Serious investigations into UNIX and Windows

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Micheal Patterson [mailto:micheal at tsgincorporated.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 9:44 AM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt; TM4525 at aol.com; stefan at swebase.com
> Cc: questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Serious investigations into UNIX and Windows
>
>
> Honestly, what makes you think that Windows is more complex in it's
> administration than a *Nix system?

Well, the first thing that makes me think this is because the ISP I
work at has an arm of the businesses that is purely Windows
techs who companies pay to fix their Windows servers, and I get called
in to help fix lots of messes there pretty regularly.  (even
though I do not have a MCSE myself)

I've seen the stuff with my own eyes.  It ain't pretty.

If you think that administering a Windows server is so simple then
answer the following test:

How do you lock down an Exchange 5.5 server to prevent a spammer from
using it as a relay.

I know how to do it.  No, it does not involve grubbing around in the
registry.  No it is not documented, either.  I know for a fact that
it isn't because I was in the conference call
where we had to do it, and the Microsoft support tech himself told us
it wasn't documented.

> It's common knowledge that Windows is
> "easier" to manage. That's one of it's selling points and it always has
> been. "Windows is now easier than ever, just point and click". Tell me how
> many times have you heard someone say that about any *Nix OS currently
> available?
>

Windows by itself is pretty useless as a server.  It only becomes useful
when you start adding in all the other crap, like a mailserver (exchange)
a terminal server, a backup software, etc.

You have obviously never had to sort out a mess with Veritos ie: Seagate
Backup on Windows.  Backup is so hairy under Windows servers that even
Microsoft themselves is afraid or unable to release a backup program
with the operating system that backs up open files.  And SQL server,
Exchange, and any other serious server application ALWAYS has open
files under a Windows server.

> The human race as a whole, is always looking for something to make doing
> something easier for them. That's what drives our desire to contstantly
> design new technology.
>

Hate to wake you with the clue phone but WE don't design new technology.
The people who design new technology are the companies that produce
it.  And they have agendas OTHER than just making your life easier.
Such as making money.  Why do you think that there's a new version of
Microsoft Word every couple years?  Can you tell me with a straight
face that each new version of Word has made it easier to type a
typical business letter?

> o Man walked everywhere then he realized, riding a horse was faster and
> easier than walking 3 hours.
>
> o They designed a saddle for the horse because it was easier on
> the ass than
> barebacking it.
>

You don't know what you are talking about.

Saddles were designed as crutches both for poor riders, and because
some horses have bony backs where you need a saddle.  They also
were designed for utility - so you can carry stuff on saddle bags,
and so you can rope cows.

If however you ride the SAME horse all the time you will find that
most horses are just as comfortable riding bareback as riding in
a saddle (keeping in mind that riding a horse, saddle or no, isn't
as comfortable as sitting in a car driving) and that you have a lot
better feel for what your horse is doing.

There are all kinds of benefits to riding bareback, just check out any
equestrian sites.  It is discussed quite a lot and many people that
give it a good try, end up preferring it.  And many riders have been
doing it long enough that they can run the horse at a gallop, bareback.

> o They designed a car because it was easier than riding a horse
> and thought
> to be faster in it's infancy.
>
> o Cars were made faster as the years went along because we wanted to get
> there faster.
>

And how much as the car changed in the last, say, 40 years?  Besides
emissions controls, the major improvements have been safety.  The act
of driving a vehicle is STILL the same as it was.

You could likely take someone 50 years forward in time from 1954 to
today and they could get in a car and within a few minutes start
driving it.  Traffic signage is still pretty much the same, stoplights
haven't changed in the last 50 years, we still drive on the right
side of the road, etc.

We are approaching a new fundamental change in vehicles from the
engine stage, with hybrid technology and suchlike.  But we are still
at least two decades away from widespread adoption of this.  And, the
controls are not going to change much.

> o The airplane was designed because people wanted to leave the ground and
> fly to wherever they wanted to go.
>

>From the passengers point of view, the typical jet has not changed in
the last 30 years.

> o Helicopters were made because it's easier to land in a field with no
> landing strip than to build the runway for a plane.
>

Choppers have not changed since the 50's other than being more fuel
efficient, and having more advanced instrumentation.  Oh sure today
now most of them are turbo driven instead of piston driven, but the
basic design has not changed.

> o Computers were made because people got headaches doing complex
> calculations and wanted something that could do it for them and
> do it faster
> as well.
>
> and so on and so forth. The human race, as a whole, is lazy and always
> looking for something to make their lives easier. In this day and age of

The cost of something is at least if not more important than how easy
it is to use.  In fact, the more experienced the people and organizations,
the more the cost is important for a technology than the ease of use.

You need to understand something about technology.  Sure, there are new
technologies released all the time.  But, each new technology has a
pretty basic refinement curve.  In the beginning, when it is released,
a technology undergoes rapid change, every year great advancements
are made.  Then as the years pass the law of diminishing returns makes
it so that the technology enters a "commodity" phase where the
basic design changes little but there are great advancements in
getting the cost down.  Then eventually that plateaus and the
technology has fully matured, and little but minor refinements are
seen.  The technology then survives in it's final form either forever -
such as your saddle - or it gets supplanted by a new technology -
as cell phone technology supplanted non cell phone mobile phone
technology.

When a technology plateaus, the companies that deal ONLY in that technology
can only survive if they sell on volume.  Such as our automakers.
And selling on volume is a game of getting the price cut as low as
possible, and just about all R&D is focused on that.  If it wern't
for emissions controls and CAFE, cars today would not have engine computers,
their engine designs would be similar to piston engine designs
that are regularly used in aviation today, which haven't changed in
50 years.  And they would probably cost a quarter of what they cost
today, and a lot more people would be making them.

The exception to this is when an entire industry is controlled by a
monopoly, as Windows is today.  The monopoly of course, does not
want to make money on volume, they want to make it on margin.
It is a lot easier to run a company when there is some cushion
in the product so that if there's a temporary drop of sales you
aren't put out of business.  (like the automakers nearly were in
2001 when people were so scared due to the poor economy and 911
that they stopped buying cars - that is why 0% interest came out)

But, you still need to generate sales and so the way you do it is
by loading more and more crap into the commodity product so that
people THINK they are getting something new and so are enticed into
buying the new-and-improved version.  At the same time you take
away crap that you loaded into the product earlier.  An automaker
does this when they add drink holders and remove ash trays, when
they add in enormous grills and take away fender skirts, or tail fins, or
fake spoilers.  Microsoft does this when they add in Active Directory
and take away Domain networking, when they add in Pinball and take
away Minesweeper.

And if while doing this you can somehow entice the customer to get locked
into you more, then so much the better.  Thus the MCSE mill and
Microsoft running around and supporting this mill by telling people to
hire MCSE's to work on their Windows servers.

> computer technology, MS provides that to us better than *Nix does. Yet,
> there are those that are adamant that Windows is more complex
> than *Nix is.

Windows WAS simpler than UNIX.  No longer.  You need to get out into
the field again, you have been sitting behind a desk managing things
for too long.  I'd love to see you setup a Active Directory network of
any size that contains mixed Windows versions.  You would lose a lot of
these misguided preconceptions.

Ted