Unwavering MS Mission

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 05/16/06

Say what you want about Microsoft, and I usually do, but they certainly don't waver from their mission. Bill Gates just gave a speech (they let programmers give speeches now? Isn't that what Bill's title says, head programmer?) blaring the party line in every way. Read about it in Gates anoints SharePoint, hammers IBM, and outlines storage, workflow".

What's the party line here? You need another server (SharePoint Server 2007). You need to trust your collaboration to SQL Server. You need to realize Microsoft is the One True Way, although they have yet to coordinate their half-dozen communication servers with workflow engines. You need to stop looking at competitors because Microsoft will ship this, they promise, by the end of the year.

Readers tell me they can't afford an all-Microsoft solution anymore because each application requires it's own server. Not technically, of course, and not according to the marketing literature. However, running Exchange Server and anything can be a disaster. Running SQL Server and anything else ditto. Remote Access server ditto. SharePoint will be different?

Have you noticed all the information about a standard document format called Open Document Format? Microsoft said they'd play that game, but now they want to "improve" the format with their own Open XML. Told you they never waver in their mission: embrace the standard publicly, change it to fit their proprietary needs, then denigrate the standard.

The market seems to think The Mission may be attackable. Hence money for Microsoft competitors, as described in Start-up targets Exchange customers. Notice the Linux foundation for this new Exchange competitor. This makes at least a dozen ways to replicate Exchange functions without paying the high price in dollars and security headaches for the Microsoft product. Want a list of options? Let me know. Are you using one now? Let us all know.

Feel the Need for Speed? PC World just updated their Power PC Ratings. Speed, as usual, takes cash, as the low end of the Power PC shopping list is about $3500. But that's considerably cheaper than a Ferrari, right?

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Comments

Re: remote access

goMyPlace proxy reached alpha.

goMyPlace is a remote access software, but not just another remote server/client thing.

goMyPlace is a proxy server and Linux/PC/Mac software (Open Source, GPL) which is able to run in three modes
- typical mode is a daemon which connects to the Proxy and serves HTML pages
- in server mode application operates as a standalone HTTP server
- in proxy mode application operates as a Proxy server for other daemons (http://proxy.gomyplace.com is a testing proxy running regular goMyPlace software package)

Daemon can serve public files and/or private files (see screen captures in the demo section of the goMyPlace.com). Because daemon is hidden behind Proxy server (see reverse proxy on wikipedia.org) and never accepts incoming connections it allows some level of protection against the simplest attacks like port scan. Besides access to the file system administrator can execute commands in the command shell (no Java support in borwser is required). For example, copy files, list running processes or any other OS commands. Set of available commands depends on the OS. In Win32 this is MS-DOS commands, in Linux/OSX user gets access to the bash.

All URLs to the "proxy/daemon/file on daemon" are premanent and can be posted on any message board or kept in bookmarks. for example
http://208.109.20.145/j4jJxRKd/test_03/?hash=71DC4351006CC5C246374A5BFCE53A68B53A19AC:/home/arkady/gomyplace.3D/goMyPlace.jar
is a permalink to file goMyPlace.jar
j4jJxRKd is a ID of the proxy - in this case this is a proxy http://proxy.gomyplace.com
test_03 - name of the daemon connected to the proxy http://proxy.gomyplace.com
hash (SHA-1) of the file is 71DC4351006CC5C246374A5BFCE53A68B53A19AC
path to the file on the daemon is /home/arkady/gomyplace.3D/goMyPlace.jar
this file is accessible by user with guest level of access - it is in public folder

click www.gomyplace.com and see screen captures or browse files on the connected public daemons and have fun

Posted by: larytet on May 19, 2006 09:22 AM