Archives


The Big Trend -- Unix, Linux and Windows Will Fight it Out for Years

Many Linux purists would like to see Linux eat into Microsoft's market share. Many Microsoft employees would prefer to see Windows work its way into the highest reaches of Unix deployments. Neither side is getting its way.

Opinion on TCO: Fuzzy Math, Fuzzy Logic?

Things get murky as you start to price out systems costs, and that's why we have analyst firms to tell us the bad news. Things are never as cheap as the vendors tell us. But what are the analysts telling us?

High-end Microsoft Stack Cheaper Than TPC Comparison Suggests

The price difference between extremely high-end Windows-based systems and extremely high-end Unix-based systems isn't as close as a recent Transaction Processing Performance Council TPC-C benchmark implies.

Microsoft Posts Stand-Alone Active Directory

Microsoft has posted the bits for its stand-alone Active Directory, an out-of-band component of Windows Server 2003 that greatly expands the flexibility of Microsoft's directory services.

Update: Stratus Touts Uptime Achievement

Stratus Technologies, maker of fault-tolerant Windows 2000 servers, is claiming its internal monitoring of more than 1,200 live customer units approached six nines of availability over the last six months.

Apache Hits Record Web Server Share

The open-source Apache Web server hit a record high in market share in August, running away to 63.72 percent of all domains, according to Netcraft's latest monthly survey.

EU Turns Up the Heat on Microsoft

Citing new evidence, European regulators on Wednesday accused Microsoft of "ongoing" abuse of its "overwhelmingly dominant position from the PC" to leverage its position in low-end servers and multi-media software. The European Commission is giving Microsoft a last chance to defend itself in a process that will wrap up in "months not years."

Licensing Change for Office 2003

Software Assurance customers got another bone when Microsoft disclosed an unexpected differentiation in the way it will distribute new features in Office 2003.

Screen Test

Some Group Policy tool tricks for implementing an enterprise-wide screen saver.

Microsoft.com Outage Not the Start of Widespread RPC Exploits

Microsoft hastened to reassure the security and user community that a denial-of-service attack that took down the Microsoft.com Web site for an hour and forty minutes on Friday was not evidence of the beginning of widespread attacks based on a recent flaw in Windows.

Mimail Worm Appears to Come from User's Own Administrator

Anti-virus vendors released a flurry of warnings over the weekend about a new e-mail worm called Mimail that is spreading in the wild. Symantec rated the virus as a 3 on its threat scale, a medium ranking that puts Mimail below only Bugbear on its current list of top virus threats.

CERT: Denial-of-Service Still Possible on W2K Systems with RPC Patch

The CERT Coordination Center put out a warning that Windows 2000 systems remain vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack even after applying the critical and high-profile RPC patch Microsoft issued in mid-July.

Speaking the Same Language

This month, Chris takes you through a handy script that discovers and enumerates what networking protocols are installed on a host.

Security By Aggravation

How much can you handle to get secure?

News Analysis: Longhorn Server Sidesteps the Question

The next version of Windows server has a code name now, but not much else. Microsoft sort of ended months of speculation at its financial analysts meeting in July by declaring that the code-name for the next version of the Windows Server will be "Longhorn" instead of the other major candidate, "Blackcomb." But Microsoft still hasn't finalized crucial decisions on the underlying issue that made the whole debate important.

Turbocharge Terminal Services

Here are some tips for keeping disk consuption to a minimum and improving server performance.

A Different Take

Many people, many stories.

License, Please...

If you were scared off by Microsoft’s licensing program announcements last year, it may be time to take another look.

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom

Windows Server 2003 has a number of differences from Windows 2000 in how it handles DNS queries. They can speed up domain construction and troubleshooting, helping you squeeze more power out of your network.

Windows Services à la Carte

Windows Server 2003 installs fewer services by default, and installs others in a disabled state. Here’s a guide to what they do, and whether you might need them or not.