programs for it.
On the server side, Linux have nothing to fear from windows. The desktop is more of a questionmark. Not because Linux is too hard to use but or a bad desktop system. It is simply because it haven’t been around that long, so there is less desktop software developed for it. Over time this will change. The longer Microsoft waits putting Longhorn on the market the stronger this competition will be.
Oh, it’s you again…
Haven’t you been banned at least once before ?
“Sure, you would need to do a little configuration, e.g. you would have to turn off the firewall on port 25,.., perhaps tell postfix some mascerading rules, set up distinguishng names for LDAP etc. But that is things you would have to configure in a Microsft solution as well. Regardless if you use Linux or windows you will need knowledge to do this. If you didn’t need knowledge Microsoft wouldn’t have certificaton programs for it.”
I have a couple of problems with this:
– Proof of concept
– Functionality
– Maintenance
I’ve not tried to piece together all 10 of these seperate projects to create an Exchange/Outlook end-to-end solution. I’m also very certain you haven’t either. So how can you be certain that it would even be possible? In my experience, the more non-related components one strings together – the higher the chances that the “little configuration” required becomes “this isn’t going to work”.
Functionality isn’t even addressed. Lets say you even got this to work on a basic level, do all of the features work? Sure you can rattle off lists of what postfix, postgreSQL, sendmail, openssh, openldap, and sieve do… However, just because one component is able to do something, doesn’t mean that any of the other parts of this system will have a clue what do with the result. There is no way of knowing how many of the features will precipitate out as being actually useful in a system like this.
Finally what about mainentance? Will updating any one of these components break integration? Who is going to be doing the QA testing for each individual component’s updates? How will new features from one project be incorportated into the system as a whole?
Maybe your idea is a tongue in cheek proposal and I’m just missing it. However if you’re actually serious, it honestly sounds like the standard linux mentality of “free linux ISO + random x86 hardware + girlfriend’s brother for consulting = Enterprise ready mainframe server”.
Dude that was awesome.
Total flame bait but beautiful nonetheless.
Haven’t actually used it, but the Germans seem to really like it and are using it. It ties together Postfix, Cyrus, and OpenLDAP to provide an Exchange alternative. With Kontact as the client PIM. It looks quite interesting, although 1.x seems a little rough around the edges. 2.x is supposed to be much better.
There’s also the Hula project from Novell that purports to be an Exchange replacement.
And there’s the OpenExchange server (which is being fazed out for releases based on Hula) from SuSE.
There are a couple of others as well.
Just a quick question about windows: Many described Windows as bloated. What about windows is bloated? If you’d like, please email them to me. I’m having an itching for some writing.
re: replacing exchange with equal or better functionality
it’s already been done. by many people. including extremely large organizations. IBM, Novell, etc.
if you kept up with the industry at all, you would know that and might not be making yourself look like an ill-informed idiot.
this isn’t theory. this is reality. people have implemented these solutions. i know it scares the piss out of you mcse’s…but i don’t know how else to put it.
the facts are there. extremely large corporations are implementing and *using* these solutions and you still want to talk like it’s all rhetoric.
i don’t know what else to say. i mean…what do you say to that?
there are none so blind as those who will not see.
Man o’ man,
who has the itch trigger finger for the abuse button. Any moderator will to give some details.
You mention only two companies (Novell and IBM) – both with competitors to Exchange, but neglect to mention that both are in decline and have been since the mid to late 90s. You then have the hide to say “if you kept up with the industry at all, you would know that and might not be making yourself look like an ill-informed idiot. “
I’ll make a clarification before someone else exaggerates my claims. When I say “both are in decline” I mean competitive products not competitive companies.
This looks like it has exchange functionality that someone has put together into a “product”.
http://asterisk.co.nz/asterisk/content/e555/e688/
No price (it is after all a managed product), no detailed features, no detailed publicly available support.
Risk your organisation to that if you feel the inkling. Most people feel safer with a company that provides more than a brief web page worth of information on their product.
And for the on web page worth of hype given by the company mentioned, the product looks to be a repackage with pretty graphics of software from projects already mentioned.
“including extremely large organizations. IBM, Novell, etc.”
Yep. You’re right. Its called WebSphere from IBM, and Groupwise/Netwise from Novell. However, unsuprisingly, none of these are open source cobbled together projects like Uno had originally recommended. These are in fact proprietary commercial projects that while they do conform to specific open standards, are not free (in beer or freedom) nor are they included on a linux ISO by any stretch of the imagination. The only one that could be construed to fit marginally into Uno’s original proposal is the now depreciated OpenExchange Server created by the no longer in existence SuSE. As for your “etc” as far as I’ve been told “etc. Inc.” makes just about damn near everything, for everyone perfectly — the hard part is finding out where the you can actually buy there stuff.
“if you kept up with the industry at all, you would know that and might not be making yourself look like an ill-informed idiot.”
Being an idiot has been and will always be one of my first and foremost hobbies. I see you’re quit accomplished in the field yourself.
“i know it scares the piss out of you mcse’s…but i don’t know how else to put it.”
Who are you talking to? Focus.
“i don’t know what else to say. i mean…what do you say to that?”
What I have to say to that includes:
1) Your solutions are not free alternatives (beer/freedom).
2) Your solutions are not found on a linux ISO.
3) Your solutions are not comprised of multiple non-collaborative projects but are commercially designed programs with a specific intent for a suite functionalty.
4) You didn’t give a single example helping Uno’s case, you merely reiterated that if you’re going to replace Exchange/Outlook its going to be with another proprietary, commercial all in one-solution not found on a Linux ISO. (i.e. replacing Microsoft with basically another Microsoft by a different name.)
“there are none so blind as those who will not see.”
You might be interesting in knowing that oddly enough Penguins have very poor eye sight.
Good argument, but I’d incorporate Lotus/IBM Notes instead of Websphere. (I nearly mistyped Nots – that would not have been inaccurate)
http://www.opengroupware.org/screens/index.html
————–
the only person i know who works at a company that doesnt use exchange, works at ibm.
Make that two.
My company does not use Exchange either and actually is trimming down the usage of MS software (like not using NT domain servers anymore, preparing a RedHat based desktop solution, etc.)
We have all global users in one mail-store. Exchange could not handle this.
I am a hard core Linux user but I constantly work on damaged systems with the operating platform produced in Redmond, Washington.
Worked on repairing my wifes poor little laptop yesterday. Even though it was protected by a firewall as-well-as being behind a router it became infested with spyware, malware, and a few viruses.
I did the normal scans with an anti-virus program. Used SpyBot S&D, Adware Personal, and even downloaded the Redmond Spyware Beta. It was, to my surprise, actually nice to use. But I had to chuckle to myself when it said VNC was spyware.
At least I am making headway with showing others they do not NEED proprietary software and use equally usable and extremely stable software.
I’ve not tried to piece together all 10 of these seperate projects to create an Exchange/Outlook end-to-end solution. I’m also very certain you haven’t either.
Actually I have. It works quite nicely. So I’m absolutely sure that it’s possible. It’s not even hard to do provided you have some basic knowledge of the internet standards involved.
I have been running it for about five years and so far the only outage of service have been a large country wide powerfailures where the UPS failed to supply us with energy long enough.
Functionality isn’t even addressed. Lets say you even got this to work on a basic level, do all of the features work?
Everything works including LDAP replication, password changeing, moving users between servers, encryption, folder sharing, quotas,..
Sure you can rattle off lists of what postfix, postgreSQL, sendmail, openssh, openldap, and sieve do… However, just because one component is able to do something, doesn’t mean that any of the other parts of this system will have a clue what do with the result. There is no way of knowing how many of the features will precipitate out as being actually useful in a system like this.
Well, postfix and all of the components follow internet or unix standards, this means that the other components do have a clue on whats going on. Just one example most applications that requre a login haven’t the sligtest clue of what system is used to verify the users. They all use PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module) that have been available in Linux/Unix for longer than I can remember.
Another example, calendering is done by using standard imap mailboxes, any imap4 compliant imap server would do. A more simple alternative would be to use a webdav enabled web server. Any webdav enabled web server. And that works too by the way, we used it before it was possible to stor calendar entries in imap.
Finally what about mainentance? Will updating any one of these components break integration? Who is going to be doing the QA testing for each individual component’s updates? How will new features from one project be incorportated into the system as a whole?
If you use e.g. Red Hat, or any other Linux distro they
are supposed to do the QA testing for each individual component, just like Microsoft is supposed to do for Exchange.
Are you claiming that Exchange is unrelated to other software? I think not. To run the latest version of Exchange you will need to run a recent version of windows, and that may require you to update other applications…
Well in that case, I stand by what I said earlier. Being an ill-informed idiot is one of my favorite hobbies.
Somebody asked for a management tool similar to the enterprise manager…
If you want it for free, the latest incarnations of PgAdmin3 are awesome, but there is also commercial stuff which surpasses the enterprise manager.
As for Exchange replacements:
Kolab Server
OpenExchange
Hula
and a bunch of others…
And yes Postgres is excellent, it really surpasses the MSSQL Server speedwise and featurewise in its latest incarnation and has less bugs (I know what I speak of, I have to deal with MSSQL every day)