h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

According to a test I recently performed DNA is server by Microsoft-IIS/5.0 and ASP .NET.

Can this be so, or is it a lie to try and divert attacks towards vunerabilities that dont exist?

Here included are the full HTTP headers for the page http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ (retrieved with a program i wrote myself)


HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 17:43:14 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Cache-Control: Private
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 22365
Connection: close

Dark Master

say it ain't so!

A787034

windows is only a liability in the hands of junior or senior programmers and systems admins, for mirical workers, saints and local deities they know how to protect the systems regardless of OS.

personaly I don't recon windows should be allowed near a network just yet.

-- DoctorMO --

It's élitist talk like that MO that could have set the computer industry back around 20 years. I wish more people thought along those lines

I recon Elitist would be to say that Unix based systems are too hard to learn for common folk and they shouldn't bother, thats why we/I don't write better software and it has nothing to do with my own/our incompitence in design and software use. Our users are just so good they don't need fancy obvous options, GUI's and on/off buttons where several hand made scripts, 20 text config files all in diferent formats and standards will do.

still better than hand me down Microsnot though.

-- DoctorMO --

notice how just about everything in that technological desription of how h2g2 works uses completely open standards (except the SQL ... don't get me started on that).

xml and xslt both work just as well as a combination in mozilla as in internet explorer.

apart from the totally different formats for anything approaching advanced queries, you could replace the ms-sql database system with mysql, or postscript and get an immediate increase in capabilities.

the same is true of the rest of the description. it is all either open standards, or proprietry extensions to open standards which have functional equivelents.

this means as microsoft continues along their path to bankruptcy, dna can be migrated to more open alternatives without needing a total rewrite.

Postscript?

So basically your saying that they are using an expensive alternative to the completely open solution they are eventualy going to end up with, just because they have the money to do so.

Yes.

That does pretty much sum it up, yes.

However they are not doing it because "they have the money to do so", but because most people don't think automatically about using the open varients, and thus go for the proprietary ones by default.

This is where microsoft makes most of it's money, because everyone uses ??? then everyone thinks of ??? as the standard way of doing things.

it is also one of the big things which will send them broke.

a lot of people cannot afford to pay the microsoft tax on programs, and so look to open source and open standards by default.

The only way open source will stay alive at all is if the EU scraps this stupid patents on software, if it goes through Microsoft have 27 patents on the Linux Kernel because it dosn't work like copyright. do you think they'll stand idaly while Linux gains more and more of server and desktop markets?

they might have us patents, but any patents in the eu before the legislation is passed should be invalid (as you can't have retrospective legislation and still claim to be a civilised democracy).

however it is mainly eileen mccarthy and a few vested interests involved, with many national (and regional) governments, charities, and businesses (both small and large) stacked up against them.

it is actively being fought by a lot of people, and some of the businesses involved literally have millions invested in linux.

just about every operating system manufacturer except microsoft has a vested interest in not having this set of patents recognised.

so do a lot of mobile phone makers, set top box makers, digital video recorder makers, and the list goes on and on.

if you then add in the fact that more software development now happens on open source software than any other system, it is obvious that microsoft will not continue to have it all it's own way.

When you consider that PCs, mobile phones etc are set to lose their 'relatively rare' status in Asia and Africa (where over half the world lives), the prospect of open source dominating the scene is, I imagine/hope, highly likely

If/when this happens, Micro$oft will either need to:
hire more lawyers
or
start playing by realistic rules

microsnot? rules? my dear no! we don't want the world to come to an end

I agree that alot of buisnesses have vested interest in some of these idea's, I use the analogy that what if H G Well prohibited the use of SciFi as a geanra in writing? claiming he owned copy rights to ideas and sytems and methods of writing?

god forbid! patents on software is madnes! and the country comming off the worst so far is down under.