clutch

Quote: is windows .net server really good for games? is it better then windows 2000 pro + sp2 + spr1 + 28 pre-sp3 fixes ? IT'S A SERVER OPERATING SYSTEM. Use a Windows desktop/workstation OS for your games, OK?

I have several BX-based systems that run awesome with WinXP Pro, and one is running .NET Server B3 right now quite well. What kind of "controller" problems did you have?

Quote: Absolutely - the human eye can't distinguish many more than 30-40 frames per second, so anything more is just wasteful. And as for those people who love to push their graphics cards up to 100FPS or higher...why?? [/b] Not entirely true. Have you ever seen flourescent lights flicker? Those run at 60Hz (US AC power) and I can see them quite often. Also, more FPS means less input lag, just like when you would try to turn a little in older 3D games but during the slide show with your slow PC/graphics card, you wind up turning 180* instead. I usually stop seeing a difference over 70+fps, and I stop "feeling" (less input lag) at 80+fps. Generally, if a game can guarantee 60fps no matter what is going on during gameplay, then I am set. Quote: Now that most games play stably at 60FPS, we should start to see more games that put the extra power into better (read: more realistic) graphics - which is what is happening with games like Wolfenstein, Unreal2 etc... Pretty much... I like shiny stuff in games. Quote: Anyway, back to the original topic, I'm about to install .NET on my other PC (just been waiting for an excuse to dig it out of the cupboard!), to see how it runs, have a play, possibly install Exchange on it...any news on when MS is bringing out Exchange .NET? AndyF The next version of Exchange is set to run on the next version of MS SQL Server (codenamed "Yukon"), and I would imagine is a bit further off in development right now. MS would like to unify all of its products and have them run on the same database core/language, and just beef them up for scale depending on the application. Quote: Playing with servers - does that make me sad, or what? Around here, it just makes you one of the crowd.

Quote: Yeah, until you get some spotty 15 year old using a w@rez copy (because that makes him l33t...) complaining that he can't get 100fps in Quake3 any more... (or am I just becoming cynical in my old age? ) AndyF Nahh, they usually complain about CounterStrike...

It does seem to work rather well, and I just installed Visual Studio.NET (Enterprise Architect) on it, and I plan on playing with debugging with it tonight or tomorrow night. The best part is that it's faster (yep, faster) than 2K server, and comes with almost nothing enabled by default, no themes, and 3 screensavers. This badboy is lean on frills but has some nice options (you can use either Remote Desktop or TS, system mgmt via a web interface, etc) to make it worthwhile.

Great way to make an enemy, but [censored] his girlfriend would have prolly been more fun...

Is this a workstation/member server or a former DC? If the former, try using the original workgroup (usually the name of the computer at installation) and the administrator of that group as the logon. If the latter, just try the original installation password with whatever the workgroup name is now. Sometimes the objects get skewed and you lose the ability to logon (I have had this happen a couple of times with NT4 and once with WinXP Pro), so you have to bypass and reset the password. I have used this utility here: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ that was pointed out in a post from a while ago by mlazovjp. If you use it, don't disable SYSKEY if you don't have to (you shouldn't), and make sure to read the directions FIRST. It works pretty well, but I did have some "side effects" after usage. Basically, I would backup all of my important data and make sure that anything relying on certificates and keys are handled appropriately in case it does have issues later on.

Umm, usually it's the delete key, and you look for the "Boot" option and make sure that your floppy is selected to be first in the boot order.

The programs you mention I believe use their own APIs, and they might have to be updated even if Win2K can read WinXP's partitions.

All I have to say is LOL. Just about any OS can be secure or not depending on its configuration and administration. http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=23958 And here's another one... http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23901.html

Basically wrong? How's that? Am I missing something here? It would seem to me that if you offer *less* things that can go wrong, then less thing should go wrong. And that's where I put Linux, in the "less things available to go wrong" catagory. Today I received a newsletter from Windows & .NET Magazine (formerly Win2K Mag), and in it there's a nice editorial from Paul Thurrott about some of these stats. Here's a big portion of it, but I would be glad to forward the whole thing to anybody that wants it: Quote: Drawing conclusions based on all the informational clutter about Linux and Windows is frustrating, tiring, and ultimately impossible. Here's a classic example: We've all heard that the open-source Apache Web Server has about 57 percent of the Web server market, compared with Microsoft IIS, which has 31 percent. Open-source partisans point to this statistic as a victory, but Microsoft can show that more top e-commerce sites use IIS than use competing products and that more Forbes 500 companies use IIS than use Apache. Let's examine a more recent example. In Friday's WinInfo Daily UPDATE newsletter, I mentioned a set of statistics from BugTraq, a reputable security- information provider, that shows how various OSs compare securitywise. The statistics show a surprising trend: When you aggregate all the Linux distributions, Linux, not Windows, has had the most security vulnerabilities, year after year. If you break down those numbers by Linux distribution (despite the fact that Windows 2000 and Windows NT are lumped together), Win2K/NT had 42 vulnerabilities in 2001 (data is through August only), and the leading Linux distribution, Red Hat, had 54. In 2000, Win2K/NT had 97 and Red Hat Linux had 95. I believe that the number of vulnerabilities in a given OS is tied, in part, to its usage. That is, more popular OSs are hacked more often because they're more viable targets. Therefore, Red Hat is the right Linux distribution to compare with Windows because it's the most popular. And because fewer servers run Red Hat Linux than Windows, yet the number of vulnerabilities in both OSs is similar, arguably, Linux is less secure. When you factor in usage, Windows doesn't look so bad. I read a lot of articles on Linux Web sites that describe Windows as "on the ropes," but major corporations around the world use Windows servers every day, and the servers, for the most part, work well. I'm not saying Microsoft has done a good job of securing its products, and the company's recent decision to focus on security is long overdue. But statements that "Linux is more secure than Windows" are definitely not true. Now, this sounds a lot like what I mentioned earlier, so this didn't come as any sort of shocker to me. However, most of these "holes" are probably in the form of client attacks, and honestly, how many people do you think are out there using Linux as a client? Most patches have been directed at workstation usage since that's where most vulnerabilities are at. I mean, you have to see the trend here and realize that there are WAY more users out there on Windows clients, and most people feel like they are wasting their time writing hacking tools for Linux boxes. That does appear to be changing though, and as it gets more "Windows-like" you can count on there being even more holes in it, especially since there are so many people trying to dictate what should and should not be in a distro. I am just getting a bit fed up with people claiming that Linux will be *so* much better "when it matures". That's funny, since I have been fiddling with it since '98 and the damn thing hasn't matured that much to me. I was expecting to at least see Star Office in a stronger light than it is, some sort of 3rd party directory service for object/container management and application support that would use said directory service. But instead, we now have 50 text editors. Hurray, I am thrilled. Most people wait until the first or second service pack of a Windows OS before they call it "mature", and that can take up to 18 months. But here, I have waited almost 3 years (and 2 or 3 version levels depending on the distro) and Linux still isn't "mature". They can't keep hiding behind that excuse anymore; you are either in or you are out. Suck it up, and take the lumps. Nobody expected them to be perfect, except for themselves. Personally, I am glad that there are people working on a different OS (even if it isn't BeOS ), but you can't keep covering up failures with excuses such as it being too "new" or that nobody understands it yet. It has been around for a long time now, and the community that backs it needs to accept responsibility for it. I have seen some MAJOR screw ups from MS, believe me. But, I would just ask that they fix it (and they usually do, even before I knew it was a problem to begin with) and move on. I pointed out the article because it was nice to see stats on Linux for a change, and found out that an OS with a far smaller user base than Windows seems to be catching up with it in terms of holes and bugs.

Actually, I think I am telling you that the Intel products have been released with far less issues using current hardware/software, not to mention having its options working than Via has. I have used Via equipment, and it's trash. Many others feel the same way, but have been using their products because it was the only thing that's available for their AMD CPUs. Releasing add-on cards for faulty USB controllers and patches to enable simple things like "suspend" in Windows is ridiculous as these items should have worked right out of the box to begin with. So, did I say Intel was perfect? No. I do say that Via's track record is poor and now AMD is sliding down that slippery slope with their new releases.

Did you go into the BIOS and set the system to boot off of the floppy disk? If "nothing happens" right now even with the Win98 boot floppy, then I doubt your system is even trying to boot from the disk (or it's a bad disk/disk drive).

They may have worked for you, and that's cool. Most of the Exchange admins that I have spoken to (and posted to on Exchange newsgroups) don't care for brick level backups and instead use a 30-day reclaimation policy on the server, so that one could just bring back the deleted files. But, the brick-level method must work for somebody (like you ) since it's available. I already spend a little more than 10 hours on our network backup, so I couldn't afford it even if I wanted to.

I was actually looking at these numbers here from the link on the first article: http://securityfocus.com/vulns/stats.shtml Even with dated numbers, you can see as there are more Linux installations (and it strives to become more "Windows"-like) the holes in it are climbing. So, I guess another way to look at it is since it has even less features than a Windows OS (and far less application support), it is still becoming a great security risk. Or, here's yet another way to look at it; as the installed base grows larger, there's more people changing focus to look for exploits in Linux distros. Hmmm....

Quote: the fact that amd/via are so popular now says any incompatibility issues will be solved, and more software will be optimised for this hardware. They are popular mostly because they are so cheap. The people that brag about having these systems tend to be power users that also overclock, tweak, and fiddle with their systems anyway. These users tend to accept many problems and consider them normal. If anything, they are having even more problems than before since these motherboards are leaving the manufacturer defective, and rather than wait for the proper fix, they want their money now and need to get them out in the marketplace. The worst part is that people are spending the same amount on the motherboard as if it worked to begin with, and yet the customers are acting as field service techs for the manufacturers by handling all the BIOS updates and troubleshooting on their own. Not exactly the best way to do business from the customer end, now is it?

I wouldn't put any other software on the Exchange server, except virus scanning software meant for Exchange (not just the server version of an AV program). It is generally considered not a good idea to have normal AV scanners on database servers, since they try to treat the database/transaction log files as normal files, and this may lead to corruption of these files. Now, there are virus scanner packages meant for servers running these applications (and the applications themselves) which should be used, I am just suggesting that you don't use the regular file server versions with these apps. One more thing about backups. How do you plan on backing up your Exchange server? I setup Windows 2000 to use NTBackup and run batch jobs every night to make a single backup file. Then, the network backup (ARCserve 2000) picks up that file when it backs up the rest of the server. Using this method, you can easily restore the databases of the Exchange server while it's online using all MS applications. I have done this a few times, and it works very well. Some backup packages have agents meant for Exchange that allow you to do "brick-level" (mailbox level) backups, but most admins that I have heard from recommend against using them as backup times are miserable and restoration abilities are questionable.

Quote: They still have a few bugs to work out (760MPX USB issue), but they do have solid chipsets overall. That isn't a bug, that's a miserable engineering/production/quality failure. Only in a high tech industry like this can such a pathetic screw up be considered a "bug" by anybody. It's a component that was supposed to work, but didn't at all. Now, I could see many of the incompatibility issues being bugs, but when a major component just doesn't work at all and requires the use of an add-on card, that would be classified as a failure.

I wrote earlier (somewhere) about my experience with the KG7, and that it sucked. It is a hybrid AMD/Via chipset (Via southbridge) and it kept "discovering" a portion of the southbridge over and over again at every boot. It wouldn't reboot at all either, it would just go to a black screen and that was it. This was after we got a replacement CPU as the vendor claimed the CPU was the problem.

Well, I really like my celeron 300a@450, and it is running .NET (Standard) Server Beta 3 at the moment. As for your girlfriend (wife), I haven't met either of them yet so I wouldn't know...

Well, CDONTS is just a way of processing the object for out purposes. Is the mailserver application installed on the same server hosting this page you want to write? If not, is the SMTP service on the IIS server? If either is correct, you could just make a simple ASP page with that code, put your email address on it, and run it to see what happens. We had our Exchange 5.5 box hosting our Intranet site during testing a while ago, and it worked very well without configuration. The same goes for having the SMTP service installed on the hosting server.

Do you have your own SMTP server to send email out from? I use CDO (Collaborative Data Objects) in ASP to send emails that I generate from forms. Here's an example: Code: strName = Request.Form("txtName")strCompName = Request.Form("txtCompName")strPhone = Request.Form("txtPhone")strFax = Request.Form("txtFax")strEmail = Request.Form("txtEmail")Response.Write "Sending email to: <B>" & strTo & "</B> .. "Set objMail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.Newmail")objMail.To = strToobjMail.From = "yourname@yourdomain.com"'objMail.Subject = strSubjectobjMail.Subject = "Subject: Online Form Submission" & strName'Mail body buildup and formattingobjMail.Body = "From your online form" & Chr(10) & Now () & Chr(10) & Chr(10) & "Name" & Chr(10) & strName & Chr(10) & Chr(10) & "Company Name" & Chr(10) & strCompName _ & Chr(10) & Chr(10) & "Phone Number" & Chr(10) & strPhone & Chr(10) & Chr(10) & "Fax Number" _ & Chr(10) & strFax & Chr(10) & Chr(10) & "Email Address" & Chr(10) & strEmailobjMail.SendSet objMail = NothingResponse.Write "done" I use these regularly for online forms both on my Intranet and Internet sites. If this will do what you are looking for, then maybe I can help you.

I have run Exchange, SQL Server, NAT/Firewall (ISA Server), WWW, etc. on servers that were both member servers and domain controllers without any issues. DCs, however, do have more overhead in large environments when they are tracking many clients. If you can keep Exchange away from SQL, Norton (I keep everything away from Norton products but that's just me ), and any firewall/NAT system you should be OK. At my office, it works something like this: Server: Exchange Server: SQL, McAfee Epolicy Orchestrator (similar to your NAV) Cisco PIX: Handles Firewall/NAT duties (like a separate server) Firewall/NAT systems should be on their own, since the might block active ports used by your apps or may have issues with socket-pooling applications (like IIS by default) that will cause an application to monitor all IPs on a given interface and may clash with whatever rules are set on the firewall. But remember, as mentioned earlier you should read up on these applications and see if any known issues might exist and *why* they exist. This way, you can try to avoid them, but if they come up you will have a better chance of recognizing them.

So, not only did you push around some kids, but you are now bragging about it? Um, nice... In any case, I use to skate too. You don't want them around, do what three mentioned; just put bolts and such on the curbs, banks, and such they use and remove the reason to come back.

That's nice, I'm glad to see that you guys could stop dragging your knuckles on the ground long enough to share your thoughts on women. While I trust it was in jest (right?), it could be fairly offensive to others so I will just lock this topic for now.