Posts by John Doe 6 130 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Sep 2009
Oh Yes, they do... everything else would be pure stupidity.
They actually quite DESPERATELY need to become "more like Apple" because they are quite fast becoming not relevant.
Apple is making more money with less effort than Microsoft ever did... and are far more popular than Microsoft.
"Microsoft's revenue is rather dependent on masses of corporate desktops running Windows..."
That has not been correct since Windows 2000... Microsoft is earning most money on enterprise solutions than from Windows.
Here is what Microsoft earned their money on (source ZDNet.com)
* Server products and Cloud services: 19.5%
* Gaming: 17%
* Office Commercial: 14%
* Windows OEM: 11%
* Dynamics: 9%
Oh btw, You pay CALs whether you access Your Microsoft server from Windows, Mac, Linux or whatever... so a MS SQL server on Linux will result in CALs paid to Microsoft instead of to Oracle.
The ONLY scenario where a Thin Client solution is not working is when you are without connection to servers, like a laptop in the middle of Alaska.
I know about several companies running AutoCad on Thin Clients (and with better performance than on PC's)... now try again and tell me what is so damn special that it can't run via a Thin Client.
I have a Compaq Concerto from 1994, it came with Windows for Pen Computing 1.0.
You can see the Concerto here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Concerto
It is the same concept as Surface Pro: Desktop Windows OS with touch/pen features and a detachable keyboard (quite good), performance was also as a laptop and weight was acceptable also as a tablet.
You need AT LEAST:
1. fixed IP address
2. your OWN Internet domain with a MX record
3. DNS pointing your domain to your fixed IP address
4. PTR record mapping your IP address to your domain (that is on your ISP's DNS server)
5. an ISP allowing direct SMTP traffic
If your mailservers hostname is hermes.yourdomain.uk the PTR must point to hermes.yourdomain.uk
Microsoft hosted domains will not receive mail unless you ask Microsoft to allow your mailserver (or have SPF records), they will however return an error to you.
best practice is to check what $STEAMROOT is and if it is sane
change to $STEAMROOT
remove files from $STEAMROOT
if $STEAMROOT is not sane (/ or ~) you throw an error telling the user that $STEAMROOT can't be located.
This IS NOT rocket science, almost everybody has been doing this for 30 years on UNIX,
"Does Paypal have government approval to ask such questions?"
Yes they have... this is a requirement for bank operation in the US and if PayPal do not obey the rules in the US they will not be able to process any of the major credit cards since:
- VISA and MasterCard/EuroCard are operated by Citibank (that is their mothership CitiCorp)
- American Express is based in USA as the name suggests.
- Diners is also based in USA.
....and all transactions goes thru SWIFT which is owned by the major members... that is more or less the big US banks.
Unless we build an economy without USA we will not be able to do anything without approval from USA.
...somone @Microsoft has discovered the fact that their biggest problem is the very bad reputation of Windows, I've heard following on a platform in a larger European city (the train was again late): "The train company probably 'upgraded' to Windows".
It is a standing joke here and we are considered a "Microsoft country".
Bronek wants to virtualize "for serious" and the machine needs to run "Windows boot on top for others to use" ?
Frankly Bronek, that's not serious... It is not a setup you ever will see outside home, there is no market for this except in the spy business.
Why do you want pass through ? because you want to hide the fact that the system is virtualized.
Why do you want to hide it ? probably because you want to spy on someone.
Now mister wannabe Snowden prove me wrong.
...you should get ESXi (which is free when you don't use vcenter) and run everything from there, You'll need vsphere client (runs only on Windows) but that's all.
Virtualization on top of some other OS is not for REAL serious operation, only bare metal hypervisors delivers. I'am runnin 7 OpenSuSE based servers and an Win 7 (for admin) on an old HP Proliant DL385 (Dual Core Opteron) for fun... oh yes, I run VMware vsphere for profit too. If you only run on 1 server you don't need the cool features anyway.
VMware ESXi 5.1 on an old Proliant DL385 (2x Dual Core Opteron 2.4 GHz, 16Gb RAM, 6x 73 Gb U320 disks on SmartArray) and a QNAP TS459U NAS as storage.
I do not have a vCenter server (because that is what you pay for now) so I can only do manual off-line cloning and can't make snapshots.
I run 6 ~ 8 Linux servers on this and it works very well (and is FREE).
Microsoft is "free" for use when you have license for the appropriate Windows Server and there are restrictions on how many Windows machines you may run on it (2 Windows VMs on a standard W2K8 Server).
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