Cringley on MS's possible plan.....

Post #4,253 by addison 8/8/01 3:44:10 PM Reply	Cringley on MS's possible plan..... [link\|http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010802.html\|[link\|http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010802.html\|http://www.pbs.org/...0010802.html]] The scary part... He might be right. Addison
Post #4,262 by Another Scott 8/8/01 4:15:50 PM Reply	It is indeed scary. It's hard to imagine IP numbers not eventually being tied to owners the way he suggests. But MS having control over TCP/IP would be a very scary thing indeed. His last comment seems to suggest that he doesn't think it would work though. I'm not so sure... Interesting article. What do you folks think about it? How could MS be prevented from implementing a "secure", MS-only, "TCP/MS" and hijacking the internet protocol? Cheers, Scott.
Post #4,265 by admin 8/8/01 4:31:12 PM Reply	Nope. If you think they have antitrust problems NOW... The first time that new protocol gave anyone any problems, they'd have injunctions up the wazoo. Regards, -scott anderson
Post #4,275 by Andrew Grygus 8/8/01 4:48:38 PM Reply	But would that stop them from implementing it? They still think they're going to be able to buy a fix on this whole anti-trust thing and get it swept under the carpet. These are people who haven't the slightest hint of respect for law or government - they just think they haven't found the right people to pay off yet. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #4,280 by admin 8/8/01 4:54:32 PM Reply	Nope. But it's a few years away, and by then they will have been smacked down severely. District court injunctions are pretty quick to implement. I just don't think it's that doable on Microsoft's part. Regards, -scott anderson
Post #4,269 by Andrew Grygus 8/8/01 4:42:08 PM Reply	Well, it might be self fixing. Given the security quality of Microsoft's offerings, what's to say TCP/MS won't be hacked immediately and become the vector of choice for invading systems and transmitting worms, trojans and viruses, as well as for industrial espionage? [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #4,285 by Brandioch 8/8/01 5:15:19 PM Reply	MS couldn't even write a decent TCP/IP stack. They tried, and they ended up taking the BSD one. While it might be a great idea (for MS), I haven't seen anything indicating that they are technically capable of designing/implementing such. This has about as much likelyhood as his previous article about MS leaving the country. What's up with him lately?
Post #4,313 by static 8/8/01 9:28:59 PM Reply	Actually, I think he has a different point. I suspect Cringely's point is that Microsoft want to do this - never mind how capable they actually are of it. It's very ambitious, though. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #5,304 by acagle 8/15/01 3:23:40 PM Reply	Re: MS couldn't even write a decent TCP/IP stack. Could you point me to the documentation on that? I've seen it refernced a couple of places. Petreley also mentioned some other stuff that MS used open source for but won't admit to.
Post #5,330 by tjsinclair 8/15/01 6:23:14 PM Reply	Re: MS couldn't even write a decent TCP/IP stack. I think if you run 'strings' (or some other tool that can look at ASCII text embedded in a binary) on the TCP/IP binaries (like WINSOCK) you should get the Berkeley copyright notice. I haven't haven't done this, so feel free to correct me on this.
Post #5,338 by a6l6e6x 8/15/01 8:00:52 PM Reply	Windows ME winsock.dll copyright says it's Microsoft's. Description: BSD Socket API for Windows. Copyright: Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1993-1997 File version: 4.90.0.3000 I just checked. YMMV. Alex Only two things are certain: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not certain about the universe. -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Post #5,371 by tjsinclair 8/16/01 12:10:05 AM Reply	So why does it say BSD if it's Microsoft's?
Post #5,392 by kmself 8/16/01 6:30:45 AM Reply	API, not implementation I'm not speaking for what's in the software. But an API is a schema, an implementation is a work. It's possible to code up an alternative implementation of an API. Mind, if there's BSD code that Microsoft's not acknowledging, they might have some interesting times with UC's IP rights management folk. -- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Post #5,444 by a6l6e6x 8/16/01 2:33:54 PM Reply	What he said! :) I agree. Alex Only two things are certain: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not certain about the universe. -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Post #5,470 by wharris2 8/16/01 4:59:52 PM Reply	Tried a google search The best reference I could come up with was a reference to someone who thought he'd seen a Berkley reference in the license to NT 3.51. That's not very strong evidence unless I can actually run across a copy of NT 3.51 and see the license myself. The winsock.h headers do include the following: * This file includes parts which are Copyright (c) 1982-1986 Regents * of the University of California. All rights reserved. The * Berkeley Software License Agreement specifies the terms and * conditions for redistribution. but as noted, this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the actual TCP/IP stack implementation. French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
Post #5,537 by Andrew Grygus 8/16/01 11:32:43 PM Reply	ID number was a point. TCP/IP stacks report an ID number which is different for each vendor - except Microsoft's TCP/IP reportes the same ID as Berkeley. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #5,554 by wharris2 8/17/01 12:35:16 AM Reply	Re: ID number was a point. But that doesn't really prove anything. Microsoft might have decided, "OK, this is the standard ID, we'll report it". Again, I wasn't able to find any report that was able to nail Microsoft to the wall with taking the BSD IP stack. None. Nada. Nill. With the number of web pages out there, and with Google looking at them, and with lots of anti-Microsoft fanatics willing to spill their guts, and with the utter total failure of any of these pages to document Microsoft using BSD code, I need pretty damn good evidence that they used the Berkely IP. French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
Post #5,628 by boxley 8/17/01 12:26:56 PM Reply	the source they released for their original winsock 89? 90? wasnt bad but rather bare bones. They released it as an after thought when they were trying to convince the world that tcpip wasnt going anywhere. The code used streams, bind and listen where streams implementation is Berkley based. This is where the BSD stuff prolly came in. thanx, bill Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves. Chuck Palahniuk
Post #4,316 by boxley 8/8/01 9:54:52 PM Reply	they tried this once before and almost lost the company remember when billy poo poo'd tcpip and insisted that his network stack was the one to use? I remember him going wait a minute I am going to lose the whole pile and turned to the net with a vengeance. I also think that the scenario is quite possible with the following caviat. Sun, the network is the computer, linux we dont gas about ms and oracle with their own stack (look at 9i oracle building LDAP) and a resugence of Netware along with the PHB's getting tired of current licensing deals. If he does this maybe we could stake MS thru the heart. thanx, bill who likes raw IP sockets along with tcp wrappers, tripwire etc. thanx, bill Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves. Chuck Palahniuk
Post #4,325 by tjsinclair 8/8/01 11:34:19 PM Reply	OT - RE; NetWare You mentioned a 'resurgence of NetWare'. Do you have any numbers? I thought they were being killed by Linux/Win2K/NT.
Post #4,330 by Andrew Grygus 8/9/01 12:52:11 AM Reply	Killed? No . . . . they are simply dying because they don't understand marketing, or the importance of marketing - and it's kind of late to start thinking about it now (not that they are). Nobody has to kill them. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #4,350 by tjsinclair 8/9/01 10:11:41 AM Reply	So nothing's changed Great tech but can't market their way out of a wet paper bag.
Post #4,361 by addison 8/9/01 11:03:15 AM Reply	Actually... In my experience they're dying because their stuff is too good. It fades into the background, and works. Without many people. Meanwhile, Microsoft is in the front door lying about their products. And once the "migration" begins, the money pit opens up, and its always "cheaper to keep going". (ie, lets not lose face by admitting that there's no reason for us to do this). Couple that with the number of people who don't upgrade (Why? The stuff they have works great, why buy something else?) - something that Microsoft has figured out (don't get all the bugs out of it, and they'll buy the new product with MORE bugs). Novell's marketing is fine, as good as it can be, against the entrenched desktop monopoly, and against the "Nobody got fired for buying Microsoft" mentality.... The only thing they might could do would be to port Groupwise to Linux/Unix (which would kick some major ass).. But even then, that won't stop the tide of people rushing to shoot themselves in the foot with exchange. What else can they realistically do? They spend a lot on promotions now.... what could they do that would be more effective? (People ain't listening to them). Addison
Post #4,371 by Andrew Grygus 8/9/01 11:53:39 AM Reply	All the more reason . . . . to emphasize marketing. If your product is invisible, even to those using it, you've got a marketing problem, not a product problem. I can't recall seeing any Novell marketing in the last year or two, and that's bad because I'm far more aware of such things than most. They used to send me tons of crap, but all too technical to show to customers, and all aimed at businesses so large as to be irrelevent to my clients. They pitched entirely to their resellers, but did absolutely nothing to prepare the field for those resellers to make the product easy to sell. Microsoft made selling their products effortless. They need to find out who IBM is using and get down on their knees and beg them to take the account. The "Peace, Love and Linux" program got a lot of mileage (though part of that was because some dingbat used spray paint instead of chalk). The "Blue Spacesuit" campaign, on the other hand, is pure genius. You can tell how good it is by how many tech columnists have written it up as stupid and pointless. It has total recognition. Even the little 1"x3" ones they run now. You're leafing through a magazine, your eye catches a patch of blue spaceman and your mind says "IBM". Over and over again. Of course advertising is just one aspect of marketing, there are many more, and Novell isn't doing any of it. They've lost me completely - for Y2K all my former Novell customers got a nice new hard disk in their server with a Samba share named SYS. Pick up at closing, deliver back at opening, a half hour to switch clients on the PCs and they're running at a fraction of the cost of a NetWare upgrade - and nobody protested because nobody cares a hoot about Novell any more. I remember when they wouldn't even consider anything else. That's a major failure of marketing. Further, Novell wanted everyone to upgrade to v5 (desgned for large multisite businesses) including a tricky migration from bindary to Directory Services (with or without bidary emulation) and a new computer to support a much fatter product. Yes, they had a Y2K upgrade for v3.x, but guess what? It runs out of OS/2 namespace (used by Windows long filenames) no matter how much memory is in the computer. I had to write a procedure for one company so they could hand start their server by hand enter the params to register additional memory because the product couldn't register memory automatically. Otherwise it was "Upgrade to version 5.x" a few months after upgrading to 3.12 (done by another consultant). This is not taking care of your customers. And the fact that you can only administer a NetWare 5.x server from a Windows 9x workstation - how dumb. How terminally dumb. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #4,374 by wharris2 8/9/01 12:01:11 PM Reply	Pure genius? The "Blue Spacesuit" campaign, on the other hand, is pure genius. You can tell how good it is by how many tech columnists have written it up as stupid and pointless. It has total recognition. Even the little 1"x3" ones they run now. You're leafing through a magazine, your eye catches a patch of blue spaceman and your mind says "IBM". Over and over again. Pure genius? Pure stupidity. It's the most stupid ad campaign they've run since the swirly Warp ads. People may remember the swirly ads, but they don't remember IBM. French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
Post #4,378 by Andrew Grygus 8/9/01 12:16:43 PM Reply	It may seem stupid to technical person . . . . . . but the illogic of the blue spacemen makes it work. It's eye recognition, not content (though I bet you remember some of the content too). IBM, IBM, IBM, IBM, IBM, you eye catches it and your mind repeats it. IBM, IBM. Blue - Big Blue - IBM. You know the blue spaceman ads, and you know they're IBM. I didn't have to explain them to you, did I? They prepare the field for when the sales rep calls. Microsoft's ads are twice the size - two pages, not one - are they memorable? [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #4,396 by wharris2 8/9/01 1:23:40 PM Reply	You mean the DB2 ads, right? What the spacemen make me think is: This database is so bad you have to wear a spacesuit to even be exposed to it. That's not the message I think IBM is trying to send. French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
Post #4,393 by cforde 8/9/01 1:02:43 PM Reply	hey, I still have one of those OS/2 shirts.... Have fun, Carl Forde

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